Place Names in Kent :: Place Names of Celtic Origin.

Place Names of Celtic Origin.

Men of Kent must not make too much of their county motto, Invicta. As a matter of fact, we have been conquered at various times, and sometimes before the rest of England succumbed to the invader. The aborigines, who were probably somewhat like the Esquimeaux, a small race, having only stone weapons and tools, lived on the fringe of the great glacier of the last Ice Age (perhaps 50,000 years ago), which enabled one (though doubtless no one tried) to walk from what is now Middlesex and Kent to the North Pole; even the present North Sea being part of the great sheet of ice which covered all our land down to the north bank of the Thames. When climatic conditions altered for the better, England (to call it by its much later name) became desirable to the great west-ward migration of the Celts, who had already over-run all North Europe. This was the first of the five great waves of peoples who from the East seized on Europe, each driving its predecessor westward. The Celtic is, at any rate, the first to be clearly traced. It was divisible into the Gadhelic and the Cymric (or Brythonic) element, from the former the Erse, Gaelic, and Manx languages being derived, and from the latter the Welsh and the Breton (Ancient British and Gaulish, the Cornish, and probably the Pictish).

The first branch is said to have passed into Britain about 800 B.C., and the second about 630 B.C. Thenceforward, but for a few place-names, chiefly of rivers and heights, and still fewer words which have survived in our tongue, we know little until the visit of Julius CÆsar in B.C. 54, from whose Gallic War we learn of some of the Celtic tribe-names and place-names. Otherwise we know little apart from the river roots which we find all over N. Europe (and hardly any in England are non-Celtic), especially the five main words for river or water—Afon—Dur—Esk—Rhe—and Don.

Kent itself in the earliest records is found as Ceant from the Celtic Cenn—a head or headland, which again appears on the other side of our land as the Mull of Cantire. We have also our Chevening, which, like Chevenage, embodies the Celtic Cefn—ridge (still Cefn in Welsh). And “Kits Coty House” on our neighbouring Down gives us Ked—a hollow, and Coit—a wood, i.e., the hollow dolmen in the wood. Mote Park sounds modern enough to some; but our “park” is the Celtic parwyg, an enclosed place, while the much later Anglo-Saxon Mote denotes a place of local assembly. Dun was their word for a hill-fort, and so we have Croydon (with a Saxon prefix) for the fortress on the chalk range, though most of the old British fortresses which preserved the name when occupied by Romans or Saxons are in other counties. Penshurst, on the other hand, has a Saxon suffix to the Celtic Pen, still unchanged in Welsh as meaning a head or hill, perhaps only a dialectic form of the Gaelic Ceann, or Ken, which we have already noted in “Kent.”

As to whether the names of Romney and Romney Marsh have a Celtic element, opinions differ. Isaac Taylor, in his Words and Places, has little doubt that they come “from the Gaelic ruimne,” a marsh, and instances Ramsey, in the Fens, as coming from the same source, and finds it also in Ramsgate, i.e., the passage through an opening in the cliffs to the marshes behind. But he wrote in 1864, and in some respects is considered too imaginative by modern philologists. Ruim is undoubtedly the British name of Thanet—Ruoihm, or Ruoichim—preceding Tenit, Tenitland, Thanet—so perhaps the situation of Ramsgate in Thanet is all we have to consider. McClure ignores “ruimne” as a derivation; but does not explain the Rumin as a name of the district. The oldest English form is in a charter of 697 A.D. Rumining—seta, i.e., the dwellings of the people of Rumin, and he inclines (though admitting it may be far-fetched) to derive from “Roman,” since the whole region is full of Roman associations. Our common suffix “den,” for a deep wooded valley, gives us probably a Celtic word adopted by the conquering Jutes. Perhaps the explanation for so few Celtic names of places having survived is accounted for by the thoroughness with which the invading Jutes either slew or drove far westwards the Celts, and so re-named whatever settlements they made. Thus, in 452 A.D., according to the Saxon Chronicle, Hengist slew 4,000 Britons at Crayford, and these must have formed a large proportion of the population, and this was only one of a series of victories which drove the Celts backward into the far west. Purely Celtic Kent was prehistoric; Romano-Celtic it was from B.C. 55 to A.D. 413, and yet marvellously little remains of either element.

