Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/26

 by regular sound-change has become Eure. There is thus no reason for thinking that there ever was such a Celtic river-name as Ebura; if it had existed, its form in modern French would, according to phonetic laws, have been Yèvre or Hièvre. Further, it is a quite baseless assumption that the Ouse at York was ever called by the name that is now borne by its tributary stream; and Ure is a mere modern misspelling of Yore. As we do know that Eburos was a Celtic name actually borne by men, and was also a common noun meaning 'yew-tree', the probability is that Eburācon is derived from the one or the other. In Gaul most of the place-names ending in -ācon (latinized -ācum, in modern French -ay or ac- according to the local dialect) are known to be derived from persons; and that affords some reason for preferring the personal derivation in this instance.

By the time of the Angle conquest, the British language had changed a good deal, and Eburācon had come to be pronounced Evurōc. In accordance with their usual practice the Angles dropped the last syllable and added their word wīc, so that the name became Eoforwīc (the f being pronounced as v). This form is not due, as is commonly said, to a popular etymology connecting the name with the Old English word eofor, a wild boar. In Old English the vowel e ordinarily became eo when there was a u in the next syllable, so that Evur- could not possibly have become anything else than Eofor-. In the ninth century the city fell into the hands of the Danes, who turned the name into Iorvīk, afterwards contracted into York.

Another city that retains part of its old name in a corrupted shape is Lichfield. The common notion is that this name means 'field of corpses', from the Old English līc, a dead body. This cannot be right, because in the eighth century the historian Bæda writes the name not as Licfelth but as Lyccidfelth. The true explanation is as follows. About two miles from Lichfield are the ruins of a Roman