An Essay on the Philosophical Construction of Celtic Nomenclature, More Particularly in Reference to the Welsh Names of Places in Wales; To Which Is

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1869. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... by an extensive wood (coed) at its base, not far from a farm-house called Trefforrest; hence probably the name, which means a grey wood. Or it may have borne the name when it was itself covered with the stunted and hoary oak of a primeval forest. It forms a part of a very large farm called Penbuarth, i.e., the chief sheep-fold, a very proper name for that high mountain land, consisting of hundreds of acres where thousands of sheep graze, whose virgin-soil the plough has never disturbed. We shall now direct our attention to the principal old territories of Wales, beginning with GWYNEDD This is the name of an ancient region in the north. Camden says that it was derived from the Veneti in Armorica, who, according to Julius Caesar, often visited Britain. This is not an improbable etymology when it is considered that the Latin V and the Welsh Gw had radically the same power, as both were derived from the old Greek Digamma, or double G written thus F. It is owing to this that Latin words, whose first radical is V, have Gw in words of the same meaning, e.g., Vir, Gwr, Vestis, Gwisg, &e. The Veneti of course called it Venetia, and the Kyiwy would give it the name of Gwynedd; and the Romans again would--as they did--call it Venedotia, as they called Gwent, Venta. Or the name may have been derived from Gwy, water, and Nedd, a dingle or glen, implying a place of rest, an abode, as in the word An-nedd, a dwelling. As the rivers flowed in the vallies, there the first immigrants would fix their homes, when, at that early period, the present cultivated plains on the higher grounds were covered with trees, or rather, impenetrable forests. Such verdant vales, irrigated by the Dee, Conwy, Clwyd, and other streams of a similar character, might-well have been called Gwy-nedd, water...