Thus many of our early saints took refuge here, from the persecutions, to which the Christian faith was exposed in Ireland; and their history has been chiefly sought in the hagiographies of that country. But the greater number of them, on coming into Cornwall, complied with this custom, common, indeed, with all men at that time, of changing the name with the residence; and accordingly, instead of that, by which they had been formerly known, and might have been recorded, they adopted or received another, as choice or accident determined their settlement. Hence we have _St. Hy_, or _St. Iä_, the Island-saint; _St. Uny_, (or perhaps more correctly _St. Unan_) the Down-saint; _St. Dennis_, the Hill-saint; _St. Allan_, the Moor-saint. But not only have these, and similar appellations, been erroneously regarded as the baptismal and proper names of the saints, whom they commemorate; but the accidental corruption of some of them has led to still greater mistakes; and from the mere coincidence of sound, the saint whose memory was to be preserved, has been identified with some other person, for whom that honour could not have been intended. Thus the town of St. I’s, or with the genitive at full length, as it was commonly written, St. Ies, has for many generations been called St. Ives, though the correct form was frequently used till the close of the seventeenth century. In consequence of this corruption, the place has been said to have derived its name from some bishop Ivo, either the Persian, who gave his name to St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, or the celebrated Ivo, bishop of Chartres. But St. I was a female from Ireland. The case of St. Dennis seems to be of the same kind; though in that instance the error is not owing to a corruption of the name, but to the similarity of the sound. St. Dennis signifies the _Saint on the Hill_, or more strictly, the _Hill-saint_; and the church stands at this day on the summit of a hill. But the good man, who lived there, has been considered the same person as St. Dionysius, or St. Dennis, the areopagite. I cannot help suspecting, that some error of this sort has occurred in the case of Paul-parish near Penzance, which is reported to have taken its name from St. Paul de Leon. Now that portion of the Mount’s bay, by which this parish is bounded on the east, is called _The Lake_; and this lake, which might have been correctly so denominated in ancient times, is at the foot of the hill, on which the present church stands; and it is, therefore, probable that some man of eminent piety once resided near it. In that case, he was called the _Lake-saint_, which rendered into Cornish, becomes _St. Pol_. For this reason, I believe that the common account is wholly untrue; and that, as in many other instances, the name of the saint, and through him, of the parish, originated entirely in a local accident.