Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/302

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 a. vi MAY 29, 19-20.

t little to the triumphant pretensions of his enemies There is a strong, quick, and deep sense of justice

, mixed up with the gall and bitterness of his resent- ment In all his answers and retorts upon his

.- adversaries, he has the best not only of the argu- ment, but of the question, reasoning on their own

- principles and practice. . . .The appeal to the Jew's mercy, as if there were any common principle

. of right and wrong between them, is the rankest hypocrisy or the blindest prejudice ; and the Jew's answer to one of Antonio's friends, who asks

! him what his pound of forfeit flesh is good for, is

i irresistible."

J. B. MCGOVERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

THE NAME OF EENDA.

PENDA is the head-word or pet-form of

- some such name as Pendrsed or Pendwine. It has never been explained, and, as a royal name, it is unique. The only king who bore

- it was the king of Mercia who reigned from 626 to 655. He was father of Pada and son

.".of Pybba. The other Pendas cited just now were Mercian moneyers who worked under Offa (757-796) and Coenwulf (796-821),

t respectively. King Offa's font-name was Pinered. It is a curious fact that Pybba, Penda and Pada are the only kings in Anglian Britain whose names began with " P " : no other kingdom had a king at all

- with a P-name.

The remarkable significance of this fact

- will be appreciated by all who will turn . either to Prof. Wright's ' Old English

Grammar,' 1908, 291, wherein we may

- read that " Most of the words beginning with p in O.E. are Latin and Greek loan-words " ;

,. or to Sievers-Cook's ' Grammar of Old ] English,' 1887, 188, where we are told that

" p is rare as an initial in Germanic words." " How true this is will become apparent at

once to any one who will look at Prof.

Sedgefield's Glossary to ' Beowulf,' 1910.

- That O.E. poem runs to 3,182 lines and comprises at least 15,000 words, but not

- one of them begins with p. A glance at Moritz Heyne's ' Glossar ' to his ' Beowulf,' 1879, will confirm this : only three p-words found by him in secondary composition with other stems are listed. These are

, herepdd, anpceft and lindplega. Yet, as I have said, in the Mercian royal pedigree we get three kings coming one after the

. other whose names begin with P. How is it that this phonological fact has never been


 * appreciated or accounted for?

The y in the name Pybba presents the

, s-infection. of u. This postulates the forms

Pybbi : Pubbi, and calls for an unshifted " Bubba " which we get in the O.E. pedi- gree of the princes of Lindsey. Similarly "Penda" postulates the forms Pendi : Pandi. Now in Forstemann's ' Altdeutsches Namenbuch,' ii. 1913, we find the place name " Penti-lingen." This shows shifted d of the hypothetical form Pendi. In the first volume we get a female name Penta a ninth-century form. In the eighth and ninth - century ' Libri Confraternitatum,' ed. Piper, 1884, we get Pando, Panto, Panzo, Penza, Penzo, but no Pend-forms. Forstemann (Bd. I.) gives Panto (818) and equates that with the unshifted Baudo which is traced back to the sixth century and documented by him. Panto, Pando and Bando point to a Germanic form BANTU and that we actually got in Paul the Deacon's ' Historia Longobardorum,' and also in the ' Origo Gentis Langobardorum,' vide ' SS. Rerum Langobardicarum,' ed. G. Waitz, 1878, pp. 3, 54, 603. Therein this stem helps to form the landnama " Banthaib," one of the countries that the Langobards sojourned in on their way to Italy. This stem BANTH-, when it under- went the Alemannic B to P shift, would become *Paiith-.

Now, how are we to connect this hypo- thetical Alemannic stem with Pend-, Panel- ? In order to do so we must turn to the 'Historia Brittonum' (ed. Mommsen, 1804, p. 208) wherein we are told :

" et ipse Osguio oocidit Pantha in campo Gai et nunc facta est strafes Gai Carapi et re^es Brit- bonum" interfectisunt qui exier-uitcum ree Pantha in expeditione usque ad urbem quue uocatur ludeu."

Nennius, who was writing in A.r>. 837, also calls the Mercian king by his customary name of Penda, twice.

For these reasons we may assert that the name of Penda exhibits the Suevic or Alemannic shift of B to P and represents earlier forms *Pendi, *Pandi, " Panth-." This shift must have taken place in Lincoln- shire as early, at least, as the seventh entury. We find it in " Peartaneu " 'cp. " Beardaneu ") in the Venerable Bede's ' H. E.,' iii. 11 and ii. 16. Bardney and Partney are about 20 miles asunder and bhey are not very far from Boothby. In that name we get the O.E. form of BANTH-, sc. Both-; cp. tanth-> O.E. toth (tooth); Nanth>O.E. Noth (-helm, &c.)

These facts and the conclusions they warrant are " contrary to the opinions of scholars." ALFBED ANS COMBE.