50 



JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 



Wales and Brittany ; the three — Cornish, Welsh, and Armoric — 

 forming, in fact, the Cymric branch ; while the Irish, Scotch, and 

 Manx, formed the Gaelic branch of the Celtic tongue. Many 

 genuine Cornish words very much resemble words with the same 

 meaning in the three last languages, and very many more are the 

 same, or all but the same, as those in Welsh and Armoric ; and the 

 same may be said with regard to proper names, especially names of 

 places ; so that when, in consequence of the scantiness of Cornish 

 literary remains, we are in doubt as to the meaning of a component 

 part of a name, we are justified in going to the other members of 

 the same family for help. 



That many names in common use here and everywhere are signi- 

 ficant, nobody can deny, though no one, in using them as names, 

 now may think of them as having any meaning in themselves. 

 Kames of persons and families were originally either mere sobri- 

 quets or nicknames, or descriptive of some peculiarity of person, 

 or circumstance in life, or trade, or occupation, or office, or rank ; 

 or they were derived from the father's name, or from some place 

 where the first person who bore it was born, or some remarkable 

 object near which he lived, or the estate which he owned. Hence 

 we get such names as White, Long, Tox, Wolf, Smith, Knight, 

 Hill, Thomas, Williams, Newton ; and these and such like common 

 English surnames are very common throughout Cornwall, mixed 

 up with their Celtic equivalents — viz., Wynn = White, more com- 

 monly, Angwin the [an) white, showing that the name was first 

 used as a soubriquet to distinguish the person bearing it from some 

 one else having the same forename, or else as a nickname, the man 

 being very dark. So also we have very common Annear (? - an Mr, 

 the long); Angove, the {an) smith {(/of); J^ew am — luern, fox; 

 Elight (? ^ bleit, a wolf) ; Marrack = marheg, a knight ; Opie = Offie, 

 i.e., Theophilus, or Hoby, i.e., Robert; Eaw or Rowe = Ralph ; 

 Bray = Jr^, a hill; Trenoweth, i.q., Newton; Chynoweth r= new 

 {nowedh) house {chy). 



There is an old couplet found in Carew's Survey, 55 — 



" By Tre, Vol, and Ten, 

 You shall know the Cornishnien." 



And as Camden (Romaines 114) gives this — 



"By Tre, Ros, Tol, Lnn, Caer, and Ten, 

 You may know the most Cornishmen," 



