A Literal Map of the United Kingdom (click to enlarge) does what the post title says, giving you the etymological meaning of the county names — Cornwall is “People of the horn,” Hampshire is “Hamlet by the water meadow” (gazing at Ophelia’s drowned body, no doubt). Thanks, JC!
Commented-On Language Hat Posts (courtesy of J.C.; contains useful Random Link feature)
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Glamorgan is “sea circles”?
And there was I thinking it was Gwlad Morgan “Country of Morgan”, where Morgan is a personal name.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Morgan
“Morgan” might be “Sea circle”, but if so, the “circle” but is pretty metaphorical.
Here in West Glamorgan, I prefer to pledge my allegiance to Morgan le Fay*, who seems to be “Sea-born”, rather than any of that circle nonsense.
*A much-slandered lady. You have to see it from her point of view. Also, she is more interesting than her (half-)brother, as CS Lewis points out. Even in Malory, all of a sudden you get flashbacks from Frenchified chivalry to good old-fashioned Brythonic witchcraft whenever M le F turns up.
She was married (so they say) to Urien Rheged, patron of Taliesin himself.
(Urien was assassinated at the behest of yet another Morgan. There were a lot of them about.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morcant_Bulc
Banffshire = “Place of the River Banff”. That doesn’t quite thrill. What’s Banff?
Either a piglet or the Virgin Mary, it seems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banff,_Aberdeenshire#Etymology
Elite Canadian resort.
On the other hand, banbh, a suckling pig, is not appropriate—one might say it is impossible—as the name of a place or district.
Ignorance, being by definition free of ontic constraints, is the best starting point for generalization about impossibles. In Bavaria alone there are
# Schweinebrück, Schweinfurt, Schweinshausen, Schweinheim, Schweinberg (gleich siebenmal), Schweinsberg, Schweinshaupten, Schweinsbrühl und andere #
As someone with some probable Banffshire ancestry, I likewise feel like I have standing to find this “literal” explanation unsatisfying. I don’t think I have an ancestral dog in any Herefordshire v. Hertfordshire fight, but I don’t know that they’ve resolved that one very cleanly, although maybe there are just no good options there.
Tyne and Wear “Place of Two Rivers”?
Lancashire “Roman Fort on the River Lune”?
Some appear to be rather expansive in their explanations:
Hertfordshire “Ford frequented by stags”. Er, isn’t that transparently “Hart ford”?
Buckinghamshire “River-bend land of Bucca’s followers” — so “ham” is “river-bend land”?
Some of these are very illuminating – like the “sel-” in “Selkirk” meaning “hall” – I know “sele” from descriptions of Heorot in Beowulf.
I also just learned “Grantabridgeshire” = “Cambridgeshire” from subject-of-a-recent-post Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (video games CAN be educational!)
I do wonder about “Wigtownshire”. Wikipedia has this:
W.F.H. Nicolaisen offered two explanations for the place-name Wigtown. One theory was that is meant ‘dwelling place’, from the Old English ‘wic-ton’; however, if it is the same as Wigton in Cumbria, which was ‘Wiggeton’ in 1162 and ‘Wigeton’ in 1262, it may be ‘Wigca’s farm’. Other sources have suggested a Norse root with ‘Vik’ meaning ‘bay’, giving the origin as a translation of ‘The town on the bay’.
Apparently “ham” is from “hamm” meaning “grazing land, alongside the bend of a river” or “a dry area of land between rivers or marshland”, depending on your source. A little more specific than “a bend in the river”.
Wikipedia says of “Buckingham”: “In the 7th century, Buckingham, literally ‘meadow of Bucca’s people’ is said to have been founded by Bucca, the leader of the first Anglo Saxon settlers. The first settlement was located around the top of a loop in the River Great Ouse, presently the Hunter Street campus of the University of Buckingham”.
The loop is clearly visible on a map.
Yes, but I don’t think that many people understand hart anymore.
German Saal, pl. Säle* “large room for festive or representative purposes”; Lithuanian sala “island”; Slavic selo “village”.
* Umlaut immediately removed from the singular to serve as a plural marker, as in other *i-stems like Gast “guest”, pl. Gäste. Regular vowel lengthening spelled out in the singular, regular vowel lengthening from a different process not spelled out in the plural; that’s German spelling for you.
