Surnames as a Science. Ferguson Robert
Germans, and the Romans, though at least as regards the Germans, the origin seems obscure.3
Now it is quite possible, particularly in the case of such monosyllabic words as these, that there might be an accidental coincidence between a Celtic and a Teutonic name, without their having anything in common in their root. It is possible, again, that the one nation may have borrowed a name from the other, as the Northmen, for instance, sometimes did from the Irish or the Gael, one of their most common names, Niel(sen), being thus derived; while, on the other hand, both the Irish and the Gael received, as Mr. Worsaae has shown, many names from the Northmen. So also the Romans seem to have borrowed names from the Celts, several well-known names, as Plinius, Livius, Virgilius,4 Catullus, and Drusus, being, in the opinion of German scholars, thus derived.
But though no doubt both these principles apply to the present case, yet there is also, as it seems to me, something in the relationship between Celtic and Teutonic names which can hardly be accounted for on either of the above principles. And I venture to throw out the suggestion that when ancient Celtic names shall have been as thoroughly collected and examined as, by the industry of the Germans, have been the Teutonic, comparative philology may – perhaps within certain lines – find something of the same kinship between them that it has already established in the case of the respective languages. Meanwhile, I venture to put forward, derived from such limited observations as I have been able to make, certain points of coincidence which I think go some way to justify the opinion expressed above. In so doing I am not so much putting forward etymological views of my own, as collecting together, so as to shape them into a comparison, the conclusions which have, in various individual cases, been arrived at by scholars such as Zeuss. There are, then, four very common endings in Teutonic names, —ward, as in Edward, ric, as in Frederic, mar, as in Aylmar, and wald, as in Reginald (=Reginwald). The same four words, in their corresponding forms, are also common as the endings of Celtic names, ward taking the form of guared or guaret, the German ric taking generally the form of rix (which appears also to have been the older form in the German, all names of the first century being so given by Latin authors), wald taking the form of gualed or gualet, and mar being pretty much the same in both. Of these four cases of coincidence, there is only one (wald = gualet) which I have not derived from German authority. And with respect to this one, I have assumed the Welsh gualed, order, arrangement, whence gualedyr, a ruler, to be the same word as German wald, Gothic valdan, to rule. But we can carry this comparison still further, and show all these four endings in combination with one and the same prefix common to both tongues. This prefix is the Old German had, hat, hath, signifying war, the corresponding word to which is in Celtic cad or cat. (Note that in the earliest German names on record, as the Catumer and the Catualda of Tacitus, the German form is cat, same as the Celtic. This seems to indicate that at that early period the Germans so strongly aspirated the h in hat, that the word sounded to Roman ears like cat, and it assists perhaps to give us an idea of the way in which such variations of tongues arise.)
I subjoin then the following names which, mutatis mutandis, are the same in both tongues, and which, judging them by the same rules which philology has applied to the respective languages, might be taken to be from some earlier source common to both races: —
In comparing Catualda with the British Cadwalladyr I am noting an additional point of coincidence. Catualda is not, like other Old German names, from wald, rule, but from walda, ruler. There is only one other Old German name in the same form, Cariovalda,5 also a very ancient name, being of the first century. This then may represent the older form, though this is not what I wish at present to note, but that Catualda is the counterpart of the British Cadwalladyr, which also is not from gualed, rule, but from gualedyr, ruler.
In suggesting that this coincidence may be confined within certain lines I mean to guard against the assumption that it would, as in the case of the language, be found to pervade the whole system, many of the formations of which may be of a more recent time. There are some other stems, considered by the Germans to be in coincidence, to only one of which I will refer at present, the Old Celtic tout, Welsh tûd = the Gothic thiuda. Hence the name Tudric, of a British king of Glamorgan, would be the counterpart of that of the Gothic king Theuderic, or Theoderic. I will take one more instance of a name presumed to be common to the Germans and to the Celts as an illustration of the manner in which – men's names being handed down from generation to generation without, even in ancient times, any thought of their meaning – a name may survive, while the word from which it was originally derived has perished out of the language, or is retained in a sense so changed as hardly to be recognised. The German name in question is that of Sigimar, the brother of Arminius, dating from the first century of our era, a name which we still have as Seymore, and in its High German form Sicumar we have as Sycamore, intermediate Anglo-Saxon names being found for both. The prefix sig is taken, with as much certainty as there can be in anything of the kind, to be from sig, victory; the ending mar, signifying famous, is a word to which I have already referred as common both to the Germans and to the Celts. Segimar was also an ancient Celtic name, but while the ending mar has a meaning to-day in Celtic speech, the prefix seg is a word of which they are hardly able to render any account. Only in the Old Irish (which seems to contain some of the most ancient elements) Gluck, finding a word seg with the meaning of the wild ox, urus, deduces from it the ancient meaning of strength (Sansc. sahas, vis, robor), and infers an original meaning akin to the German.
It happens, perhaps yet more frequently, that a German name, which cannot be explained by anything within the range of Teutonic dialects, may find a sufficient etymon from the Celtic. That is to suppose that a word originally common to the Teutonic and the Celtic, has dropped out of the former, and been retained only in the latter. Thus there is a word arg, arch, found in many Teutonic names, and from which we have several names, as Archbold, Archbutt, Archard, Argent, Argument, for which the meaning that can be derived from the German seems very inadequate, but for which the Irish arg, hero or champion, seems to offer as good a meaning as could be desired. So also all, from which, as elsewhere shown, there are a number of names, in its Teutonic sense of omnis, does not seem to give by any means so satisfactory a result as in its Celtic sense of "great" or, "illustrious." Many other instances might be adduced on both sides to show the way in which a word has dropped out of the one language and been retained in the other.
Before passing from this part of the subject, I may be allowed to adduce an illustration – a striking one I think, albeit that the name in this case is not that of a man but of a dog – of the way in which a name may be retained in familiar use, though the word from which it is derived has perished out of the language, though the language itself has passed out of use among us for more than a thousand years, and though the word itself is only used in a sort of poetical or sentimental sense. Who has not heard, in verse or in prose, of the "poor dog Tray"? And yet who ever heard, excepting in books, of a dog being called Tray, a word which conveys no meaning whatever to an English ear? What then is the origin, and what is the meaning, of the name? It is, I venture to think, the ancient British name for a dog, which is not to be found in any living dialect of the Celtic, and which is only revealed to us in a casual line of a Roman poet: —
Non sibi, sed domino, venatur vertragus acer,
Illæsum leporem qui tibi dente feret.
The British vertrag must have been something of the nature of a greyhound, though, from the description of his bringing back the game unmangled to his master, perhaps capable of a higher training than the greyhound generally attains to. Now the ver in vertrag is in the Celtic tongues an intensitive, and as prefixed to a word, gives the sense of preeminence. The ancient British word for a dog in general must have been trag, a word of which we find a trace in the Irish traig, foot, allied, no doubt, to Gothic thragjan, Greek τρεχειν,
So at least Foerstemann seems to think, observing that we can scarcely derive it from Maur, Æthiops, English "Moor." Nevertheless, seeing the long struggle between the Teutons and the Moors in Spain, it seems to me that such a derivation would be quite in accordance with Teutonic practice. See some remarks on the general subject at the end of Chapter IV.
So that we may take it that Virgilius, as the name of a Scot who became bishop of Salzburg in the time of Boniface, was his own genuine Celtic name, and not derived from that of the Roman poet.
This name, that of a prince of the Batavi, is considered by the Germans to be properly Hariovalda, from