AND THE DIALECTIC DIFFERENCES INDICATED BY IT. 209 



etymology, founded upon mere resemblance of sounds, as those of his predecessors. 

 The MSS. left by George Chalmers show how he set about preparing his etymo- 

 logies, and we now know the process he went through. He had himself no 

 knowledge of either branch of the Celtic language, but he sent his list of names to 

 Dr Owen Pughe ; and that most ingenious of all Welsh lexicographers, who was 

 capable of reducing every word in every known language in the world to a Welsh 

 original, sent him a list of Welsh renderings of each word, varying from twelve to 

 eighteen in number, out of which Chalmers selected the one which seemed to 

 him most promising. 



As an instance, we may refer to a pet etymology of Chalmers, on which he 

 has built as historical fact, and which has been followed by all subsequent writers. 

 He interprets Kilspindy, the name of a place in Aberlady Bay, which belonged 

 to the bishop of Dunkeld, as signifying in Welsh CM ys pendu, which he renders 

 "the Cell of the Black Heads," and supposed that it indicated a settlement of 

 the Culdees. We have no reason to suppose that the Culdees were distinguished 

 by having black head-dresses ; but the etymology is philologically false, for Cill 

 is Gaelic and not Welsh. Ys is no known form of the article in Welsh, and 

 pen du means black head in the singular. In the plural, it would be penau 

 duon. The old form of the word puts the etymology to rout, for it was originally 

 written " Kinespinedin." His other etymologies are equally founded on a mere 

 resemblance of sounds between the modern form of the word and the modern 

 Welsh, as those of the clergy in the Statistical Account were between the modern 

 form of the word and the modern Gaelic. 



That system of interpreting the names of places, which I have called phonetic 

 etymology, is, however, utterly unsound. It can lead only to fanciful renderings, 

 and is incapable of yielding any results that are either certain or important. 



Names of places are, in fact, sentences or combinations of words originally 

 expressive of the characteristics of the place named, and applied to it by the 

 people who then occupied the country, in the language spoken by them at the 

 time, and are necessarily subject to the same philological laws which governed 

 that spoken language. The same rules must be applied in interpreting a local 

 name as in rendering a sentence of the language. 



That system, therefore, of phonetic etymology which seeks for the interpre- 

 tation of a name in mere resemblance of sound to words in an existing language, 

 overlooks entirely the fact that such names were fixed to certain localities at a 

 much earlier period, when the language spoken by those who applied the name 

 must have differed greatly from any spoken language of the present day. 



Since the local names were deposited in the country, the language itself from 

 which they were derived has gone through a process of change, corruption, and 

 decay. Words have altered their forms — sounds have varied— forms have become 

 obsolete, and new forms have arisen — and the language in its present state no 

 longer represents that form of it which existed when the local nomenclature 



