h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

“Here is my interrogation about the “combes” of Devon: what about the idea of the Devonian “combe” form being influenced –at least in the way it is written- by Old French “combe”?”

The question of the provenance of ‘coombe’ was behind my posting yesterday on the Devon place names thread. I found an obscure article attesting that the Welsh-style spelling ‘cwm’ had been used in the Domesday Book. As yet we have not been able to find out whether this is true or not.

Penn Recca’s reply on the subject shows the variety of ‘combe’ spellings that were used. It is possible Old French had an influence, as it was the language of government in England for some time, but I think the greatest factor was the standardisation imposed by modern map-making, where different variations of ‘combe’ may have just been regarded as time-consuming errors of spelling or inconsistency by locals and ‘corrected’ to a general form used throughout the region. The ‘e’ on the end, which gives our ‘combe’ the French appearance, is however, often absent in maps as late as the 18th century were you can see ‘comb’ frequently used. See the example below;

http://www.devon.gov.uk/etched?url=etched/ixbin/hixclient.exe&_IXP_=1&_IXR=110222

I have seen from my brief research on the subject that the origins of this word lie far back in antiquity. Variations of it occur throughout Britain, and as you have pointed out, it is commonplace in France too. I have found also that ‘comba’ meaning valley is a word in the language of the Piedmont region of northern Italy. The language of Piedmont is Latin based.

One possible ancient route it came to us is from the Greek ‘kumbe’ meaning something which is hollow—you mentioned the sense of ‘hollow’ in your post. This has given rise, via Latin, to the modern English word ‘catacomb’. It appears in Latin as ‘cumba’ a word for boat which refers more to the hollow or space made by the hull.

I think because of the widespread use of variations of this word in Europe that, like many river names, it is an extremely ancient topographical description that may even predate the Celts themselves. I would say that this ancient word was absorbed into common Latin speech in Roman times and survived that way. It is does not seem to occur in countries with Germanic languages except England. I have found no examples. In England, records show that it was in existence before the Norman Conquest, so it was not introduced by them.

The presence of ‘coombe’ even in south-eastern England suggests it was taken from the language of the Romano-Britons, and from then entered Old English. I do not know of any examples of this kind of name being used the lands were the Germanic settlers originated. The word clearly survived in Old English, as it is often used with English in place names, such as Watcombe and Maidencombe in Torquay.

So, I think, the word cannot reliably be taken as an example of Celtic language, unless as in Wales, it occurs with other demonstrably Celtic words. An example of a proper Celtic usage in Devon is the village of Pennycomequick, near Plymouth, which is an English rendition of “pen-y-cwm-cuic” meaning settlement at the head of a valley. An identical name is found in Cornwall, and used to be a name for part of what is now Falmouth.

Transmarinus,

I was aware of the incidences of ‘combe’ names in the Jura region of France, and guessed that these must have been derived from the Gallic equivalent of the Welsh ‘cwm’.

Your mention of the word ‘teno’ is interesting. You are quite correct that the term ‘den’ in English place-names does indeed signify a primary valley, but according to the English place-name etymologists it is derived from the Old English word ‘denu’ and not from a Brythonic word. Only one such place-name in Devon comes to mind, and that is ‘Dean Prior’ on the southeast boundary of Dartmoor. The term ‘dean’ has become popular in England as an element in house names, but has usually been used without any understanding of the meaning of the term. As such, many houses with names containing the word ‘dean’ are to be found at the tops of hills. Whether or not the term ‘den’ is from an Old English or a Brythonic root is an interesting question. Many place-name etymologists still tend to follow the dictates of Ekwall in the 1920s, who decreed that when searching for place-name derivations in England, Germanic options should be considered wherever possible. Of course this was at a time when the (now discredited) Victorian notion that in most of England the Britons had been either massacred or otherwise replaced by the Anglo-Saxons, so almost all place-names would therefore be Old English in origin. We now know that this is total nonsense, but it seems to be taking some time for the place-name etymologists to catch up with their academic colleagues in the fields of history, archaeology and population genetics.

Your question concerning whether the Devonian form ‘combe’ may have been influenced by the Old French ‘combe’ in its written form could have some validity. There is no evidence that the Brythonic language of the Southwest of England was a written language prior to the transition between Old Cornish and Middle Cornish in about 1200AD. The first remnants of written Cornish documents date back to the 14th century only. Therefore it is quite possible that the Normans, when compiling records for the Domesday Book in the late 11th century, could have adopted an Old French spelling format for some of the place-names that they were recording from local verbal testimony. This could have included the many ‘combe’ names in Devon and elsewhere. Of course if anyone knows of the specific spelling ‘combe’ being used by the Saxons in documents, such as the ASC, prior to the Norman Conquest, then that would rule out such a theory.

