CORNISH NAMES

Evening Star, Issue 21317, 23 January 1933, Page 12

CORNISH NAMES

, Some interesting place names in Cornwall are being examined by the English Place-name Society, which is working bn a volume of Cornish place names.

As the more obscure valleys, moorlands, and porths of the Duchy are becoming better known to the everpenetrating public of England, maps and signposts and farm gates reveal new surprises in the form of place names. Some of these afe grotesque; many are extremely melodious, others the reverse. Actually, few Pave wandered to far from their original form that a little knowledge of the Co; nisii language fails to explain them. It is when these old Celtic names have been Anglicised into a sort of pidgin •CVrn.vsh that the strangest results occur. To take a'few at random. What can be more imaginative than Idless, Belovoly, or Noon Downing, or what more appealing as a homo name than Cutcare of Come-to-Good, Little Beside, Retire, or Little Regarded? They sound like fancy names, but they are far. too old for that, and suburbia might well come to Cornwall for inspiration in these matters. At the other end of the scale we have llhvill, Purgatory, ■ and Great Sinns. The translation of place names is always a thorny subject, and full of pitfalls, but the origin of most of these is fairly clear. Idless was anciently Edless. Ed is probably “ ard,” meaning high, and “ less ” means an enclosure or court.

Belovely is corrupted (not altogether by accident, one would think) from Belouda, or Belovda, the ancient beacon which stands alongside Castle-an-dinas, on the slopes of which Belovely lies. ■ Noon' Downing was probably Noon-doon-ic, “ the valley by the down-land.” There are quite a number of Cdme-to-Goods, or ’ Cwm-ty-coit, “the coombe by the dwelling'(ty) in the wood,” and Comforts, or fords in the coombe. ■ The common Cornish word bos, or bod, “ a home,” is probably at the root of both Little Beside and Belovely; . Cutcaro is “ Coit-caer,” the camp in the wood; Retire, near Belovely, is lleth-tyr, “ the red house,” and as to Little Regarded, its similarity to the Cornish name Tregarden, meaning the place of shelter,” is a likely clue to its original form. Illwill, near Rome Head, is Weal Gwill, the minefield. - Purgatory can be explained harmlessly as Parcow (fields) and' douric (watery). So far from suggesting any analogy between this name and the Stygian fields, the Cornish Purgatory is a most Elysian place. Great Sinns owes its origin to the Celtic “ zans,” a hollow. Akin to Come-to-Good and Comfort there is the well-known Pennycomequick, meaning the head (pen) of the coombe by the creek (cuik). Such names as these are fairly simple, but Stepside, Featherbed, Cripple’s Cage, Fellover, Fatwork, and Girls are all baffling. There are places called Dorset near Fowey and Launceston, a Flanders in St. Gennys, and two Keiros and an Egypt in the Padstow district. Catchfrench, the ancient seat of the Glauvilles near St. German’s, is said to be Norman, chasse-franche, “ free hunting,” and another old family in the samo district were the Inches of Earth. Here the Cornish “ard,” or “ arth,” high, has become earth. Music Water, Wise Wanderer (Wandra), Content, i Dreary, and Bedwhindle are all rhythmical and melodious; but not so Gump, Gungcr, Gut, or Great Grumbla. . _ . An origin which must be unique in the whole glossary of place names is responsible for Zozc Point, ono of the promontories at the entrance to Falmouth Harbour. Its original Cornish name was Zawn Point, zawn being a fairly common word round those coasts for “ a cave.” When the first ordnance survey was made in the district the surveyors took ‘ the word for Zone, but on setting up the type for the maps the compositor accidentally inserted the third letter on its sido, so that, in the type used,

the “ n ” resembled a “ z,” and it has been Zone Point ever since. Travellers in the Lizard aro sometimes puzzled by the name Laity on the signposts. It would probably surprise them to find that this cjuite Eng-lish-looking word has, in this case, a purely Celtic origin. ft is Laeth-ty, the milking house, or dairy. Even more arresting is Cost-is-lost, by which name farms near Cnmeford, Bodmin, and Padstow are known. It has, of course, no reference to the farmer’s initial outlay, but it is a corruption of cos. a wood, ty, house, and los,- gray. There is in Sithncy a farhi called G'ondygoose, a nursery expression which is all the more intriguing in this case because “ goodi ” happens to be Cornish for goose. It is probably an Anglicised form of Cned-y-gos, or, in other words, Marshland Farm, Skyb'urrio, near Falmouth, has a hint of the gibberish about it, but it is actually an nncorrupted Cornish word meaning “the Barns.