Part 1 (2/2)
”Nay! but what better origin can we have,” I can fancy the reader saying at starting, ”than our own word 'gay', French _gai_?” I would not undertake to say that our name is not in any instance from this origin, but what I say is that a proved Anglo-Saxon _name_ is better than any a.s.sumed _word_, however suitable its meaning may seem to be. Moreover, the same Anglo-Saxon word will account, not only for Gay, but for a whole group of names, _Gay_, _Gye_, _Gedge_, _Gage_, _Kay_, _Key_, _Kegg_, _Kedge_, _Cage_,--all variations, according to my view, of one original name. It must inevitably be the case that a name dating back to a remote antiquity, and in use over a wide area, must be subject to many phonetic variations. And it matters nothing to etymology, so long as her own strict rules are complied with, if some of these names have not a single letter in common. Given, then, an Anglo-Saxon name Gagg, Gegg, with its alternative form Cagg, Keg, and we get from it all the forms that are required. For the English ear is averse, as a matter of euphony, to a final _g_, and while it most commonly changes it into _y_ (which is in effect dropping it), as in A.S. _dag_, Eng. _day_, A.S.
_caeg_, Eng. _key_, it also not unfrequently changes it into _dg_, as in A.S. _bricg_, Eng. _bridge_, &c. To come, then, to the Anglo-Saxon names concerned, Kemble, in his list of original settlers, has both Gagingas, _i.e._ descendants or followers of Gag, and Caegingas, _i.e._ descendants or followers of Caeg. And the Anglo-Saxon names cited below, one of them the exact counterpart of Gay, are deduced from place-names of a later period. The Old German names do not, in this case, throw any light upon the subject, as, on account of the stem not being so distinctly developed as it is in Anglo-Saxon, they have been placed by Foerstemann to, as I consider, a wrong stem, viz. _gaw_, patria.
_Anglo-Saxon names._--Gaecg, Geagga, Geah, Caeg, Ceagga, Ceahha (Gaeging, Gaing, _patronymics_).
_Old German names._--Gaio, Geio, Kegio, Keyo, Keio.
_Present German._--Gey, Geu.
_Present Friesic._--Kay, Key.
_English surnames._--Gay, Gye, Gedge, Gage, Kay, Key, Kegg, Kedge, Cage.
As to the origin and meaning of the word, I can offer nothing more than a somewhat speculative conjecture. There is a stem _gagen_, _cagen_, in Teutonic names, and which seems to be derived most probably from O.N.
_gagn_, gain, victory. We find it in Anglo-Saxon in Gegnesburh, now Gainsborough, and in Geynesthorn, another place-name, and we have it in our names _Gain_, _Cain_, _Cane_. It is very possible, and in accordance with the Teutonic system, that _gag_ may represent the older and simpler form, standing to _gagen_ in the same relation as English _ward_ does to _warden_, and A.S. _geard_ (inclosure), to _garden_.
As in the two previous cases, so also in this case, there is an ancient Celtic name, Geio, to take into account, and to this may be placed the names _Keogh_ and _Keho_, if these names be, as I suppose, Irish and not English. Also the Kay and the Kie in _McKay_ and _McKie_. Lastly, in this, as in the other two cases, there is also a name on Roman pottery, Gio, which might, as it seems, be either German or Celtic. Can there be any connection, I venture to inquire, between these ancient names, Celtic or Teutonic, and the Roman Gaius and Caius? Several well-known Roman names are, as elsewhere noted, referred by German writers to a Celtic origin.
It will be seen then that, in the case of all the three names of which I have been treating, there is an ancient Celtic name in a corresponding form which might in some cases intermix. And there are many more cases of the same kind among our surnames. _Wake_, for instance, may represent an ancient name, either German or Celtic; for the German a sufficient etymon may be found in _wak_, watchful, while for the Celtic there is nothing, observes Gluck, in the range of extant dialects to which we can reasonably refer it. So _Moore_ represents an ancient stem for names common to the Celts, the Germans, and the Romans, though at least as regards the Germans, the origin seems obscure.[3]
Now it is quite possible, particularly in the case of such monosyllabic words as these, that there might be an accidental coincidence between a Celtic and a Teutonic name, without their having anything in common in their root. It is possible, again, that the one nation may have borrowed a name from the other, as the Northmen, for instance, sometimes did from the Irish or the Gael, one of their most common names, Niel(sen), being thus derived; while, on the other hand, both the Irish and the Gael received, as Mr. Worsaae has shown, many names from the Northmen. So also the Romans seem to have borrowed names from the Celts, several well-known names, as Plinius, Livius, Virgilius,[4] Catullus, and Drusus, being, in the opinion of German scholars, thus derived.
