The objections against the early introduction of _kirika_ are mainly historical. We do not know the actual circumstances in which _kirika_, as the representative of the Greek κῡριακόν, became so powerfully entrenched as to resist all the influence of Latin Christianity to supplant it. The word may have been picked up by Teutonic invaders of the Roman Empire before those invaders had become Christianized. Curiously enough, this very question is discussed by a writer of the ninth century. But whatever may have been the cause of the transfer, the word _kirika_ (church) was brought to England by the Angles and Saxons[353]. It is of some interest to find that the Latin equivalent, _dominicum_, of the two Greek words, was employed in the sense of “house of God,” by the middle of the third century. To a certain extent this word was adopted in Old Irish, since _domnach_ (mod. Irish, _domhnach_) is frequently used to denote a church[354]. Another detail, worth noting as we pass along, is the existence of a group of place-names which appear to contain _ecclesia_ as a prefix. Out of a goodly list, we may mention Ecclesfield, Eccleshall, and Eccleston. It has been plausibly argued that these names could not have been given by the Saxons, who would have handed down words compounded with _church_, instead of _ecclesia_; that in fact, the group has an earlier history, dating from the days of Roman or Celtic Christianity. Only in this way, it is thought, could the Graeco-Latin term have formed part of a place-name. The objection to this theory--and it is a grave one--lies in the inability of its defenders to prove that the place-names possess the element _ecclesia_ at all. Most, if not all, of the names, break down under examination. In brief, Professor Baldwin Brown, who has investigated the subject, declares against the pre-Saxon origin[355].