>> Of course if anyone knows of the specific spelling ‘combe’ being
>> used by the Saxons in documents, such as the ASC, prior to the
>> Norman Conquest, then that would rule out such a theory.

As indicated in the following site (which is based on Gloucestershire) there is evidence of "cumb" being used in the ASC.

http://www.grahamthomas.com/anglosaxon.html

Gloucestershire has a number of Celtic placenames, so one may presume that the ASC refersd to the same word as our Devonian "combe" or "coombe", rather than any Saxon word of different meaning.

Although "combe" is found in the placenames of central and eastern England they are rare. They would occur with less than 1% of the preponderence in Devon - where it is the second most common suffix (after "tun" or "ton")

What is evident is that there was no fixed form of writing in the dark or middle ages. You only have to look at the variety of surnames which have a common source to realise this - and surnames came into general use much later than the placnames to which we refer above.

In Shakespeare's plays you can see inconsistent spelling. and this is by the one author and within the same play.

I believe we have to look at the phonetics, rather than the strict written form, when looking at early evidence on names.

ExeValleyBoy,

One has to be cautious about ascribing an Old English origin to ‘combe’ place-names. For instance, the example you gave of ‘Maidencombe’ looks to have a clear English prefix ‘maiden’, but this may not be the case. The element ‘maiden’ occurs frequently in the names of pre-historic stone circles. Many are called ‘Nine Maidens’, but few of these consist of nine stones, so the legend about them originally being nine maidens (or virgins) who were turned to stone for dancing on a Sunday seems apocryphal. If there are seventeen stones, why would the circle not be known as ‘Seventeen Maidens’? It is much more likely that the name is really an Anglicised corruption of ‘Ni Maen’, meaning ‘sacred stones’. Likewise, ‘Maidencombe’ could originally have been ‘Maen Combe’, meaning ‘stone valley’.

Obviously some ‘combe’ names do have English affixes, but this does not necessarily imply that the name ‘combe’ was originally given to them by Saxons. Margaret Gelling, in her book “The Landscape of Place-Names”, states that many ‘combe’ place-names were originally simplex names, but acquired affixes after the Norman Conquest. Many such later affixes would have been English or Norman French additions to the names of much older dwellings, the name ‘Combe’ or ‘Coombe’ having been given to them by the Britons who first built them, in recognition of the fact that they were dwellings in a valley. This explanation seems far more likely than the improbable one that a relatively small number of Saxons settled in the area and proceeded to build settlements in valleys, which they then named ‘Coombe’ in the language of the British majority rather than in their own language. Remember that the Saxons had their own terms for valley, such as ‘denu’ and ‘hop’, so why would they have used a British term? Also, the assumption that the relatively small Saxon majority were responsible for naming a large majority of the ‘combe’ names poses the question of what names the British majority had given to their settlements. The ‘loan word’ assumption only makes sense if the Saxon settlers had largely replaced the Britons (after discovering from the Britons that ‘combe’ was a word for a valley) and then formed the majority of the population. We know that this did not happen.

As for ‘Pennycomequick’, Oliver Padel claims that the name is not Brythonic in origin, but a “joke” English name given to a field (or a farm), by an owner who is hoping to make his fortune. At least this is the explanation that he gives for the Falmouth example. He even states that ‘Pennycomequick’ has no meaning in the Cornish language, despite the fact that he acknowledges the existence of the Old Cornish elements ‘pen’, ‘comm’ and ‘cuic’. The Plymouth ‘Pennycomequick’ is perfectly described as being at the head of a valley, as also is the Dartmoor ‘Pennycomequick’ (a couple of miles east of Tavistock). The latter example was named ‘Pennycombe Crik’ on the first edition of the OS maps of 1809, so it certainly doesn’t appear as if the name was English in derivation. In this case, it is probable that the meaning is ‘head of the valley of mounds (or tumuli)’. There is also a ‘Pennycombe’ southwest of Exeter, which has an exact cognate in ‘Penycwm’ in Southwest Wales.

Regarding Pennycomequick as a Brythonic place-name is appealing. But here is a question: the definite article, in Cornish (in Middle Cornish as well) and in Middle and Old Breton is “an” (Modern Breton has “an”, “ar” and “al”); if I am not mistaken, most scholars think that the Old Welsh language and the language spoken in Dumnonia before the Saxon conquest pertained already to two different dialectal groups. Thus, why should a Welsh form be found in Cornwall or Devon??? Why “Pen y” and not “Pen an”? Assuming that the word “com” existed in Old Breton –it’s quite likely- the “end/head of the valley” would have been “Pen an Com”. If so, I think it would have been the same in Old Cornish and in the Brythonic dialect spoken in Devon.
Please excuse my broken English.