Horribly simplified, isn’t it. To say Dorset gets its name from the people of Dorn is to miss out Dorchester and the Durotriges and Durnivaria. Wiltshire gets its name from the town of Wilton, and Wilton its name from the River Wylye, and, OK the Wylye may mean Willowy, but Einar Ekblom’s work on Wiltshire placenames says it may be a British name, perhaps from a word meaning “grey”. And so on.
The original forms of placenames could be called “placentals”. They must have existed, but carefully imaginative reconstruction is required.
Sloterdijk called them Urbegleiter.
On the other hand, banbh, a suckling pig, is not appropriate—one might say it is impossible—as the name of a place or district.
Ignorance, being by definition free of ontic constraints, is the best starting point for generalization about impossibles. In Bavaria alone there are
# Schweinebrück, Schweinfurt, Schweinshausen, Schweinheim, Schweinberg (gleich siebenmal), Schweinsberg, Schweinshaupten, Schweinsbrühl und andere #
Regarding the above:
Examining just latter-day spellings and pronunciations may be misleading because folk etymology phonological change, or both may turn a place name, or any word for that matter, into something it originally was not.
For example, with respect to Schweinfurt in Bavaria:
“Nicht das Schwein, sondern Swin hat laut Wolf-Armin von Reitzenstein der Stadt ihren Namen gegeben. Das Wort stamme wahrscheinlich nicht aus dem Althochdeutschen, sondern wurde von den Franken aus ihren ursprünglichen Gebieten um Maas und Schelde mitgebracht. Im Niederländischen bezeichnet Zwin [zʋin] einen Priel, einen Wasserlauf in Watt und Marsch.[2] Swin bedeutet im eigentlichen Sinn abnehmen (schwinden) und bezieht sich in diesem Zusammenhang auf das seichte Wasser einer Furt. Das Wort war auch im Altsächsischen in Gebrauch, worauf mehrere Orte namens Swinford auf den Britischen Inseln hinweisen,[2] ferner auch Swinemünde an der Swine” (Wikipedia, s.v. Schweinfurt, with references to the research literature in the footnotes; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweinfurt#Etymologie).
Which is not to say that none of the German place names with Schwein- could refer to pigs. If any do so refer, that can be proven only by examining earliest-known or reconstructed forms of the name, but even then one may not be able to go back far enough to be sure of having drawn definitive conclusions.
The Swiss newspaper article from which I took that list of names mentions another doubtfully false friend; Swein meaning not pig, but “herdsman, servant, young man”, in the former name of the Swiss village now called Savognin.
# Interessantes lässt sich zu Savognin berichten, das bis 1890 offiziell Schweiningen hiess: Urkunden zeigen, dass es einst Suvaneng/Sweiningen genannt wurde und später zu Savognin/Schweiningen wurde. «Swein» hatte nichts mit Schwein zu tun, sondern war das germanische Wort für Hirt, Knecht, junger Mann. Bei anderen Quellen ist die Bedeutung des Namens unklar. #
@ David M. –
And closer to home (I’m in Bangkok), there is the (I think?) distantly related Sanskrit loan-word for pavilion, sala:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sala_(Thai_architecture)
From https://www.townlands.ie/search/?q=Banbh
—
We found 9 townlands matching your search of “Banbh”.
Clonbonniff (Cluain Banbh) , Tisaran Civil Parish, Barony of Garrycastle, Co. Offaly
Cloonbaniff (Cluain Banbh) , Achonry Civil Parish, Barony of Leyny, Co. Sligo
Cloonbannive (Cluain Banbh) , Killanummery Civil Parish, Barony of Drumahaire, Co. Leitrim
Cloonbonniff (Cluain Banbh) , Kilkeevin Civil Parish, Barony of Castlereagh, Co. Roscommon
Cloonbonniff (Cluain Banbh) , Crossboyne Civil Parish, Barony of Clanmorris, Co. Mayo
Derryloughbannow (Doire Locha Banbh) , Rathcline Civil Parish, Barony of Rathcline, Co. Longford
Drumbonniff (Droim Banbh) , Clonduff Civil Parish, Barony of Iveagh Upper, Lower Half, Co. Down
Glanbannoo Lower (Gleann Banbha Íochtarach) , Kilmocomoge Civil Parish, Barony of Bantry, Co. Cork
Glenbonniv (Gleann Banbh) , Feakle Civil Parish, Barony of Tulla Upper, Co. Clare
—
These names are mainly in Connaught but Ulster and Munster are also represented. The banbh is in the second part of the name, i.e. Cluain Banbh = Meadow of the pig. The first attestation of any of the Cluain Banbh names in that form is 1585. As DLG says, it is possible these names were folk etymologised, although there is a good spread. There was also a goddess Banba/Banbha, so if the names are that old, rhe element could refer to her instead of the pig….