This mighty race has left us little record, though its language survives in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. In Maidstone Museum we can study its weapons, its ornaments, and its methods of sepulture; but in our walks in Kent we are rarely reminded of its long, as well as ancient, occupation of the soil. Yet in what we might consider the purest English some undoubtedly Celtic words survive, such as basket, crook, kiln, fleam, barrow, ashlar, rasher, mattock, bran, gown, flannel.

Availing myself of what has been written by Celtic or Saxon scholars, I turn to the river names of Kent, of which some are obviously Celtic and others as obviously Saxon.

Ash.—The western branch of the Stour is so named, and Ashford was anciently Esshetsford. Rivers have sometimes been named from the trees on their banks, and besides our Ash-ford, we find elsewhere Ashbrook and Ashbourne; though the common Celtic esk for water or river may also be considered. In this connection I note that in a direct line we have near Detling, Boxley, Thornham, Hollingbourne (Anglo-Saxon Holeyn is holly), possibly Bearsted from the Saxon Berc for birch, and Ashford from Aesc, our ash.

Brook.—This later, or English, name for a small stream appears only as a termination. We have Cranbrook, a reminder, like Cranbourne elsewhere, of the time when cranes were not uncommon in England. These are the places: Brook, a village on a tributary of the Stour; Brookland, near a branch of the Rother; and Brook Street, near Woodchurch. And may not Kidbrooke, or Kedbrook, be “the brook from the Coed”—the Celtic word for a wood?

Bourne.—The Anglo-Saxon Burne for stream appears not only in the Bourne and Bourne Park, and the various Nail-bournes, or intermittently flowing brooks, but also in Bekesbourne, Bishopsbourne, Patrixbourne, Littlebourne, the Ravensbourne, Hollingbourne, Brabourne (the broad bourne), Northbourne, and perhaps Sittingbourne, although this is on a creek rather than a brook.

Cray.—From the Saxon Cregga, a small brook, a tributary of the Darent or Derwent. In 457 A.D. Hengist and his son Æsc (Ash, or, metaphorically, ship) slew 4,000 Britons at Crecganford, and drove the rest out of Kent to Lundenbyrg (London). So the Saxon Chronicle records. Another old chronicler calls this the battle of the Derwent. The valley of the Cray contains the villages of Crayford, St. Paul’s (probably S. Paulinus’) Cray, St. Mary’s Cray, Foot’s Cray, and the district is commonly called the Crays.

Darent.—Like Dover’s Dour, from the Celtic root Dur for water or river, comes the Der-went, of which Darent is a variation. Dwr-gwyn in Welsh is the clear water. There are four Derwents in England, besides Lake Derwent Water. Dartford is the ford of the Darent.

Dour.—The living Celtic tongues of Wales, Ireland and Scotland preserve the Celtic Dur—Dwr in Welsh, Dur in GÆlic and Erse. There are other Dours in Fife and Aberdeen, and the Dover or Dur-beck in Notts, and in Sussex the Roman itinerary gives Portum Adurni, whence it has been assumed that there was an Adour river. But Prichard gives forty-four ancient names containing this root in Italy, Germany, Gaul, and Britain.

Eden.—The Eden, on which is Edenbridge, is a tributary of the Medway. Various rivers of this name are found also in Cumberland, Yorks, Fife and Roxburgh, containing the Celtic root Dan, Don, or Den, for water or river.

Lee.—This is a brook rising at Eltham Place, and giving its name to Lee Street and Lee, thence flowing to Lewisham. The more important river Lea on the opposite side of the Thames is called Lygan in the Saxon Chronicle. In Essex also there is the Lea-beck, which shows a Celtic name with a suffix attributable to the Danish marauders whose becks are more common in the north of England. The dropping of the last syllable of Lygan would give the Lee.

Len.—This short tributary of the Medway has been neglected by writers on place-names; but it might be the Celtic Levn, smooth, as in Loch Leven and three rivers of that name in Scotland, besides others in Gloucestershire, Yorks, Cornwall, Cumberland, and Lancashire.

