Somehow the resounding word Benbecula came up recently — it’s the name of an island of the Outer Hebrides — and I found the etymology interesting and tangled enough to share; from that Wikipedia article:
The first written record of the name is as “Beanbeacla” in 1449. The names Beinn nam Fadhla and Beinn na Faoghla are used in Scottish Gaelic today. All these names are assumed to derive from Peighinn nam Fadhla (pronounced [pʰe.ɪɲəmˈfɤːlˠ̪ə]) “pennyland of the fords” as the island is low-lying. Peighinn is very similar phonetically to the unstressed form of Beinn ([peɲ] “mountain”, and appears to have been subject to folk etymology or re-analysis, leading to the modern forms containing Beinn rather than Peighinn. Through a process of language assimilation, the [mˈfɤːlˠ̪ə] sequence has resulted in the modern pronunciation of [vɤːlˠ̪ə]. The spelling variations faola and fadhla are due to phonetic merger of /ɤ/ with /ɯ/ in certain Gaelic dialects. Spelling variants include: Beinn a’ Bhaoghla, Beinn na bhFadhla and Beinn nam Faola.
The second element is a loan from Norse vaðil(l) “ford” which was borrowed as Gaelic fadhail (genitive fadhla). Through the process of reverse lenition fadhla, with the ethnonymic suffix -ach has led to the formation of Badhlach “a person from Benbecula”.
Other interpretations that have been suggested over the years are Beinn Bheag a’ bhFaodhla, supposedly meaning the “little mountain of the ford”, Beinn a’ Bhuachaille, meaning “the herdsman’s mountain” and from Beinnmhaol, meaning “bare hill”.
Benbecula is pronounced /bɛnˈbɛkjʊlə/ ben-BEK-yuul-ə; even after reading all that, I’m still not clear on how it got its present form, with stressed BEK.
The odd word pennyland is interesting as well; OED (entry revised 2005):
Chiefly Scottish. Now historical.
1. † Land having the rental value of one penny. Chiefly Scottish with reference to land valued at a (usually large) specified number of pennies. Obsolete.
[…]2. In Orkney, Caithness, and Shetland: a division of land on which a tax of one silver penny was owed to the overlord (probably originally the king of Norway), comprising one eighteenth of a urisland. Also: (in the Hebrides and parts of the western mainland) a similar division of land equal to one twentieth of a tirung or ounceland.
[1299 Mork gullz brendri með uelltu iorðu huert penings land.
in Orkney & Shetland Rec. 38]1439 That..he had selit the charteris off the xij penny lande off Tollop to the forsaide Thomas.
in J. S. Clouston, Records of Earldom of Orkney (1914) 71
[…]1822 None of these pennylands, or other terms, indicate any definite extend of ground; and they are of different extent in different towns. But all the pennylands, marks or cowsworths in the same town are of equal extent.
A. Peterkin, Notes on Orkney & Zetland 6
[…]1988 The pennyland is found in a twelfth-century charter to Paisley Abbey of one penny in perpetuity from every house from which smoke issued.
D. M. Walker, Legal History of Scotland vol. I. 36
[…]< penny n. + land n.¹ Compare post-classical Latin denariata terrae land having the rental value of one penny (from 11th cent. in British sources; compare denariate n.), and perhaps also nummata terrae, nummata pennyworth of land (from 12th cent. in British sources), also in sense ‘land yielding an annual rent of one penny’ (in an undated medieval document cited in T. Madox Hist. & Antiq. Exch. Kings of England (1711) I. 155).
I note that the Wikipedia article Pennyland doesn’t explain the etymology; it doesn’t even mention the word penny.
It does mention ounces. Are we to infer that not everybody knows a pennyweight is a twentieth of an ounce? Shocking if true.
Alas, we live in a fallen age.
So it rhymes with Temecula. That was how I mentally pronounced it when I first saw it, but once I started reading I figured that couldn’t be right.