From Wikipedia, s.v. Katzenelnbogen [in Rheinland-Pfalz]:
Die Herkunft des Namens „Katzenelnbogen“ ist nicht endgültig geklärt. Er könnte auf die lateinische Bezeichnung Cattimelibocus zurückgehen.[5] Catti oder Chatti geht auf das germanische Volk der Chatten zurück, während Melibocus Berg oder Gebirge bedeutet.[6] In unmittelbarer Umgebung Katzenelnbogens finden sich mehrere Hügelgräberfelder, die von einer frühen Besiedelung zeugen. Diese Deutung wurde jedoch 1783 von dem Historiker Helfrich Bernhard Wenck als unhaltbar eingeordnet.[7] 1952 untermauerte Karl E. Demandt die Deutung von Adolf Bach (1927) und Wilhelm Kapsers (1937), dass der Name mit „kleine/gewinkelte (Bach-)krümmung“ übersetzt werden sollte.[8] Der Begriff „Katzenelnbogen“ taucht erst unter den Grafen auf.
There was also a goddess Banba/Banbha, so if the names are that old, rhe element could refer to her instead of the pig….
Which brings us back to the Virgin Mary, as adumbrated by DE. And to placentals and fetomaternal microchimerism, since the old names live on in the new.
Placentas may be alien intruders, however, in the form of symbiotic retroviruses.
Oh, interesting.
Horribly simplified, isn’t it.
Indeed; for that matter, I suspect that there are usually some accepted(ish) etymologies for the personal and tribe names.
They also absolutely missed the opportunity to render East Riding as “eastern third of” (the rowan tree estate, presumably, but I wouldn’t fault them for missing that part).
loan-word for pavilion, sala
…huh. I would never have guessed that зал and село are cognates.
Norw. sel n. “dwelling house on a summer dairy farm; (older) lodging house for travellers”.
Bathrobe: Apparently “ham” is from “hamm” meaning “grazing land, alongside the bend of a river” or “a dry area of land between rivers or marshland”, depending on your source. A little more specific than “a bend in the river”.
Isn’t ham just the compound form of home, i.e. cognate to e.g. Ger. Heim? I can see how “naturally enclosed” is part of the concept, but “(meadow in) a river bend” seems overly exact., even if meadows protected by rivers and marshes happened to be good sites for a homestead.
… I think I was off on sele / Saal = (Sanskrit) Sala, sorry everyone –
śā́lā शाला is said to be from *kel- and is cognate with “hall” and “cell” (which is interesting enough in its own right, but not quite what I erroneously implied before):
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%BE
while
Saal / sele, etc.
is from *sel-
Pokorny
Root: sel-1
English meaning: dwelling
German meaning: `Wohnraum’
Material: Ahd. sal m. `Wohnung, Saal, Halle’, langob. sala `Hof, Haus, Gebäude’, as. seli m. `Wohnung, Saal, Tempel’, ags. sæl n., salor n., `Halle, Palast’, sele m. `Haus, Wohnung, Saal’, aisl. salr m. `Saal, Zimmer, Haus’, Pl. `Wohnung, Hof’, sel (*salja-) `Sennhütte’; got. saljan `einkehren, bleiben’, saliþwōs Pl. `Einkehr, Herberge’, ahd. salida, as. selitha, ags. seld `Wohnung’; abg. selo `fundus, Dorf’, selitva `Wohnung’ (bildungsähnlich dem got. saliþwōs); lit. salà f. `Dorf’.
References: WP. II 502 f., Trautmann 248.
The map is missing Cromartyshire, Britain’s Kleinstaaterei. “crooked bay”, or the “bend between the heights”
Aboud Slavic selo, there are hypothetically:
P-S *selo
P-S *sedlo “seat”
[and vaguely related: P-S *sedьlo “saddle” < Germanic ]
I do not know how reliably it can be reconstructed to either. Modern Russians interpret it as <*sedlo.
—
Baltic examples are not unambiguous either.
