The authorities derive _avon_, or _aune_, the Celtic for a gently flowing river, from _ap_, the Sanscrit for water, but it is more likely that there is a closer connection with Eve, or Eva--Welsh Efa--whose name is the Hebrew for life or enlivening, whence Avon would resolve most aptly into the _enlivening one_. Not only are rivers actually the enlivening ones, but the ancients philosophically assigned the origin of all life to water or ooze. According to Persian, or Parthian philosophy--and Parthia may be connoted in passing with Porthia, an old name for the Cornish St. Ives, for St. Ive was said to be a Persian bishop--the Prime appointed six pure and beneficent Archangels to supervise respectively Fire, Metals, Agriculture, Verdure, the Brutes, and Water. With respect to the last the injunction given was: "I confide to thee, O Zoroaster! the water that flows; that which is stagnant; the water of rivers; that which comes from afar and from the mountains; the water from rain and from springs. Instruct men that it is water which gives strength to all living things. It makes all verdant. Let it not be polluted with anything dead or impure, that your victuals, boiled in pure water, may be healthy. Execute thus the words of God."[449] Etymology points to the probability that water in every form, even the stagnant _fen_--the same word as _Aven_, _font_, and _fount_--was once similarly sacred in Britain, whence it may follow that even although Fulham and Walham were foul, vile, evil, and filthy,[450] the root _fal_ still meant originally the _enlivening all_. The word _pollute_ (to be connoted with _pool_, Phol, or Fal) is traced by Skeat to _polluere_, which means not necessarily foul, but merely to _flow over_. The _willow_ tree (Welsh _helygen_), which grows essentially by the water-side, may be connoted with _wallow_. Of Candian or Cretan god-names only two are tentatively known, to wit--Velchanos and Apheia: Apheia may be connoted with Hephaestus, the Greek title of Vulcan or Vulcanus, and the connection between Hephaestus and Velchanos is clearly indicated by the inscribed figure of Velchanos which appears upon the coins of the Candian town of Phaestus. That the _falcon_ was an emblem of the Volcae is obvious from the bird on Fig. 248, and the older forms of the English place-name Folkestone, _i.e._, Folcanstan, Folcstane, Fulchestan supposed to mean "stone of a man Folca," more probably imply a _Folk Stone_, or Falcon Stone, or Vulcan Stone. The Saxon gentleman named Folca is in all probability pure imagination.