Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/19

 for 'people of Cantion' was Cantware, whence Cantwaraburh, 'borough of the Cantware,' now Canterbury. The reason why the original a has not here been changed into e is that already in prehistoric times an Old English word ending in i (after a long root-syllable) lost that sound when it became the first element of a compound. If the compound had been formed at a later date it would have been Centware, and the name of the city would now be Kenterbury.

What Cantion really means it is impossible to say with certainty. We have no means of knowing whether it primarily denoted the country, or the South Foreland (Ptolemy's ), or whether it is derived from the tribal name of the inhabitants (in Latin Cantii). As the Irish céide, a market, must descend from an Old Celtic cantion, Sir John Rhŷs has conjectured that the district may have been so called because it was the place of resort for merchants from Gaul; but this seems very doubtful.

As I have already stated, the ground on which lexicographers have inferred the existence of a Welsh word gwent, with the sense 'open or champaign country', or 'plain', is that Gwent is, and has been from early times, the name of the region now known in English as Monmouthshire. The alleged meaning of the name is descriptively appropriate only to a part of the district; and there is reason for believing that the district was so called from its capital, now Caerwent (the prefixed word caer meaning 'fortress'). Caerwent is in Roman records called Venta. It is commonly said that this is a latinized form of the British name Gwent. It is not 'latinized' at all. The ancient British name was Wenta; we may retain the spelling Venta, if we remember that the Latin v was pronounced (at least nearly) like our w. I have already said that Welsh has dropped all its original unaccented final vowels; and it has also turned its original initial w into gw, so that the Welsh form of the