Se(d)lo. (Don’t miss Piotr Gąsiorowski’s comments, starting here.)
@trond
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamm
This town is located at a bend in the Rhine, But the Rhine course has neen changed. Anyway ham is not the same as hamm in placenames.
I’d forgotten about the goddess Banba. I wonder if she might have been baptised into the Virgin Mary by the pious people of Banff, rather along the same lines as this Nahuatl-speaking lady in Guadalupe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonantzin
Pigs are good though. Why shouldn’t a place be named after a pig, I’d like to know? I smell hyophobia here …
@ David Eddyshaw “Pigs are good though. Why shouldn’t a place be named after a pig, I’d like to know? I smell hyophobia here …”
At least with respect to Schweinfurt and other names giving the impression of meaning ‘Pigs’ Ford’, if pigs were able to ford the body of water in question, so too were animals with longer legs, and therefore the question would arise why pigs were signaled out for recognition in the place name.
Pigs seem like a perfectly good thing to name a hamlet after.
Why did the pigs cross the ford ? Because the swineherd made them do it. Pigs are not strongly motivated to swim, I assume, so the water level has to be accomodatingly low.
There’s good money in those porkers. They are thus worth commemoration in the place name.
In a different economy, cattle fords can be more nameworthy.
How much I have forgotten.
(And I read about solum with the others just a few days ago. Or weeks, I forgot that, too.)
Precisely for that reason: to brag that the ford is so shallow even pigs can just walk through.
‘Dunbar’s Town’ for Dunbarton(shire) is kind of laughable. ‘Dun’ is a fortified place, ‘Barton’ a corruption of ‘Briton’, so Dunbarton was the capital of the Welsh-speaking province of Strathclyde.
Yes, indeed: I missed that one. Curses!
Not Welsh, strictly speaking, but Cumbric
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbric
although it was pretty certainly mutually comprehensible with Old Welsh (and indeed, some, if not most, of the poetry of the Cynfeirdd must have begun life in Cumbric.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Welsh_literature#Welsh_poetry_before_1100
“Rhondda Cynon Taf” (“Noisy One Chief Davy”) is, in point of fact, named after the rivers Rhondda, Cynon and Taf.
“Rhondda” might possibly mean “noisy”, but nobody really knows; if it has anything to do with noise at all, it’s probably really “speech.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhondda
“Taf” has nothing to do with any Davys, all of whom begin with d in Welsh as you’d expect (Dewi, Dafydd), though it’s given its name to Cardiff. No idea about “chief.”
I don’t think “Gwent” is really anything to do with gwynt “wind.”
Powys does indeed seem to be the land of the pagans (“country dwellers”), though. Figures.
In defense of the late William J. Watson, I think his point may have been that it would be odd to simply name a place Pig, as opposed to names that translate to Pig Ford, Pig Field, Pig Town, etc. A place called Pig seems to have no place name element in it at all. But stranger things have happened.
I thought “chester” and “cester” were generally markers of Roman forts, an element that seems to be missing from the descriptions of Manchester, Leicestershire, Gloucesterhsire and Worcestershire.
“The English place-name Chester, and the suffixes -chester, -caster and -cester (old -ceaster), are commonly indications that the place is the site of a Roman castrum, meaning a military camp or fort (cf. Welsh caer), but it can also apply to the site of a pre-historic fort.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_(placename_element)
But stranger things have happened.
There is a place in northeast Ghana called Sakote “Last Night’s Porridge.”
The map has the pre-1974 Scottish counties, the 1974-96 English ones, and the post-1996 Welsh ones
Explaining “Merthyr Tydfil” as “Place of Saint Tydfil”, while not wholly wrong, rather oddly misses the (you would have thought) obvious fact that the first element is “martyr”, reflecting the fact that the eponymous saint Tudful was killed by English pagans (how like them!) Her father was King Brychan (not to be confused with St Brechdan, patron saint of fast food.) Mind you, Brychan seems to have acquired rather a lot of daughters, including St Dwynwen, the much prettier Welsh answer to Valentine, Bishop and Martyr.
Ich brech’ dann mal. “I’m off to puke if you don’t mind.”
(Bit of a register clash, I think, but regional words for puking may vary.)
Edited to add: huh, apparently the concept of Butterbrot / tartine was so foreign to Wales it had to be imported from Ireland…
Schweinfurt in Deutsches Ortsnamenbuch, edited by Manfred Niemeyer (2012):
In other words, there is no acceptable etymology.
