{"id":13808,"date":"2017-04-04T16:05:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T16:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=13808"},"modified":"2017-04-04T16:05:54","modified_gmt":"2017-04-04T16:05:54","slug":"abounding-in-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=13808","title":{"rendered":"Abounding in fish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/omniglot\/33661657321\/in\/dateposted\/\" title=\"The Mill Pond and River Dart\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/3\/2936\/33661657321_d552e37fc5_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" alt=\"The Mill Pond and River Dart\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I spent the weekend in Devon with my brother and his family. It was my nephew&#8217;s first birthday yesterday and I was there mainly to celebrate that. My journey, a long and meadering one, took me through some places with interesting names, such as Exeter, Teignmouth, Dawlish and Paignton. <\/p>\n<p>As well as admiring the scenery, I started wondering about the origins of these names, and in the case of Teignmouth, how to pronounce it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Exeter\"><strong>Exeter<\/strong><\/a> comes from the Old English <em>Escanceaster<\/em>, and is named after the River Exe, with the Old English suffix <em>-ceaster<\/em> (fortres, fortified town). So the name means &#8220;fortress on the Exe&#8221;. The Welsh name for the city, <strong>Caerwysg<\/strong>, means the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/River_Exe\"><strong>River Exe<\/strong><\/a> gets it&#8217;s name from the Latin <em>isca<\/em>, which is what the Romans called the fort they built where Exeter is now, in 55AD. They later called it <strong>Isca Dumnoniorum<\/strong> (Watertown of the Dumnonii), to distinguish it from <strong>Isca (Augusta)<\/strong> or <strong>Caerleon<\/strong> in South Wales.<\/p>\n<p>The Latin name <em>isca<\/em> is a modified form of a Brittonic root meaning &#8220;water&#8221; or &#8220;abounding in fish&#8221;. Other river names from the same root include Esk, Axe and Usk. I think the root referred to is the Proto-Celtic <em>*udenskyos<\/em> (water), from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*w\u00f3dr\u0325<\/em> (water) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic\/udenskyos\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The Proto-Indo-European <em>*w\u00f3dr\u0325<\/em> is also the root of words for water in Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, and Goidelic Celitic languages. It is the root of words for wave in the Romance languages (<em>onda, unda, onde<\/em>, etc), and of an obsolete English word for wave, <strong>und<\/strong>, from the Middle English <em>unde<\/em> (a wave), via the Old French <em>unde<\/em> (wave).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Teignmouth<\/strong> is pronounced [t\u026anm\u0259\u03b8] and comes from the Old English <em>Tengemu\u00f0a<\/em> (mouth of the stream) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Teignmouth\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dawlish<\/strong>, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dawlish\">Wikipedia<\/a>, comes from a Welsh river name meaning &#8216;black stream&#8217;. In Roman times it was known as <em>Dolfisc<\/em> (dark river or the devil&#8217;s water). According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawlish.com\/article\/details\/10\">dawlish.com<\/a>, Dawlish was originally spelt <em>Deawlisc<\/em>, a Celtic (Brythonic) word meaning &#8216;Devil Water&#8217;, or from a word meaning &#8220;black stream&#8221;, which is cognate with Welsh <em>du (g)lais<\/em> (black stream).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paignton\"><strong>Paignton<\/strong><\/a> [\u02c8pe\u026ant\u0259n] comes from an Anglo-Saxon name meaning <em>Paega&#8217;s town<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In case you&#8217;re wondering, the photo is of the mill pond and River Dart in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stoke_Gabriel\">Stoke Gabriel<\/a>, where my brother lives. Stoke comes from the Old English word <em>stoc<\/em> (place), which also has two two specialised meanings: (1) a religious place and (2) a secondary settlement [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stoke\">source<\/a>], and Gabriel is a saint\/angel associated with the area. The Dart apparently gets its name from a Brythonic Celtic word meaning &#8216;river where oak trees grow&#8217; [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/River_Dart\">source<\/a>]. If you click on the photo you can see a larger version, and some of my other photos from Stoke Gabriel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent the weekend in Devon with my brother and his family. It was my nephew&#8217;s first birthday yesterday and I was there mainly to celebrate that. My journey, a long and meadering one, took me through some places with interesting names, such as Exeter, Teignmouth, Dawlish and Paignton. As well as admiring the scenery, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}