My object in the present chapter has been more especially to show the
intimate connection between our early Saxon names, and those of the
general Teutonic system. But now I come to a possible point of
difference. All the names of Germany would tend to come to England, but
if Anglo-Saxon England made any names on her own account, they would not
go back to Germany. For the tide of men flows ever west-ward, and there
was no return current in those days. Now there do seem to be certain
name-stems peculiar to Anglo-Saxon England, and one of these is _peht_
or _pect_, which may be taken to represent Pict. The Teutonic peoples
were in the habit of introducing into their nomenclature the names of
neighbouring nations even when aliens or enemies. Thus the Hun and the
Fin were so introduced, the latter more particularly by the
Scandinavians who were their nearest neighbours. There is a tendency
among men to invest an enemy upon their borders, of whom they may be in
constant dread, with unusual personal characteristics of ferocity or of
giant stature. Thus the word _Hun_, as Grimm observes, seems to have
become a synonym of giant, and Ohfrid, a metrical writer of the ninth
century, describes the giant Polyphemus as the "grosse hun." Something
similar I have noted (in a succeeding chapter on the names of women, _in
voce_ Emma) as possibly subsisting between the Saxons and their Celtic
neighbours. The Fins again, who as a peculiarly small people could not
possibly be magnified into giants, were invested with magical and
unearthly characteristics, and the word became almost, if not quite,
synonymous with magician. This then seems to represent something of the
general principle, upon which such names have found their way into the
Teutonic system of nomenclature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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