“One possible ancient route it came to us is from the Greek ‘kumbe’ meaning something which is hollow (…). It appears in Latin as ‘cumba’ a word for boat which refers more to the hollow or space made by the hull.”
I looked into my Latin dictionary. “Cumba” or “cymba”, borrowed from the Greek, meant a skiff, a gig, and, in some texts, it is, as you wrote, a hull; a “cymbula” being a small skiff.

How amazing! Do you know that your remark allows me to understand a strange and recurrent “topos” encountered in the legendary lives of our “Breton” saints! Many legends say that they came from Britain or from Ireland, crossing the sea on board a stone “feeding trough”… Such granite troughs can still be seen near chapels dedicated to those saints. I remember local people, looking for a rational explanation, telling me that in old days boats had stone keels… As I already mentioned, in Breton, a “komm” (formerly “com”) is a drinking or feeding trough for the cattle… So, I think that somebody translated the word “cumba”, found in a Latin “vita” (narration of a saint’s life) by the Breton word “komm”, and then, in French texts, by “auge”, i.e. “trough”… whereas the original narration of the saint’s life prosaically said “He -or she- crossed the water on board a ship”… Thanks for the light you unintentionally cast on this mystery…

In the recently discovered Cornish play 'Bewnans Ke' (The life of St Ke) Ke arrived in Cornwall on a whetstone. This I read in Ken George's translation, published this year by Kesva an Tavas Kernewek (The Cornish Language board). In his notes the translator, a prominent Cornish langauge expert, writes "The usual explanation for slabs being given as the saints' means of maritime transport is to suppose that they really travelled in wooden boats with a circular holed stone for the mast-step, and that after the wood rotted, all that was left was the stone".

“Why “Pen y” and not “Pen an”? Assuming that the word “com” existed in Old Breton –it’s quite likely- the “end/head of the valley” would have been “Pen an Com”. If so, I think it would have been the same in Old Cornish and in the Brythonic dialect spoken in Devon.
Please excuse my broken English.”

Transmarinus,

I think that the confusion here is in the comparison of the current state of Brythonic derived place-names in Devon with those in Brittany. You are quite correct that the correct Southwest Brythonic or Old Cornish form would be ‘Pen-an-comm-cuic’, but that would not be taking into account the process of ‘corruption’ into a more Anglicised form, which is not only common in Devon, but also (to a lesser extent) in Cornwall.

In Brittany, the language is still intact as a living language, so place-names are still found in the correct Modern (or Middle) Breton form. In Devon, Brythonic has been extinct as a living language for centuries, so the names of places have, over the centuries, acquired Anglicised appearance and spelling. Place-names with attested Brythonic origins now look very English in appearance. The name ‘Carn-liss’ has become ‘Charles’, ‘Du-gleis’ has become ‘Dawlish’ and ‘Lann-cors’ has become ‘Landcross’. Even in Cornwall, where the language has not been a living entity for over two centuries, place-names such as ‘Camm-bron’, ‘Hen-liss-ton’, ‘Kelli-hen-lann’ and ‘Marghas-byghan’ have been Anglicised (or evolved) to become ‘Camborne’, ‘Helston’, ‘Kehelland’ and ‘Marazion’ respectively. In the first of these Cornish cases, ‘bron’ is not a familiar word to English speakers, but ‘borne’ is. Similarly, in the case of ‘Pennycomequick in Devon, ‘penn-an’ is not seen as an English word formation, but ‘penny’ is, and for similar reasons ‘cuic’ would become ‘quick’. What we are seeing here is not a Welsh form of the name, but an Anglicised one. If (as Padel surmises) ‘Pennycomequick’ was merely a humorous field name, why are both of the Devon instances of this name clearly situated at the heads of valleys, as is ‘Pennycombe’ also?

Incidentally, you have no reason to apologise for your English. It is far better than my French (or Breton).

