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SCTENCE. 



[Vol. Vlll., JNo. 192 



But let us now take a rapid survey of the kinds 

 of names in the United Kingdoms of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, and see what supplies of interest and 

 of illustration lie ready to the hand of the geo- 

 graphical teacher as he introduces his pupils to 

 those places and natural features which fall into 

 the scheme and method of his course of teach- 

 ing. 



We are, first of all, met by the obvious, and 

 indeed salient fact, that the names of most of the 

 natural features — rivers, mountains, and lakes — 

 have been given to them by the old and great but 

 decaying race whom we call Celts. There is 

 hardly a single river-name in the whole of 

 Great Britain that is not Celtic. Men come and 

 go, towns rise and decay ; even the sites of the 

 towns disappear and are forgotten : but the old 

 river-names remain — they are more lasting than 

 the names of the eternal hills, just as the rivers 

 are more lasting than the so-called eternal hUls 

 themselves. The two commonest words for water 

 or river are the Celtic words avon and esh or 

 uisge. They were at first generally common 

 nouns. From common nouns they became either 

 proper names or meaningful suffixes ; and we 

 find avon or ab, in all parts of India and Europe, 

 as the name for a stream. There are, I think, 

 thirteen Avons in England alone, five or six in 

 Scotland, and about ten in Ireland. The word 

 itself is cut down and transmuted in the most 

 curious manner. It becomes Inn in Fife and in 

 the Tyrol ; it becomes a mere n in the names of 

 the French rivers Seine, Aisne, and Marne ; and it 

 becomes ana in the Spanish Guadiana, which is 

 our word avon with the Moorish or Arabic prefix 

 of wadl. In Hindostan the name appears as ab, 

 as in the country of the five rivers or Punjab, in 

 the country of the two rivers or Duab ; and, last 

 of all, it appears as ub in the Danube. 



There is, on the other side of the Firth of Forth, 

 a village called Aberdour, which means the place 

 at the mouth of the river Dour. This last part 

 of the word is the Celtic or Cymric word der 

 (water) ; and this root is found in forty -four names 

 of rivers in Italy, Germany, France, and Britain. 

 There is Dour in Fife, in Aberdeen, and in 

 Kent ; we find Doare in Spain ; an Adour and a 

 Durance in France ; and in many parts of Eng- 

 land it takes the simple form of der at the end of 

 the word, as in Bother (the red water), Calder (the 

 winding water), in Dniester, and in Derwent {which 

 means the clear water). To trace the similarity in 

 all of these and many more differences — to find out 

 the underlying identity in the varied diversity — 

 is one of the mental exercises which combine the 

 interest of hunting with the quiet and self-con- 

 trolled use of the practical judgment, and which 



we have a right to call, on this account, educa- 

 tional in a very high degree. 



Let us take another example of a similar nature. 

 The Gaelic and Erse word for water is uisge; and 

 this name appears in the most i^rotean forms in 

 several scores, perhaps in hundreds, of river-names 

 in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Ireland, and 

 Great Britain. The following are only a few of 

 its transmutations : Esk and Ex : Usk, Ugg, and 

 Ux ; Ock, Oke, and Ox ; Use and Ouse ; Ax and 

 Iz ; Eska, Esky, and Esker ; Oise, Issa, and Issy ; 

 Isere and Isar ; Isen and Etsch. And many of 

 them give us the names, and with the names the 

 positions, of such towns as Exeter and Exmouth ; 

 Axbridge and Axminster ; Uxbridge, Oxford, and 

 Bannockburn. 



If the teacher knows the old Celtic word for 

 mountain, — as, indeed, every one does, — he can 

 go a pretty long way in throwing some light upon 

 some geographical names. Not to insist too much 

 on the historical conclusions drawn from the fact 

 that we find the Gaelic-Celtic form JBe?^ in the west 

 and north, while the Cymric-Celtic form pen is 

 found only in the east and south, the teacher can 

 point to the identity of pen and ben, and show how 

 pen appears in Pennine and Apennine, in Gram- 

 pian and Pentland, in Pennigant and Penrith, in 

 the Spanish Pentra and the Greek mountain Pin- 

 dus. Then, again, we have the same root in pin 

 and pinnacle, in_pmeand spine. The Gaelic form, 

 Ben is found in Benan (the hUl of birds), Benledi 

 (the mount of God), Benvrachie (tlie spotted moun- 

 tain), Benmore (the great mountain), and many 

 others. 



Again, Aber and Inver are two dialectic forms 

 of the same word, the n in inver being probably in- 

 organic. Both words mean ' the mouth of a river.' 

 Aber is found repeatedly in Brittany, about fifty 

 times in Wales, about twenty times in middle 

 Scotland, three or four times in England, but 

 never in Ireland. We know the position of such 

 towns as Aberconway, Aberystwith, Aberdeen, 

 Aberwick or Berwick, Aberbrothock or Arbroath, 

 the moment we utter their names ; and the same 

 may be said of the towns at the mouths of the 

 Ness, the Leithen, the Aray, and the Ury ; that is, 

 Inverness, Iimerleithen, Inveraray, and Inverury. 



Take another minor point from a Celtic language. 

 Ard is the Gaelic for point or height, and we find 

 it in Ardnamurchan, Ardwich-le-Street (the high 

 town on the great Roman road), and many other 

 names. But if we go down to the south coast of 

 England, — -to Hampshire and Devonshire, — we 

 find that a small projecting point used by sailors 

 to land their boats at is called a hard, with the 

 southern breathing attached ; and the name was 

 most probably left there by the oldest Britons. 



