I may observe with regard to the Anglo-Saxon names in the above lists that there is occasionally a little corruption in their forms. The English trouble with the letter h seems to have been present even at this early day. We have Allingas and Hallingas, Anningas and Hanningas, Eslingas and Haslingas, Illingas and Hillingas, in all of which cases the analogy of Old German names would show the h to be in all probability an intruder. And the same applies to the Hanesingas, the Honingas, and the Hoppingas. There is also an occasional intrusion of b or p, thus the Trumpingas, whence the name of Trumpington, should be properly, I take it, Trumingas, A.S. trum, firm, strong. Stark suggests a Celtic word, drumb, but the intrusion of p is so easy that I think any other explanation hardly necessary. The Sempingas, found in Sempingaham, now Sempringham, should also, I take it, be Semingas, which would be in accordance with Teutonic names, whereas semp is a scarcely possible form. Basingstoke, the original of which was Embasingastoc, owes its name to a similar mistake. It would be properly I think Emasingastoc, which would correspond with a Teutonic name-stem. A similar intrusion of t occurs in the case of Glæstingabyrig (now Glastonbury), which should I think be Glæssingabyrig; this again would correspond with an ancient name-stem, which in its present form it does not. So also I take it that Distingas, found in Distington in Cumberland, is only a phonetic corruption of Dissingas, if indeed, (which I very strongly doubt) Distington is from a tribe-name at all. Both of these intrusions are natural from a phonetic point of view, tending as they do to give a little more backbone to a word, and they frequently occur, as I shall have elsewhere occasion to note, in the range of English names.
My object in the present chapter has been more especially to show the intimate connection between our early Saxon names, and those of the general Teutonic system. But now I come to a possible point of difference. All the names of Germany would tend to come to England, but if Anglo-Saxon England made any names on her own account, they would not go back to Germany. For the tide of men flows ever west-ward, and there was no return current in those days. Now there do seem to be certain name-stems peculiar to Anglo-Saxon England, and one of these is peht or pect, which may be taken to represent Pict. The Teutonic peoples were in the habit of introducing into their nomenclature the names of neighbouring nations even when aliens or enemies. Thus the Hun and the Fin were so introduced, the latter more particularly by the Scandinavians who were their nearest neighbours. There is a tendency among men to invest an enemy upon their borders, of whom they may be in constant dread, with unusual personal characteristics of ferocity or of giant stature. Thus the word Hun, as Grimm observes, seems to have become a synonym of giant, and Ohfrid, a metrical writer of the ninth century, describes the giant Polyphemus as the "grosse hun." Something similar I have noted (in a succeeding chapter on the names of women, in voce Emma) as possibly subsisting between the Saxons and their Celtic neighbours. The Fins again, who as a peculiarly small people could not possibly be magnified into giants, were invested with magical and unearthly characteristics, and the word became almost, if not quite, synonymous with magician. This then seems to represent something of the general principle, upon which such names have found their way into the Teutonic system of nomenclature.
While then England received all the names formed from peoples throughout the Teutonic area, the Goth, the Vandal, the Bavarian, the Hun, and the Fin, in the names of men, there was one such stem which she had and which the rest of Germany had not, for she alone was neighbour to the Pict. Perhaps I should qualify this statement so far as the Old Saxons of the seaboard are concerned, for they were also neighbours, though as far as we know, the Pict did not figure in their names of men. From the stem pect the Anglo-Saxons had a number of names, as Pecthun or Pehtun, Pecthath, Pectgils, Pecthelm, Pectwald, Pectwulf, all formed in accordance with the regular Teutonic system, but none of them found elsewhere than in Anglo-Saxon England. Of these names we may have one, Pecthun, in our surname Picton, perhaps also the other form Pehtun in Peyton or Paton. The Anglo-Saxons no doubt aspirated the h in Pehtun, but we seem in such cases either to drop it altogether, or else to represent it by a hard c, according perhaps as it might have been more or less strongly aspirated. Indeed the Anglo-Saxons themselves would seem to have sometimes dropped it altogether, if the name Piott, in a will of Archbishop Wulfred, A.D. 825, is the same word (which another name Piahtred about the same period would rather seem to indicate). And this suggests that our name Peat may be one of its present representatives. We have again a name Picture, which might represent an Anglo-Saxon Pecther (heri, warrior) not yet turned up, but a probable name, the compound being a very common one.
I do not think it necessary to go into the case of any other name-stem which I do not find except among the Anglo-Saxons, inasmuch as, there being in their case no such reason for the restriction as in that to which I have been referring, it may only be that they have not as yet been disinterred.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] From a similar origin is the name of the Scandinavian Vikings, Vik-ing, from vik, a bay.
[29] Archæological Journal.
[30] The reader must bear in mind that Ang.-Sax. æ is pronounced as a in "ant."
[31] I take the word contained herein to be "ganz," an ancient stem in names.