The oldest known forms of the name are Suinuurde (720) and in Suinfurtero marcu (791).
dass Schweine nicht durch Furten getrieben werden
Why the hell not, if the market is on the other side ? That is a black swan claim. Chickens have been known to cross roads for even less reason.
Sad to say, the ‘net affords no picture of fording pigs. Is it because they are now kept in stalls and converted to cutlets in situ, or is some kind of hy(dr)ophobia involved ?
Here, at least, is a description of Pigsticks and Harold the Hamster fording rivers.
What do you get when you cross a pig with a dinosaur ? Jurassic pork.
On the ‘sala’ element, it is also part of ‘Uppsala’ according to one etymology I heard.
In modern Uppsala, Sala is now actually a neighborhood stemming from a settlement named after an old dining hall. Uppsala is the town up the river from it. Later this Uppsala became the religious center of area (Adam of Bremen describes a Norse termple there). Adjacent to Sala a port town of Östra Aros grew up and overshadowed the ecclesiastical center of the archbishop. After a fire in the 13th century, the ecclesiastical functions and the name of Uppsala were transferred to Östra Aros, with the old Uppsala becoming Gamla Uppsala.
The other etymology for Uppsala I heard was that it comes from Ubbs hal(a) (“Ubb’s hall”).
>Swein meaning not pig, but “herdsman, servant, young man”
Compare the Swedish name ‘Swen’ (West Norse ‘Swein’).
Could that be related to English “swain” ?
Borrowed from Norse (which explains the odd vowel correspondance):
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/swain
After a fire in the 13th century, the ecclesiastical functions and the name of Uppsala were transferred to Östra Aros, with the old Uppsala becoming Gamla Uppsala.
Meanwhile, also in the 13th century, the town of Sarum/Salisbury transferred to a new (initially otherwise empty) site on the occasion of a new cathedral, and the town of Ryazan transferred to what was previously Pereslavl-Ryazansky after the old Ryazan was thoroughly sacked by the Mongols.
(I wonder if there are other similar cases, particularly outside the 13th century.)
the concept of Butterbrot / tartine was so foreign to Wales it had to be imported from Ireland….
We are a cosmopolitan people.
But caws bobi tota nostra est, as Quintilian says. Him or Tolkien, anyhow.
Norw, toponyms with Svin- are explained with svinnr “quick; wise” instead of svín “pig-” if there’s a suitable river nearby. I would have thought that that’s basically the same etymology as schwinden, but I wouldn’t have expected it to correspond to ei < ī in German. Could Schweinfurt instead be from the German cognate of sveinn “boy, servant”, making a contrast to Frankfurt “ford (on the Main) of the free men”?
Likewise, in the 19th century Munich, Minnesota was moved two miles to new site, now called New Munich (pop. 320). The original Munich, Minnesota kept its name but immediately ceased to exist.
Could Schweinfurt instead be from the German cognate of sveinn “boy, servant”
The earlier forms seem to be swīn-, not swein, though. Only in the modern language would the forms fall together (and not in all dialects even then. Nor in Yiddish …)
PP: This town is located at a bend in the Rhine, But the Rhine course has neen changed. Anyway ham is not the same as hamm in placenames.
Ah, thanks. I assume that’s ham “thigh” used as an image. “Grazing land” is still an odd extension.
David E.: The earlier forms seem to be swīn-, not swein, though.
Evidence interfering with my hypotheses again? Schweinfurt!
Stephen Carlson: Adjacent to Sala a port town of Östra Aros grew up
Östra Aros “Eastern Aros” was named in contrast to Västra Aros, now Västerås. Aros, normalized West Norse Áróss, means “rivermouth”. There were a few medieval trading ports with that name, and it’s a respectable (but untestable) hypothesis that they were named after Århus in Denmark.
-wall means “people”? Would be a little more disinctive if they told you Cornwall means “foreigners of the horn”.
Maybe “semi-romanized Celts of the horn”? “horn hawks”?
Also, I had never realized until now that Gwynedd is yet another place that basically has the same name as Venice. Thank you, county etymology map.
I never noticed the breast-shaped hill on which Manchester is built when I lived in Greater Manchester in the 1950s. However, at that time I wasn’t very interested in breasts. The etymology of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, and of the Spanish name of the Twin Peaks in San Francisco, Los Pechos de la Choca, are more obvious.
