The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
History
The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Geology -- England -- Cornwall (County)
In this parish stands the barton and manor of Good-ol-gan, also
God-al-gan, synonymous words, only varied by the dialect, meaning a
place that was altogether a wood down, a name anciently given and
taken from the natural circumstances thereof. Otherwise, if the name
consist of English-Cornish, God-ol-gan signifies a place that was
altogether God’s downs. As for the modern name Good-ol-phin,
God-ol-fyn, it, in like manner as the former, admits of no other
etymology or construction than that it was a place that was altogether
a wood, fountain, well, or spring of water, or altogether God’s
fountain or spring of water. But because the words god, gud, good, in
Cornish, Belgic, and British, are always taken and adopted in the
first sense, to signify only a wood, and the words Du, Due, and Dyu,
are the proper appellations of God, and no other in Cornish, I cannot
apprehend how that sacred name is concerned in the initial part of
this word, Godolphin, which refers, as I said before, to the
circumstances of the place, viz. that no table, fountain, well, or
spring of water here, that passeth beneath the house, through the
gardens, and the woods and groves of timber that still surround the
same.
Contrary to this etymology, Mr. Carew, in his “Survey of Cornwall,”
page 153, says that godolphin signifies a white eagle, than which
nothing can be more untrue; for, in all those compound words, there is
not one particle or syllable relating thereto, or any other than the
British language whatsoever: for wen erew, wen eryr, wen eriew, and by
contraction wen-er, is a white eagle in the Welch, Little-Britannic,
and Cornish tongues. [See Dr. Davis’s British Lexicon, and Floyd upon
Aquila.] In like manner Verstegan tells us, that, in the Saxon tongue,
blond erna is a white eagle; as also in the German and Dutch tongues;
and the French dictionaries inform us that blanch ægle, or aegle, is a
white eagle; ἀετος [aetos] in Greek; aquila, in Latin; nesher in the
Hebrew; from whence our British erew, erier, eryr, eriew, is derived.
In opposition to all those etymologies of the word godolphin, Mr.
Sammes in his Britannia, and the author of the additions to Camden’s
Britannia, tells us that godolac in the Phenician tongue signifies a
land of tin, from whence they apprehend the name of godolphin is
derived, especially because tin is found in the precincts thereof, but
surely not comparable in quantity to what is made in forty other
places in Cornwall, that yet come not under that denomination of
godolphin, as being tin land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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