Plymouth Exile,
I think, regarding “Pennycomequick”, that you might be correct in mentioning the process of ‘corruption’ of a Brythonic place-name into a more Anglicised form. I agree.
On our side of the sea, that kind of evolution, here into more French looking names, is well known in Eastern Brittany (East of a line joining St. Brieuc to Vannes, where Breton disappeared mainly before the XVIIIth century). We have also had samples of such distortions in Western Brittany. It happened when geographers or Army survey officers (of course, French speaking “outsiders”) imposed a few absurd, but French looking, forms while good Breton forms were –and still are- only known to local people. Our “Tuchenn Gador” (knoll of the chair) gave birth to a bizarre “Signal de Toussaines” (“Toussaines” looking much like “Toussaint”, i.e. “All saints”…) on some maps. Another example, concerning “Cors”, as you mentioned “Lann-Cors”: We have a beach called “Trez an Cors” (in the M-Breton form), which means “beach of the reeds/of the marsh”. Guess what happened… French speaking scribes wrote “Plage du Corse”, i.e. “Beach of the Corsican”. Just wait a century and a writer will imagine that it was named after Napoleon… A last example : Kersaoz, “the village of the Englishman” is sometimes written “Kersauce” and some people wonder which kind of sauce it may be (mayonnaise?).
You mentioned Dowlish being a former Du-gleis. I think, you will tell me if I am wrong, that it means “Black brook”? Are you sure of the old form which is proposed? Is it a reconstitution made with the help of, for instance, the Welsh Dulais?
I am asking this because, here, we have at least –as far as I know- two Daoulas. In the Breton place-name, the prototheme is not “du” (black) but indeed “daou” (two). In both Daoulas we find the confluence of two brooks. I looked at the Ordnance Survey map of Dowlish, it seems that a narrow brook meets the Dowlish river just before the latter crosses the town. Then, could it be an equivalent of our Daoulas rather than an equivalent of the Welsh Dulais?

Ker Transmarinus,

On a slightly different tangent..

We know that part of central/northern Brittany was known as , in much the same way as south-western Brittany is known as Cornouaille.

Of course Domnonée has historical links to the British "Dumnonii/Dumnonia" - from which Devon got it's name.

Some claim links to Arthur.

http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/riothdo.html

My question though, is whether there is any recognition of that name in modern day Brittany??

Ker Transmarinus,

On a slightly different tangent..

We know that part of central/northern Brittany was known as Domnonée, in much the same way as south-western Brittany is known as Cornouaille.

Of course Domnonée has historical links to the British "Dumnonii/Dumnonia" - from which Devon got it's name.

Some claim links to Arthur.

http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/riothdo.html

My question though, is whether there is any recognition of that name in modern day Brittany??

Transmarinus,

It is interesting to note that the same process of ‘corruption’ has occurred in Brittany as can be seen in Devon (and Cornwall). You may be interested to know that the Ordnance Survey of Britain was first carried out in 1809 by Army surveyors, so it is highly probable that some Anglicisation occurred at this time. I have noted that further corruption of names has occurred since then, such as ‘Pennycombe Crick’ becoming ‘Pennycomequick’ on Dartmoor and ‘Buryet’ becoming ‘Burriott’ in North Devon.

I suppose that it is possible that Dawlish could be derived from ‘deu-gleis’, meaning ‘two streams’, but all of the specialist etymologists seem to agree on ‘du-gleis’ (black stream). I don’t know if they have an early source, which indicates that this is the correct etymology.

Transmarinus,

Having read your post again, I have realised that you wrote ‘Dowlish’ and not ‘Dawlish’ as it should have been. Dowlish is in Somerset (near Ilminster), not in Devon. Dawlish is a coastal town south of Exeter. Dowlish (Somerset) would fit the description ‘two streams’ better than Dawlish (Devon) would. Which did you look up on the OS map?

"Salud dit" Oozie Exile,
The use of the term “Domnonée” (in its French form) disappeared in the 11th century when what remained of the shrinking original Breton “Domnonea” (the former western part of Domnonea had already given birth to new territories, for instance Tregor, among others) was integrated within the new Penthièvre county (S and E of St. Brieuc), where the Breton language vanished in the Middle Ages but is still present in “frozen” place-names and in a few words of the "Gallo" romance dialect still spoken by old people in that area. Now the name is only used by geologists: as regards the Paleozoic times (Primary Era), the Northern geological province of Brittany is commonly called "Domnonea" by scientists.

Plymouth Exile,

I am so sorry. I must have been quite sleepy: I wrote Dowlish instead of Dawlish . The one I meant was the Devonian Dawlish, which I scrutinized on the OS site. I am interested in learning that there is a Dowlish in Somerset that could match the idea of a confluence of “two streams”. Examining the OS 1/25000 map, I met a “Luscombe” NW of Dawlish. It would be a good surprise if there were bilberries in Luscombe Wood… Why? Well, "luz"/"lus" (it depends on the orthographic system you chose) means “bilberries” in Breton. Have you ever been there? If so, did you find bilberries? Is my idea founded?

