Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/25

 the man's name is derived may have had some other meaning than 'savage'. But as no such name as Londinos has yet been found borne by any Briton or Gaul, the theory of personal derivation remains uncertain. All we really know is that the name of the city is derived, by the addition of suffixes, from a word lond-, the meaning of which is still obscure. However, our inability to find a satisfactory solution of the problem is no reason for acquiescing in guesses which we know to be wrong. It is only a reason for waiting patiently for further light.

London is almost the only instance in which a British name of a town has remained nearly unaltered for nineteen hundred years. As a rule, when the Angles and Saxons adopted the name of an inhabited place, they appended to it a descriptive word in their own language, such as ceaster (borrowed from the Latin castrum), a fortified city, burh, borough, or wīc, a dwelling-place. Thus Wenta became Wintanceaster, now contracted to Winchester. If the British name was a long one, it lost some of its syllables; for instance, Sorwiodūnon became Searoburh, now Salisbury; and Manduessedon, with the addition of ceaster, remains as Mancetter. This process is exemplified in the history of the name of York. The ancient British name was Eburācon, which is probably derived from a man's name Eburos, though it may possibly mean a place where yew-trees grew. It is often said that Eburacon comes from Ebura, a supposed name of the Ouse, one of whose tributaries is still called the Ure. But this is a mistake. The argument on which it is founded is as follows. The name of the French city Évreux is derived from the tribe called Eburovīces; and as the territory of this tribe bordered on the river Eure, antiquaries have inferred that the name Eure must be a contraction of Ebura. But in fact the ancient name of the river was Autura, which