Page:Devon and Cornwall Queries Vol 9 1917.djvu/210

 154 Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries. Taking the suffix, the substantival part in A.-S. place- names, first, the earliest I have are -truua and -troiie, two spellings of manifestly the same origin when applying to the same object. A reference to Bosworth's Aug. -Sax. and Eng. Dictionary will give us the following as used in the earliest times for the large or huge plant we call a tree : — treo, treow, treu, triow, triu, triw, tryw, &c. Amid the jumble of the vowels in these words and their inflections for case the first, with its eo, sounded as the Saxon y and our ee — perhaps assisted by the Danish invaders' trae — ultimately became the general name for a tree, and was thus spelt, remaining so to the present day. Seeing that the pedigree of the word can be so plainly worked out, and that the traditional meaning has been, until quite recently, always in accordance with it, there is left extremely little ground on which to build any fancy theory of this frequent element in English place-names at which so many etymologists seem to shy, as if far too common- place for their regard. The prefix Heavi is certainly more difficult, at first sight, to apprehend. In the earliest - the Domesday — spellings it is Heve, of course with a two-syllabled sounding. And it is the same in the Feudal Aids names as well as in the Bishops' Registers of the 13th and 14th centuries. I cannot at this moment assign or date the first use of heavi to repre- sent the heve in the name Heavitree, and neither of them appears in Bosworth ; but they are evidently phonetically the same, and intended to convey the same meaning. The clue is given us in the name of Mamhead as found in Domesday. It is Msimmeheve. Heavi or Heve evidently represents the word Head. Again referring to Bosworth, we find hevet or hevod as alternative spellmgs for hedfod, the A.-S. word for the modern English head. In the Bishops' register of 1262 we have Mamhead represented by M.3.mneheved, which was doubtless the common pronunciation of the time of the root substan- tive hedfod — the head or top point of man or of any other erect object. In 1410 we have it actually Mammehed. One other example only I may use to make the demon- stration certain. There is a well-known and common place-name, Donhead or Downhead, which explains itself.