Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/95

 12 S. VII. JULY 24, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 75 Following Sir Robert Worsley's derivation Britton and Brayley ( ' Hampshire and the Isle of Wight,' p. 373) give its origin as Y-pwll-y-dwr-y-cwm " the pool of water in the hollow or recess of a hill," and Shore ('History of Hampshire,' 1892, p. 59) quotes "" Appledercombe " as among the names which may have been the names of the places vthey now denote in Romano-British time. " Such names " (he says) " would certainly Shave been more intelligible to the Celtic popula- ttion than to the Saxon, and the survival of such 'Celtic names and many others such as Mapelder- well and Itchingswell, which subsequently were made intelligible to the Saxons by a syllable of r bheir own language being added to the old Celtic Toot-word, probably points to the survival of part of the conquered race at or near to these places." As against these views the Rev. Edmund Venables (' Guide to the Isle of Wight,' ip. 239) says "' the name has been derived from " Y-pwl-dwr- stand in " ancient British " for " the pool of water in the valley." Without going so far back ; it may be deduced much more simply from the Saxon " Appuldre " and the British "cwm," the Valley of Apple Trees." "This derivation is adopted in the ' Guide to .the Isle of Wight,' in Methuen's ' Little Guides ' Series, as " the simplest and most -probable " one, and Mr. Percy G.' Stone, F.S.A. ('Architectural Antiquities of the .Isle of Wight'), after noticing the other -derivations suggested, calls " Appuldie <Cwm," the valley of the apple trees, "the more common sense source,'' and adds in a iiote that " the indigenous crab at one time ^abounded here." It may be noted that in the same parish -of Godshill as Appuldurcombe, there is a {hamlet called Appleford. This from docu- ments quoted by Dr. Whittaker (op. cit.) (has had many various spellings as follows : Apulderford (1280), Appeldelford (1331), ,Appedelford (19 Edw. III.), Appeltreford <1361) Apeltreford (1390), Appelderford (9 My. IV.). Your correspondent's statement that the prefix " apul," " appul," or " apple," can ''hardly be connected with the fruit, does iot seem well founded, and from the large number of place-names in various parts of tli3 country derived from trees, it seems -very probable that many names with the prefix in question owe their origin to the -apple tree. Dr. Isaar> Taylor ('W)rds and Places,' London, Macmillan, 1885, p. 321) says 'Names derived from those of plants are found in great abundance." After giving examples derived from the oak, the elm, the beach, the lime, the thorn, and many others, he gives the following from the apple, " Avallon or Apple Island, Appleby and Appleton." At p. 249 he says, speaking of names found in Anglo-Saxon Charters, " The names of fruit-trees are also very un- frequent, with the exception of that of the apple- tree, and even this appears very rarely in con- junction with Anglo-Saxon roots, being found chiefly in Celtic names such as Appledurcombe and Avalon, or in Norse names such as Appleby, Applegarth, and Applethwaite." It may, perhaps, be doubted how far the " combe " in Appuldurcombe is directly due to Celtic influence, as the Celtic " cwm " was adopted by the Anglo- Saxons in^the form of " combe," in the same way as they adopted the Latin " castra " in the form of " caster " or " Chester." The Celtic element is sparingly represented in Isle of Wight place-names, though " combe " is of frequent occurrence, e.g., Boweombe, Galcombe, Idlecombe, Luccombe, Nettle- comb, Shalcombe, Whitcombe, Combley, and probably Compton. While, therefore, there is good authority for the apple-tree having given its name to many places, there are probably other cases in which the prefix has a different origin. For example Taylor (or), cit. p. 237) says Appledore (which was formerly a maritime town) is a Celtic name meaning " Water- pool." It is, of course, always a difficult- question to decide the origin of a name that has come down from the remote past, a when the original meaning of a word has been forgotten, the process of assimilation often takes place, which results in the adoption of a pronunciation and spelling which will render the word significant to those using it, by making it like some familiar word of somewhat similar sound. This was especially so before the invention of printing led ibo a standardization of spelling. It is also not improbable that, in some cases, invaders of the country adopted a name significant in their own language because it was a near approach in sound to the name previously used by the former occupants of the district. Westwood, Clitheroe. WM " SELF WEEKS. ""Tulman, in < A Lecture on the Nam^s of Places,' derives Appleshawe from apwel and scon (Danish), the apple wood. Appledore, in Devonshire, he says, may perhaps be from the CalticJT/ pwl y dwr, a] pool of water;
 * y-cwm " which ungainly vocables are asserted to