Medway.—The first syllable is adjectival, like the Tam (broad or still) in Tamesa or Thames, and is the Celtic Mwg, vapour, whence our “muggy.” The second is from a varying Celtic root, represented in Welsh by gwy or wy, for water. Most of the river-names from this root are in Wales; but besides the Medway there is the Solway, on the Scottish border, and such names as Weymouth and Weybridge. In the Saxon Chronicle it is spelled MedewÆgan. Worth recording (if only to discard them) are some derivations given in Ferguson’s River Names. Writing in 1862 (since when some study has been more scientific), he gives the suggestion of the German, Grimm, that the name refers to a cup of mead overturned by a river god! Also that Gibson’s Etymological Geography derives it from the Latin medius because the river flows through the middle of Kent! and this, says Gibson, is the usual acceptation. Ferguson throughout has Sanscrit on the brain, and so refers us to a Sanscrit root, mid, to soften, and thinks it named from its gentle flow. But which of our Kentish rivers are not gentle?

Quaggy.—One of the two brooks at Lewisham. Quag may be the same as Quag in quagmire, and the second syllable the Anglo-Saxon “ea” for water or river, cognate with the old High German “aha” and the Latin “aqua.” In Rosetti’s poem we find “I fouled my feet in quag-water.”

Ravensbourne.—When Teutonic colonists or invaders, dispossessing the Celts, inquired the name of a stream, they took the Celtic word to be a proper instead of a common name, and so added their own name for water or river. Later, when the English tongue was evolved, “water” was sometimes added to the Celtic, or Celtic-plus-Saxon, name. Thus, in Wansbeck-water, Wan is Alfon and Evon; S is a vestige of the Gadhelic visge; Beck is the Norse addition; and Water the later English when it was forgotten what Wansbeck meant. Thus our present name means River-water-river-water! So Ravensbourne (interpreted inanely in a Lewisham print by a legend of a raven and a bone) is really the Celtic Avon, with the Saxon addition of Bourne, so common in Kent for stream.

Rother.—A mainly Sussex stream which forms part of the boundary of Kent. It is said to be the Celtic Rhud-dwr—that is Red Water.

Stour.—There are other rivers of this name in Suffolk, Dorset, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, besides the StÖr in Holstein, the Stura, a tributary of the Po, and the Stura (now the Store) in Italy, all probably named from the union of two Celtic words for water, Is and Dwr. Some regard it as merely the intensitive of Dwr, as in Welsh the prefix Ys is used to intensify. Note that a unique river name is a rarity.

Swale.—Bede, the Saxon historian, writes of the baptisms by S. Paulinus, in the Sualua. This is the Swale, which makes Sheppey an island. There are the East and the West Swale and Swalecliff, and the origin may be from the Anglo-Saxon Swellan, to swell. There are other Swales in Britain and Germany.

Thames.—This means the Broad, or Still, Water, from the Celtic adjective Tam and the root Is for water, which is reduplicated in the name Isis for the river at Oxford, higher than where the Thames falls into it. There is a river Tame in four of our counties.

Wantsum.—This much-dwindled stream separates Thanet from the mainland, and is called Wantsumu by Bede. The word is said to be not Celtic (as are most river names here and on the Continent); but Teutonic. Want or Went, meant a Way, and Som had the same qualifying force as in the word “winsome,” that is, equivalent to the “able” in “lovable.” There is a Wensum, a tributary of the Yare, near Norwich. While in early days the north branch of the Stour by Thanet was not fordable, this water was “go-able”—to coin a word. The “way” is not necessarily a water way. At Ightham, Seven Vents is the name of a place where seven roads meet.

Yenlade or Yenlet.—“Applied by Lewis to the north and south mouths of the estuary of the Wantsum, which made Thanet an island. The A.S. gen-lad means a discharging of a river into the sea, or a smaller river into one larger.” Ladan or hladan means to load or lade. Lambarde wrote in 1570 “Yenlade or yenlet betokeneth an Indraught or Inlett of water into the land.” There are two or three places of this name in the mouth of the Thames. Yantlet Creek is in the Isle of Grain.

Beult.—The final t is not found in the earliest records I have seen, where the name is Beule. One of our best Kent archÆologists suggests the Saxon verb Beauland, to turn or twist, as the origin. I think, however, we may go further back and find no exception to the rule that most of our rivers were named by the Celts, for I find the Erse or Irish Buol or Biol for water, and in addition to Continental rivers which contain this root there is the Buil (now called the Boyle) in Ireland, the Beela in Westmorland, and the Beauly in Inverness.

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