Even when English/Scottish pennies were silver and had not yet been debased, a full pennyweight of silver wasn’t all that much. A pre-1964 U.S. silver dime (heavier in the hand than a more recent base-metal dime even though the same size) weighs pretty close to 1.5 pennyweight. Even back in 1790 when the U.S. coinage was first rolled out I’m not sure how much farmland you could rent for a dime a year or even a dime a month.
Note that in England as of 1430 in order to be propertied enough to definitely be able to vote in Parliamentary elections, you had to be a “forty-shilling freeholder,” i.e. own land whose rental value was at least 480 pence per year. The penny was probably debased by then, of course, although I can’t be arsed to look up the details.
Everything has always already been debased.
@hat. “See also … Thrownness” is more poetic-than-average for a wikipedia cross-reference.
From the Wikipedia article:
Simply a bad translation – “individuals have always been subjects”.
German just can’t do that with tense-marking, so it has to employ some extra vocabulary.
“See also … Thrownness” is more poetic-than-average for a wikipedia cross-reference.
It’s a mercy that Heidegger’s translators didn’t do the usual thing and use “jactation” or whatever.
Ejaculation. The terminus a quo, or big bang, of subjects.
We are tossed into this world by tossers. Most of us at any rate. I was found under a cabbage leaf.
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminologie_Heideggers
Das Dasein ist als Existenz bestimmt durch Geworfenheit und Entwurf, es ist entworfener Entwurf. Das Dasein hat nicht die Möglichkeit eines voraussetzungslosen Entwurfs, sondern die Möglichkeit des Entwurfs ist ihm durch seine Geworfenheit bereits geschichtlich vorgegeben.
—
Presence (Dasein) is determined as Existenz (Existenz) by Thrownness and Realisation (Entwurf), it is Realised Realisation. Presence does not have the possibility of an assumption-free Realisation, rather the possibility of Realisation has been “previous historically” (bereits geschichtlich) bestowed (vorgegeben) on Presence by its Thrownness.
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Geworfenheit und Entwurf sind gleichursprünglich bestimmt durch die Rede als dem existenzialen Wesen der Sprache. „Der ausdrücklich vollzogene geworfene Entwurf, der das Dasein auf seine seinsverstehende Existenz entwirft, hält sein Entworfenes in einer durch die Rede gegliederten Verständlichkeit.“
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Thrownness and Realisation are in an identical manner (gleichursprünglich) defined by speech as the Existential Identity of language. ” The literally completely Thrown Realisation, which Realises Presence in its Being’s-Understanding (seinsverstehende) Existence, keeps its Realisation in an Understandability (Verständlichkeit) linked/segmented (gegliedert) by speech.
—
1. This reads like self-parody, one can easily imagine extending this system to include “Rausgeworfenheit”,”Weggeworfenheit” and even “Maulgeworfenheit”.
2. My terms in the translation are 1-1 with the German and not intended to reflect what Heidegger’s translators use.
Through a process of language assimilation — I wondered whether “assimilation” meant Language shift or Assimilation (phonology); the Wikipedia actually links to Language change, which seems a bit vague.
I’m sure all the information about pennylands and fords is true enough, but I suspect it’s irrelevant – without claiming to be any kind of placename expert, my gut instinct is that we’re dealing with two corruptions of a Norse name, one born of an attempt to produce a name in plausible Gaelic words, the other in English possibly through Latin.
The best example I’ve heard of of the first kind is Beinn Tart a’ Mhill on Islay – those are Gaelic words, and you can make a kind of sense out of them (hill of the drought of destruction?), but it doesn’t really work either grammatically or descriptively. Recognise it as the same Norse name (deer hill) that produced Hartaval on Skye and the Harter Fells of the Lake District, and it suddenly makes sense.
(Initial h- only exists in Gaelic as a lenited form of s- or t-, so you tend to get those backformations – Howmore/Tobha Mor on South Uist is another.)
