Dear Nick,

Thanks for the latest news from the frontline of the new onomastics, but I'm still unconvinced. The problem is not with the etymologies, of which you offer lots and lots and lots, but with the methodology behind them. I hesitate to define this - 'seeing in 3D' isn't really a definition - but the underlying idea seems to be that any name in the current language of an area can be interpreted as a reinterpretation of another name in the substrate language of that area. Your etymologies can only be true if your methodology is right. And I can see problems with it.

Firstly, although there is no doubt that some reinterpreted names do exist, your conclusions depend on the assumption that they are very, very common and there is no theoretical justification for this. Quoting Gosport and Appledore and so on is a circular argument because there would be no reason to suppose that these names were reinterpretations unless you were right in thinking that such a process of name-formation was frequent, which is exactly the point that you are trying to prove. You need to show that this is a rule of name-generating linguistic behaviour in general before we can agree that it's the origin of south-western British/English place-names in particular.

Secondly, the process of reinterpretation must by definition destroy all morphological evidence of what went before. Because it has been through a process of absolute assimilation - lexical, not phonological - the reinterpreted name contains no formal evidence whatever of the original name from which it was coined. So if you were to point to an OS map and tell me reliably that it contained twenty-one reinterpreted names, there would be no way that I could identify these, because all the names on the map whatever their origin would be indistinguishably English in form. Likewise, even if I somehow just know that a particular name is a reinterpretation, I still can't tell what it's a reinterpretation of, because the lexical substitution will have destroyed all phonological evidence of development from original elements. The history of the name can therefore go no higher than its available forms in the successor language, whether those are taken to be reinterpretations or not. As my old driving instructor used to say, 'If you don't know, don't go'.

Jeremy Harte

-----Original Message-----
From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Corbett
Sent: 23 September 2014 10:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: W Eng GOOSE: breach or passage worked by the sea. NJW dates for WCB new penult. stress

hi everyone,
1. Gosport HMP
thanks Jeremy for comments. No, it isn't onomastics as you know it, because with respect, you are
doing name studies in 2 dimensions, and we can now start to see in 3D - or even 4D if there was ever a British post-VL dialect (we could jokingly call this "Nostratic" after lingua nostra in Gildas).

Richard I appreciate any comment from you (as I do from Jeremy of course) , but I will throw you back the ball and ask why you start
your discussion of the Gosport name in your PN Hants/Batsford with "apparently". I think the fair inference is that your
gut feel is that this might be a re-interp. name. And I agree with this hint.

There is a significant landscape feature here apparently not referred to.
and when names get re-interp., they have a tendancy to get re-interp. as animal or plant names.

I've been reunited with my notes from GPC.
Pls note this W Eng dialect form "goose" (der. from gwyth) "breach or passage worked by the sea".
My case wd be stronger with Welsh parallels - I'll keep an eye out for these PNs on maps..
The full list of translations for gwyth in GPC online is this:
"vein, sinew, nerve, seam (mine), stream, brook, ditch, gutter, drain, channel, firth, estuary".
This is a good landscape fit for Portsmouth Harbour.

The paradox about these mistranslations is that they are easier to be confident about than perfect translations, where - as Richard pointed out here not long ago - the Pr W equiv. of "dulais" might have been independently re-invented by unrelated observers of the stream as the OE equiv. of "blackwater".
If one feels that the basic PNs in Ireland, Wales and England are strongly likely to refer to the salient landscape
feature, Occam's razor can be applied to what I've said about this name. Not to mention probablity theory.

Gendron NL Animaux/p. 130 (Errance)
"les appllatifs les plus divers accompagnent les oies: BOIS, champs, iles, BRECHES, croix, FOSSES, mares, patyres, vignes, gues, trous, pres, tretres".
My capitals - the Gaulish word may have been the same as the GPC * for British.
The word may have been under taboo (J Caesar on goose taboo in GB I think) and etym. of Mod Fr. "oie" which I think is
just from avis/bird. (oiseau is a diminutive - little bird).


2. dating WCB new penultimate accent. shift

the PNs Appledore and Barnstaple appear to me to be PNs of the type Aber + RN with modern penultimate stress present before these names were re-interp. as English place-names Here is what NJ Williams says (the most significant figure in the Cornish revival - I think an Associate Prof. of Celtic at UCD.
"the accent shift occurred throughout the Brythonic languages except in the SE part of the Breton speech-area, Jackson
has dated this accent shift to the 11th Cent (LHEB 669) but it is probably much older than this. Since it occurs throughout the Brythonic world it is likely to have occurred when WCB were a cultural unity".
N J Williams - Cornish Today 3rd ed. Everytype 2006.
(he makes a case for Cornish having survived longer than OJP would agree with in E. Cornwall - his case largely PN-based, so a most interesting chapter. I'm going to have to re-read several times to evaluate.)

I have rhe 1990's 4 Courts Press DUB reprint of LHEB. The person writing the intro says that KJ himself said in the
1960's that if one thread of the garment is unpicked, it all unravels. This person quietly signals a couple of things that
need revision, without more openly saying that LHEB has had its day. I'd agree.

Thanks everyone for reading this
nick
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