The Celtic Element

Certain of the most familiar English place-names were well known on the Continent long before the first Saxon invaders set foot on these shores, and must therefore be pre-English in origin. The Thames is mentioned by Caesar and Tacitus, Kent by Caesar, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, London by Tacitus and Ptolemy, the Isle of Wight by Pliny and York by Ptolemy. All these are probably Celtic in origin, but all are difficult and more than one etymology has been put forward for each. York we have discussed above. 1 London may be a derivative of a stem *londo- ‘wild, bold’, from which a personal-name or tribe-name may have been formed. Kent has been derived from Celtic canto- ‘rim, border’ (‘border country’) and from canto- ‘white’ in the sense ‘clearing’. This is the origin of Kenn (D, So), both DB Chent and both situated on streams called ‘white’ or ‘brilliant’. Wight, Vectis in Pliny, Gueith in Nennius, Wiht in Bede, is probably identical in origin with Welsh gwaith ‘work’, a word cognate with Lat vectis ‘lever’ (lit. ‘the act of lifting’) and OE wiht ‘weight’, derived from the root of Lat vehere ‘to carry’. The meaning might have been ‘what has been raised’, ‘what rises above the sea’, ‘an island’. The same element may occur in Penwith (Co), with reference to the hilly Land’s End peninsular separated from the rest of the county by a flat neck of land.