Whoa. f > v already in 720?
Not in any dialects that I know anything about.
This actually seems like a good argument for the idea that Standard German is descended from a koine that developed when Prague was the imperial capital. Consider how far apart the modern dialectal reflexes are:
[iː] [ɑɪ̯] reconstructed PWGmc
[iː] [eː ~ eɪ̯] Low German
[ɛɪ̯] [eɪ̯]* [ɛɪ̯]** modern Standard Dutch * by default ** by umlaut from the next syllable!
[aɪ̯] [eː] East Central German
?? [aː] Upper Franconian (in part?)
[ɛ̞] [a] eastern Austria (phonetic length variable, not phonemic)
[ɛɪ̯] [oɐ̯] rest of Bavarian (phonetic length variable, not phonemic)
[ɛɪ̯] [ɑe̯] parts of Swabian
[iː] [ɑɪ̯] Swiss
ei ai southern/Catholic written German up to ~ 1750; not sure what pronunciations were intended.
Well, the map is a bit of fun and top marks for effort but between the errors and quibbles loses a few points, especially for the likes of Dunbarton and Gwent (< Uenta Silurum).
Banff is full of interest, though nothing definite can be said. For a start, “Place of the River Banff” won’t fly, because there is no “River Banff”; the town is on the Deveron and there is no evidence for an alternative name within the Gaelic-speaking period.
I agree with James that Watson’s objection (appearing a bit more strident out of context in the Wikipedia article) was not so much that banbh “suckling pig” could not be used as a place name element (as we have seen, it occurs in Ireland; and the Welsh cognate banw is used as a toponym – including as a river-name); rather it would be unlikely to be used in such an uncompounded or simplex fashion. But maybe? Places such as Benvie and Banavie appear to be from banbhaidh “pig place”.
On the other hand, there are several names for Ireland used in Old and Middle Irish texts, including the “poetic” terms Fotla, Elg, and Banba (the last being this putative goddess-name) which seem to turn up in Scottish contexts such as Atholl (which has been explained as Ath Fotla “new Ireland” – the prefix ath- meaning “re-, again-“ in this context), Strathearn (Srath Érenn, Mod.Sc.G. Srath Èireann “Valley of Ireland”, not to mention the river Earn running through it).
It has been argued (originally by the very same W.J. Watson, in fact) that since many of these places are in central and NE Scotland (north of the Forth-Clyde), they represent in some way the Gaelicization of the former Pictland following the emergence of the kingdom of Alba c. 900. It is difficult for Banff to be related to Banba though, since the attestations, including the earliest, seem to be monosyllabic. But then there is a Bamff in Perthshire which is maybe of the same origin. Meanwhile, a little way west of Banff is the Burn of Boyndie which has been explained in a similar fashion to the Irish Boyne (a river name also doing business as a goddess-name). As an extra layer of complication the River Deveron (on which Banff sits) is in Gaelic Dubh Èireann “Black Ireland”, in contrast with the River Findhorn a way to the west which appears to mean “White Ireland”.
Caution is advised!
Borrowed from Norse
The native cognate of sveinn was OE swān > ME swon, swan, which unfortunately collided with OE swān ‘swan’ > ME swan, swon and was lost. (Remember that OE /ā/ > ME /õ/ is a false sound shift, because London standard ME is not a descendent of Wessex standard OE.)
the “sel-” in “Selkirk” meaning “hall”
English lost the direct descendant of this word, but got it back via French in the forms salon and saloon. Several Romance languages borrowed the source word from Germanic, giving French salle and Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish sala. Italian added the augmentative ‑one to form salone, giving French salon, and from there back to English.
(Why did they all need to borrow this word? Didn’t the Romans have halls?)
Mongolian has заал (as in концертын заал ‘concert hall’), borrowed, of course, from Russian.
@ktschwarz
It appears that rooms in a Roman house were not named X-room but X, e.g., cubiculum, “sleep”. People gathered in an atrium or aula, but aula seems to have become attached to schools and atria (I think) were roofless. A cella was found in temples and was enclosed or windowless. There was also porticus, but my impression is that this was regarded as an exterior or briefly occupied space. Again, forum means “outdoors”, so even though it might have a roof, it would not be natural to apply it as a general “room” word.