But though no doubt both these principles apply to the present case, yet there is also, as it seems to me, something in the relations.h.i.+p between Celtic and Teutonic names which can hardly be accounted for on either of the above principles. And I venture to throw out the suggestion that when ancient Celtic names shall have been as thoroughly collected and examined as, by the industry of the Germans, have been the Teutonic, comparative philology may--perhaps within certain lines--find something of the same kins.h.i.+p between them that it has already established in the case of the respective languages. Meanwhile, I venture to put forward, derived from such limited observations as I have been able to make, certain points of coincidence which I think go some way to justify the opinion expressed above. In so doing I am not so much putting forward etymological views of my own, as collecting together, so as to shape them into a comparison, the conclusions which have, in various individual cases, been arrived at by scholars such as Zeuss. There are, then, four very common endings in Teutonic names,--_ward_, as in Edward, _ric_, as in Frederic, _mar_, as in Aylmar, and _wald_, as in Reginald (=Reginwald). The same four words, in their corresponding forms, are also common as the endings of Celtic names, _ward_ taking the form of _guared_ or _guaret_, the German _ric_ taking generally the form of _rix_ (which appears also to have been the older form in the German, all names of the first century being so given by Latin authors), _wald_ taking the form of _gualed_ or _gualet_, and _mar_ being pretty much the same in both. Of these four cases of coincidence, there is only one (_wald = gualet_) which I have not derived from German authority. And with respect to this one, I have a.s.sumed the Welsh _gualed_, order, arrangement, whence _gualedyr_, a ruler, to be the same word as German _wald_, Gothic _valdan_, to rule. But we can carry this comparison still further, and show all these four endings in combination with one and the same prefix common to both tongues. This prefix is the Old German _had_, _hat_, _hath_, signifying war, the corresponding word to which is in Celtic _cad_ or _cat_. (Note that in the earliest German names on record, as the Catumer and the Catualda of Tacitus, the German form is _cat_, same as the Celtic. This seems to indicate that at that early period the Germans so strongly aspirated the _h_ in _hat_, that the word sounded to Roman ears like _cat_, and it a.s.sists perhaps to give us an idea of the way in which such variations of tongues arise.)
I subjoin then the following names which, _mutatis mutandis_, are the same in both tongues, and which, judging them by the same rules which philology has applied to the respective languages, might be taken to be from some earlier source common to both races:--
_Ancient German Names._ _Ancient Celtic Names._
Hadaward. Catguaret (_Book of Llandaff_).
Haduric. Caturix (_Orelli_).
Hadamar (Catumer, _Tacitus_). Catmor (_Book of Llandaff_).
Hadold (=Hadwald). Catgualet (_British king of Gwynedd_, A.D. 664).
Catualda (_Tacitus_). Cadwalladyr (_British king_) (Catgualatyr, _Book of Llandaff_)
In comparing Catualda with the British Cadwalladyr I am noting an additional point of coincidence. Catualda is not, like other Old German names, from _wald_, rule, but from _walda_, ruler. There is only one other Old German name in the same form, Cariovalda,[5] also a very ancient name, being of the first century. This then may represent the older form, though this is not what I wish at present to note, but that Catualda is the counterpart of the British Cadwalladyr, which also is not from _gualed_, rule, but from _gualedyr_, ruler.
In suggesting that this coincidence may be confined within certain lines I mean to guard against the a.s.sumption that it would, as in the case of the language, be found to pervade the whole system, many of the formations of which may be of a more recent time. There are some other stems, considered by the Germans to be in coincidence, to only one of which I will refer at present, the Old Celtic _tout_, Welsh _tud_ = the Gothic _thiuda_. Hence the name Tudric, of a British king of Glamorgan, would be the counterpart of that of the Gothic king Theuderic, or Theoderic. I will take one more instance of a name presumed to be common to the Germans and to the Celts as an ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which--men's names being handed down from generation to generation without, even in ancient times, any thought of their meaning--a name may survive, while the word from which it was originally derived has perished out of the language, or is retained in a sense so changed as hardly to be recognised. The German name in question is that of Sigimar, the brother of Arminius, dating from the first century of our era, a name which we still have as _Seymore_, and in its High German form Sic.u.mar we have as _Sycamore_, intermediate Anglo-Saxon names being found for both. The prefix _sig_ is taken, with as much certainty as there can be in anything of the kind, to be from _sig_, victory; the ending _mar_, signifying famous, is a word to which I have already referred as common both to the Germans and to the Celts. Segimar was also an ancient Celtic name, but while the ending _mar_ has a meaning to-day in Celtic speech, the prefix _seg_ is a word of which they are hardly able to render any account. Only in the Old Irish (which seems to contain some of the most ancient elements) Gluck, finding a word _seg_ with the meaning of the wild ox, _urus_, deduces from it the ancient meaning of strength (Sansc. _sahas_, vis, robor), and infers an original meaning akin to the German.
It happens, perhaps yet more frequently, that a German name, which cannot be explained by anything within the range of Teutonic dialects, may find a sufficient etymon from the Celtic. That is to suppose that a word originally common to the Teutonic and the Celtic, has dropped out of the former, and been retained only in the latter. Thus there is a word _arg_, _arch_, found in many Teutonic names, and from which we have several names, as _Archbold_, _Archb.u.t.t_, _Archard_, _Argent_, _Argument_, for which the meaning that can be derived from the German seems very inadequate, but for which the Irish _arg_, hero or champion, seems to offer as good a meaning as could be desired. So also _all_, from which, as elsewhere shown, there are a number of names, in its Teutonic sense of _omnis_, does not seem to give by any means so satisfactory a result as in its Celtic sense of ”great” or, ”ill.u.s.trious.” Many other instances might be adduced on both sides to show the way in which a word has dropped out of the one language and been retained in the other.
Before pa.s.sing from this part of the subject, I may be allowed to adduce an ill.u.s.tration--a striking one I think, albeit that the name in this case is not that of a man but of a dog--of the way in which a name may be retained in familiar use, though the word from which it is derived has perished out of the language, though the language itself has pa.s.sed out of use among us for more than a thousand years, and though the word itself is only used in a sort of poetical or sentimental sense. Who has not heard, in verse or in prose, of the ”poor dog _Tray_”? And yet who ever heard, excepting in books, of a dog being called Tray, a word which conveys no meaning whatever to an English ear? What then is the origin, and what is the meaning, of the name? It is, I venture to think, the ancient British name for a dog, which is not to be found in any living dialect of the Celtic, and which is only revealed to us in a casual line of a Roman poet:--
Non sibi, sed domino, venatur _vertragus_ acer, Illaesum leporem qui tibi dente feret.
<script>