name Cantabriga for Cambridge, Canty Bay
and Pentland Hills in Haddingtonshire, and
Pentland Frith, those last words being
transformations from the Kentland Hills and
Kentland Frith. In the west of Scotland the
name lives in Cantyre, head of the land. But
at a very early period another race of Celts
changed the word kent into pen, a name
applied by them to hills, never to promontories.
Pembroke had previously been Kentbroke,
the name used by the later comers for
a cape was corn, a horn, which is preserved
in Cornwall. The wall, in this word, is the
Celtic gall, meaning western, as in Galway,
Donegal, and so forth. Mr. Sullivan, the
author of a clever book upon the people
and dialect of Cumberland and Westmoreland,
adds, to observations of his kind, a
theory suggested by the transformation of
Kent or Cent, into lceni. The I was a common
Iberian (Basque) prefix, and he believes
that some of the old Celts who settled here
came even from Celtic Spain. He believes
that the Mendip and the Grampian Hills
are witnesses to this, being derived from
the Basque words Mendia, a hill, and Gara,
a height.

Inver and Aber, as in Inverary and
Abergavenny, were names given by Celts of the
earlier and later migration to the mouth of a
river. Car or Caer in Carlisle, Cardiff,
Caernarvon, is from the Celtic Cathair, a fortified
place, and has therefore the same meaning
as the words or endings derived from the
Roman castra or camps, Chester, Lancaster,
Doncaster, Dorchester, and so forth. Coln, in
such words as Lincoln, is from the Latin
word for colony. By or bye is Anglo-Saxon
for a dwelling-place; den is from the
Anglo-Saxon denn, meaning valley. Denbigh means
therefore the dwelling among the valleys.
Ham, pronounced by the Anglo-Saxons hawm,
is the word now spelt home, and is a common
ending to the names of places, in which
men are gathered into homes, as Walt-ham
wood home, and a hamlet is a little group of
homes.

The low in names like Hounslow is from
the Anglo-Saxon hleauw, a gently rising
ground. The in or ing in Hitchin or
Reading, is Anglo-Saxon for a field or
meadow.

Maen was a stone or rock, and more or
maur was great, both being Celtic words;
thus, Penmaenmawr with its steep rocky
side translates into The Hill of the great Rock.
Ross was the Celtic for a promontory, as in
the name Ross itself or Roxburgh. Ness as
in Dungeness or the Naze is from the
Anglo-Saxon, næsse, for a nose. Stead meant a place
in Anglo-Saxon, and still means that in
English, when we say, "in stead of" for "in
place of," or speak of a homestead. That old
word homestead becomes a special name in
Hampstead. Thorp was a village, as in
Althorp, the old village. Ton was a hedged
or walled enclosure, from the Anglo-Saxon
Tynan, of which we have another form in Ty.
Thus Sutton meant the south enclosure.
Tyburn the boundary stream. Wick as in
Alnwick and Greenwich, was the
Anglo-Saxon for a town; Worth for a farm, village,
or town, as Wandsworth, the village on the
Wandel. By or bye, which we have already
said is Anglo-Saxon for a dwelling, is also
Danish for a city, town, and borough, in
which sense it was more commonly applied
to places in the north of England.

There is another way of classifying local
names. Names of tribes are remembered in
the word England itself or Angles-ey in Es-sex,
Sus-sex, and Middle-sex, called after the
Saxons, in Menai Straits, and Man called
after the Menavi, and so forth. Local names
ending in ham or ton are often described
by the names of families, whose homes they
used to be perhaps a thousand years ago.
Birmingham was the home of the Beormingas,
or descendants of Beorm. Though
certainly its vulgar name of Brummagem and
the neighbourhood of Bromwich, point to
another derivation, Brom-wich-ham, the
broom-place home, from the broom growing
there. Some of the old Saxon families seem
to have been equally at home among all
tribes.

A great family of Billings is found to
have occupied hams, tons and hursts, in
Durham, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Bedford,
Stafford, Lancaster and Sussex. Perhaps
it had also a residence near London, of
which there is record in the name of
Billingsgate. But Billingsgate is more
probably the gate of a fabulous British King
Belinus, companion of Brennus in the sacking
of Rome, and the father of King Lud, whose
name was attached to Ludgate. The name of
the Danish King Canute was attached to a
ford—Knutsford. Epsom was Ebbis-ham,
Queen Ebba's home. Malmsbury was Saint
Maidulph's City.

Not only Christian saints, but the old
gods of the Teutonic heathen left their
names scattered upon our country side.
Odin, whose name is in Wednesday, had a
city in Wednesbury and a residence in
Wanstead, and in Wensleydale a meadow valley.
His wife Freia has a Friday-thorpe and
Fraisthorpe. Thor, god of thunder, whose
name is in Thursday, is to be remembered
by his own name in Torness, in Thursfield
and Thursley, and by his symbolic hammer
in Hamerton and Homerton. Teu or Tuisco,
whose name is in Tuesday, has a Tye-hall
and a Tewesley. The god of Saturday claims
Satterthwaite.

Very many places are named after animals.
Efer, the Anglo-Saxon word for the wild
boar is in Everton, renowned for toffey, or in
Eversholt the wild boar's wood, and Evershaw
the wild boar's field. Broc or Bag, the
badger, is in Brockley or Bagshot. The
Buch appeared in such places as Buckenham
and Buckland. Cosgrove was the cow's