One reason is possibly that the lordly hall where the retinue gathered to feast was an important feature of Germanic society, and that therefore concept and word were imported to the Romance languages of regions that had an aristocracy of Germanic descent in the centuries after the end of the Roman empire.
@Hans: The feasting and gathering hall definitely seems to have been an important element of Germanic culture in the European Dark Ages, probably with both social functions and political ones (such as exhibiting a local magnate’s wealth and power). From my first exposure to Beowulf (at age six), I noticed that the mead hall of Heorot is mentioned and described numerous times before the poem even alludes to the fact that the hall is really just the central building of a larger complex. Only well after Grendel’s depredations have begun are the outbuilding mentioned; moreover, Grendel’s arrival is specifically a response to the noise, not just of the Heorot settlement, but the mead hall proper.
Grendel’s response to inconsiderately noisy neighbours has always struck me as entirely understandable, if perhaps a little disproportionate. But he may have tried friendly approaches before and been rebuffed; the Beowulf poet may well have suppressed such material. He shows an all-too-evident prejudice against monsters, sadly characteristic of his period.
Both the hall word and the sal word were borrowed into Romance. I don’t know if this reflects borrowing with specialized meanings or different usage in the Gemanic source languages closest to Romance.
At least in NG, it seems that a höll f, is for feasting, while (derivations of) salr m. are for more mundane eating and accomodation. I have wondered if the distinction originally was made between a room with a stone floor (höll) and one with an earthen floor (salr)..
@TE
While you are (?) still here, why is primula called ‘key’ in Scandinavian, as in:
Gefnarlykill (fræðiheiti Primula farinosa) er blóm af ættkvísl lykla.
https://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gefnarlykill
Primula veris is marianøkleblom (“Saint Mary’s key-flower”). This flower looks enough like an old-fashioned key that the name lykill or danified nøkleblom is reasonable. When it comes to the association with the virgin Mary and her keys to heaven, cause and effect may be difficult to disentangle. Other flowers named after her are marikåper (Alchemilla), presumably named for the shape of the leaves, and marisko (Cypripedium calceolus), a shoe-shaped orchid.
why is primula called ‘key’ in Scandinavian
It’s not only Scandinavian, the flower is called Schlüsselblume in German as well.
Takk/Danke!
Gefn is one of the names of Freyja, as per Wiki:
The name Gefn likely means “she who gives (prosperity or happiness) and is generally considered connected to the goddess name Gefjon, but the etymology of the name Gefjon has been a matter of dispute. The root Gef- in Gef-jon is generally theorized as related to the root Gef- in the name Gef-n.”[6] The connection between the two names has resulted in etymological results of Gefjun meaning “the giving one”.[7] The names Gefjun and Gefn are both related to the Alagabiae or Ollogabiae, Matron groups.[8]
Scholar Richard North theorizes that Old English geofon and Old Norse Gefjun and Freyja’s name Gefn may all descend from a common origin; gabia a Germanic goddess connected with the sea, whose name means “giving”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freyja#Alternative_names
I actually thought of a possible connection to Freya without a single penny dropping on Gefn. But I wouldn’t put it past the Icelanders to replace Mariu- or something with Gefnar- for national-romantic reasons.
And viva, it seems, is exclusive to your eastern neighbours.
Ooh, I like that.
Himmelsschlüssel. (Less common than Schlüsselblume. And it’s Peter who has the keys to heaven here, not Mary.)
And just around that time, North Germanic underwent the sound shift *lþ > *lð > ll…
In German terms, rather than a Halle f., it was originally a Halde f. – “dump”, as in “mine dump” or “garbage dump”.
Me: I wouldn’t put it past the Icelanders
You should be warned that I’m always wrong on Icelandic.
juha: And viva, it seems, is exclusive to your eastern neighbours.
Oddly enough. The “official” word in one language often shows up as a dialect word or with a slightly different referent in the other, but it’s nowhere to be found. The Swedish word looks like the older one, replaced by key-words in other languages. Not even attested in Old Norse, though, if my cursory dictionary search is to be believed.
David M.: And it’s Peter who has the keys to heaven here, not Mary.
Peter holds the keys. That doesn’t mean that Mary for some reason didn’t get hold of some. But maybe it’s just me who thought those would be the keys to heaven.
Peter holds the keys.
But it’s Master Bob who makes Heaven’s Door.