Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/27

Rh races among our ancient place-names, it is clear, therefore, that the old tribal designations cannot be disregarded. Another important consideration is that, for one man who bore a tribal name which has survived, there may have been many others of the same race called by other names, or whose names did not become attached to any place, and so have not come down to us. The testimony which names afford must, however, be considered with caution, for it is certain that they do not always imply what they seem to imply. From the archæologist’s point of view, modern place-names, without their most ancient forms as a guide, or without circumstantial evidence showing a reasonable probability what their most ancient forms were, are almost valueless. The Anglo-Saxon names, however, are of great value. Many instances are known of places which have two names, both of them apparently old, and it is probable that instances of this double nomenclature which have not been recorded, or which have not come down to our time, were much more numerous. As already mentioned, many places must originally have got their names from the people who lived in them, or from people who were their neighbours. Possibly, in some cases, people in neighbouring settlements some miles away in one direction called a place by one name, and those some miles away in another direction called it by another. If these neighbours spoke different dialects, as they may have done on the borders of the primitive districts or States, the use of such double names would be more likely, and perhaps in some cases probable. The tendency to give nicknames, or ekenames, to both people and places has also to be taken into account. The tendency of people to turn names the meaning of which they did not understand, or which had become lost as the language became modified or changed, into familiar animal or other names. such as Camelford from Gavelford, when the meaning of the primitive name had ceased to be