I don’t know that I would rule out ‘beinn’, either – there are various things called ‘beinn’ in the outer islands which would be a cnoc (hill) at best on the mainland – Ruabhal (the main and really only hill on Benbecula) is small, but it’s the highest ground for some distance, and it’s higher than e.g. Beinn Sleibhe on Berneray.
The replacement of the unfamiliar ‘peighinn’ with the familiar ‘beinn’/’ben’ would be natural in an area which had become mainly English speaking, but I can’t see why it would happen in a Gaelic speaking area. (And a couple of ‘peighinn’ names have survived on Benbecula – Peighinn Lodain and Peinavalla.)
There’s also a tendency for Norse placenames to gain Gaelic clarifications – so Langavatn, the long water, becomes Loch Langabhat once the -vatn ending is no longer recognised as meaning ‘loch’, or a -ness/-nis gets ‘Rubha’ (Point) at the start. (Actually, Beinn Tart a’ Mhill is also an example of that, because it already ends in -val which is hill (fell, fjell…))
The impulse to Make Sense here might be quite recent – I feel like Beinn a’ Bhaoghla was the most common Gaelic form even 20 or 30 years ago, and certainly fits the pronunciation better. (Not just the v- rather than f- noted in the wikipedia description, but the fact that it’s a ‘slender’ n under the influence of the ‘i’ in ‘beinn’ – with a following ‘na’ it should be the ‘broad’ n from there that you hear more strongly.)
This is getting long so I’ll start a new comment for English forms!
Thanks, that’s great stuff!
Forms found in English texts:
The wikipedia article gives ‘Beanbeacla’ in 1499, from an unspecified source (which I’m too sleepy to hunt down!).
Dean Monro (originally from 1549, first published in Latin in 1582) gives ‘Buchagla’ – if that’s a form without the initial ‘Ben’, that’s interesting.
Martin Martin in 1703 uses the modern form ‘Benbecula’, and also uses that name for Ruabhal.
So the ‘b-‘ at the start of the second part has been there from the beginning. Early records of names can be pretty weird, of course, but it wouldn’t be difficult to approximate ‘fadhla’ in English, without stray ‘b’s and ‘c’s getting in.
So are we looking at an original form – Norse or otherwise – something like ‘Bekla’ (or maybe ‘Vekla’, if the ‘b’ is a Gaelic assumption that initial ‘v-‘ must be ‘bh-‘), with ‘Beinn’ added for clarification that it applies to the highest ground in the area?
I’m just making that up now – and my spelling is definitely influenced by Hekla – but I do find the ‘fadhla’ explanation unconvincing, however logical it might be geographically.
I’m going to bed now 🙂
I too was unimpressed with both pennyland and hill and ON vaðill, and was trying to say something along those lines, but couldn’t do anything with the Gaelic.
But now that you sorted it all out and pointed to Old Norse Vekla, I got the idea to check the island name Vega. The ON form of the name, Veig f., is homonymous with veig f. “strong drink” <- “humidity” in an inferred other sense “wetland”. With that I think we can postulate Veigill m. or Veigla f.
Wonderful! Somebody publish it in a journal…
Yeah… but for one problem. I think we’d have to assume that the Old Norse name was itself a folk etymology, confirming to a naming pattern that was no longer productive.
Norw. island names derived with an l-suffix are plenty, but they’re considered to be older, maybe much older, than the Viking Age. From about the Migration Era (I think), compounding with -ey, -land, -holmr, etc. became standard. This name form is dominant in Shetland and Orkney. The exception seems to be comparisons with objects (esp. body parts), which can be uncompounded, but there are no names derived with a suffix.
While ‘peighinn’ is a perfectly good Scots Gaelic word, the common modern word used for ‘penny’ is confusingly ‘sgillinn’ – clearly borrowed from the English ‘shilling’, which in pre-decimal coinage was equivalent to 12 pence. The explanation is that, at the time of the Act of Union in 1707, the Scots economy was in such a desperate state due to the disastrous Darien scheme that 1 shilling Scots was considered equivalent to only 1 English penny.