Penn Reca,

Penn Recca,

I think that the Cornish “Bewnans Ke” could have been inspired by a Breton prototype. As you know, the religious contributions did not only travel in a single direction “South Britain to Brittany”. It worked both ways and even at rather late stages. Just think of the Breton Winwaloe/Gwenole or Corentin/Corantyn whose names are still found in Cornwall, even if it seems that these famous saints from Kerne (i.e. Breton “Cornouaille”) never visited the places which bear their names in “Kernow”. Here is, quickly resumed, a late version (late because of the presence of the Virgin in the story) of St. Ke’s Breton legend: « Ke, coming from Britain on board a stone trough, came ashore in a place –now called St. Quay-Portrieux, on the N coast of Brittany- where women were doing the washing. The women were terrified; they thought he was some kind of evil spirit. They beat him so violently that he was wounded and lost a lot of blood. God bestowed him a miracle, through the aid of St. Mary: a spring gushed out from the ground were he was lying down. The Holy Lady took him to rest under a huge bramble bush that protected him. The next day the women went to see him and apologised for what they had done. A chapel (destroyed in 1875) called “Notre-Dame-de-la-Ronce » (Our Lady of the Bramble) was erected there afterwards…”
Regarding Ken George’s rational explanation, we can hear it here too. Moreover, Ken George spent a few years in Brest as a researcher in oceanology. He may have heard this explanation in Brittany, who knows?
I am rather prone to accept the hypothesis of a mistranslation, since a circular holed stone for the mast-step has a small size… But I may be wrong.

Transmarinus,

I have never been to Luscombe Wood, so I have no idea whether there are bilberries there or not. Even if there are none there now, that does not mean that there weren’t any there when the place was named, so your proposed etymology could well be the correct one. Certainly the word ‘lus’ is also found in Cornish, so it is highly likely that place-names containing that element would be found in Devon. The Welsh equivalent is ‘llus’.

Like Plymouth Exile I haven't visisted Luscombe woods, and so I cannot speak for their berries.

However I believe that Bilberries grow better at (relatively) higher altitude and that to the NW of Dawlish is the Great Haldon range.

I have noticed another Luscombe which is just outside Buckfastleigh - and again there is higher elevations and the proximity to Dartmoor.

By the by, in Devon Bilberries are often known as Whortleberries, but on Dartmoor they are known as "hurts"

http://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/whort_berry.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilberry

Hello Oozie Exile,

Thank-you for the links you mentioned.
Here, in W Brittany, we have bilberries at rather low altitudes (30m, 50m) on acid soils. I picked some in the Cranou Forest (less than 10km from the Brest Bay) and in Stank-Luzigou, just a few kilometres upstream from Quimper (“stank” is one of the many words meaning valley, “luzigou” is the plural of a diminutive form; i.e. “valley of the little bilberries”). Moreover, regarding the vegetation, even in the same language, the same word can sometimes have slightly different meanings according to the region…

TRANSMARINUS

I wrote the post on Bywnans Ke (also spelt Bewnans or Beunans) as I suspect the part about sailing on a slab may well come from the same source as the legends you describe in Brittany, and therefore likely traces back to the early suspected mistranslation you have discovered. I didn't think many of you in Brittany would yet have read the new Cornish play, it has only been available for a short while, and you might therefore not be aware that the 'slab' legend also exists over here. Clearly a great deal of work has gone into translating this play into English, and Kernewek Kemmyn. I particularly enjoyed the first part about St Ke and Sir Teudar, a tyrannical pagan King of part of Cornwall.

The story in the play is not the same as that you posted. Here is a VERY brief summary: In the first part of the play St Ke sails from Brittany to Cornwall on a slab and comes ashore on the Fal estuary. He gets imprisoned, chained, fettered and tortured by King Teudar after the two had disagreed on matters of religion... later.. Teudar gives ke a field. Later... Ke creates a fountain (spring) and washes a leper to cure him. The leper rewards Ke with a spring and four acres of land. Ke later gains land from Teudar whilst the king is 'stuck' in his bath.. The second part of the play is about King Arthur.

I think King Teudar (Tewdar), was previously the King of Brittany: maybe you know something of him. In the back of Bywnans Ke is published a translation into English of a summary of Albert le Grand's Life of St Ke, taken from an original in Latin found in the parish archives of St Kleder. We are informed that the text, in French and Breton, is published in 'St Ke: vie et culte'.

As you can see, the links with Brittany are very strong. I am not a scholar, but in this suspected mistranslation I think you may have discovered something of significance.

As this is a Celtic Devon thread I think I should draw your attention to the village of Landkey in North Devon: it is thought to mean Kea's hermitage, but very little seems to have been written about it.
http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/Landkey/LandkeyDedication.html