Contributor Leaderboard

First, a correction: “Cnoc an Chuillin (Irish Gaelic) means literally ‘Hill the Holly’ as does the Welsh equivalent ‘Bryn Celyn’ - holy hill”. That should read holly hill and not holy hill. Moving on to the Old English period (OE) 700 – 1100 AD, the Romans had now left Britain but there’s not a lot of evidence to throw any light on what effect they had on the language. What little does remain of their influence is, strangely enough, found in place names. We know that they built military settlements and this is visible today in the names of their major settlements, now ending in –chester which is derived from the Latin castra meaning camp. According to David Crystal The English Language (1990), there’s also the odd borrowed word such as street from straet, but this is of no help to us in unraveling the mystery of Hollymount. I think we can safely say the Romans had no part to play in that name. However, what happened next had a profound effect on the language as Crystal goes on to explain. It was a turbulent time for England with many invasions and this turbulence also found its way into the English language. The sheer number of invaders eventually outnumbered the Celts making it easy for their languages to get a grip on England. England had become a nation of small kingdoms each battling for supremacy and the same thing was happening with their languages. The result, however, was not one united language for England but four different dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon. Northumbrian and Mercian came from the Angles, Kentish from the Jutes and West Saxon from the Saxons. The Northumbrian dialect went on to be greatly influenced by the Vikings but it was Mercian that went on to become the standard English which we use today- hardly surprising as Mercian was the dialect of London - the seat of power. As if that wasn’t enough for England to be dealing with, side by side with those invasions another invasion of a more ‘spiritual’ nature was happening as Irish monks arrived to establish Christianity (and monastic buildings) the length and breadth of England. Many of their buildings, Lindisfarne among them, have not stood the test of time and are now in ruins but their contribution to the English language, in the form of the Latin alphabet and many Latin words, has done somewhat better as most of the words they introduced are still in use today. Understandably, most of these words relate to the church: abbot, chalice and hymn as well as many of the words used in church services but some words relate even to their monastic lifestyle with its self-sufficiency in housekeeping, such as: radish, plant, oyster and candle but they left nothing in the way of place names to help explain Hollymount. The Old English period of language development also saw a start to writing manuscripts in this new ‘language’ and those that have survived give a fair amount of authentic research material. The majority of the written material which survives from the period is written in West Saxon dialect but the oldest surviving texts, noted by both Barber and Crystal, are in the Northumbrian dialect: Caedmon’s Hymn, Bede’s Death Song, the poem Leiden Riddle and of course the several thousand names and places in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, translated from Latin at the request of King Alfred in the second half of the ninth century. Credit must be given here to our North Eastern forefathers who never let anything go to waste if it could be saved for later use! Thank heavens it didn’t end up torn into neat squares and threaded on a string, to be hung behind the door of some draughty, outdoor netty, as has been the fate of so much other written material! What a service they did for historical linguists everywhere! Understandably, there were major changes throughout the period in many aspects of language: spelling, grammar, pronunciation, an ever increasing amount of new words and, of course, place names. During the Old English period, topographical names continued to be used and some new Celtic names may have appeared. Some totally Anglo-Saxon names would certainly have appeared as the invaders built their new settlements and some names, like the previously mentioned Cumberland, mixtures of the two languages, would also appear as the dialects rubbed shoulders with each other. However, the Anglo-Saxon invasions caused a new type of place name to emerge. As land was being taken by invaders, numerous settlements were appearing and these were being named after the chieftains or landowners – presumably of high status and therefore well known should one wish to find one’s way by asking. Most of us are aware of a couple of Old English (OE) place name endings: –ton from the OE tun, meaning an enclosure, farmstead or hamlet and –ham from the OE ham, meaning homestead or from hamm, meaning meadow. Barber in his study The English Language, a Historical Introduction (1997) adds -ley from OE leah meaning wood or glade, -field from OE feld meaning open country and several other endings of a topographical nature. Hollymount, having neither ‘endings’ nor personal names to help us, requires us to now break down the word into its component parts – holly and mount – to look for clues. As previously said, topographical names were still being constructed during the period so all hope is not lost. Next, I’ll be reporting my findings on holly and mount and having a look for any connections with holy. … to be continued.

... It’s worth mentioning here that these changes didn’t occur overnight. They were the result of long, drawn out processes which often took place over hundreds of years so a change which started in one developmental period may not have become established until the following period in the development. Can the name 'Holly Mount' be Celtic? Practically the only place names surviving from our original language, Celtic, are topographical names, particularly names that describe the natural features of the landscape – like, for example, Holly Mount - a hill with Holly. According to Charles Barber (The English Language, a Historical Introduction) quite a few of our rivers still have Celtic names: Avon and Ouse, he says, are Celtic words for water or stream, Derwent means Oak River and Thames means Dark River. A couple of our county names are also totally Celtic in origin, Kent and Devon, while some county names are Celtic in part only. Cumberland, to give an example, has the first part in Celtic, cumber, and the last part in English, land, and means “the land of the Cymry” that’s to say the land of the Welsh. I’m sure you recognize the word Cymry, meaning Welsh, from the name of a certain political party. Remember here, the Celts were the people who were driven south from all over England and eventually settled in Wales and Cornwall but today’s word Welsh, when referring to the people of Wales, bears no resemblance to the word Cymry, the reason for that being that it’s from a different language. The word Welsh has its origins not in Celtic but in Old English, the language introduced throughout the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions (700 – 1100 BC). Charles Barber, another scholar, (The English Language: A Historical Introduction, 1997) says that the Old English word, wealh, from which Welsh is derived, originally meant ‘foreigner’ but went on to mean Celt, Welshman, servant or slave, which is what these people were to the invaders. Wealh, albeit in a somewhat distorted form, survives today in the second half of the county name Cornwall. And there you have a good example of how history is reflected in the language we speak. Nothing to do with place names but, by way of anecdote, I can tell you that it’s also found as wal in our word ‘walnut’ from the same period’s wheal-hnutu – literally ‘a foreign nut’ (the shelled variety)! At this point, it’s tempting to think that Holly Mount may have its origins in Celtic, describing as it does a natural feature of the landscape, and not only that, the Holly was a much revered tree, worn in crowns by Celtic chieftains, highly sacred in Celtic mythology and planted near settlements to protect them from lightening strikes. https://thepresenttree.com/blogs/news/holly-tree-meaning. It seems they knew a thing or two those Celts as, in later years, the belief that Holly was resistant to lightening has proved to be justified! Those plantations themselves would create a landscape feature with which to identify your whereabouts. However, Hollymount/Holly Mount is not a name unique to Bedlington, either as a place name or the name of a residential building. Can we get any clues from those? Have there been world wide, multiple, widely accepted linguistic changes from holy to holly? Or, perhaps multiple events of 'holy' significance? I’ve been able to find numerous examples, not only in England but as far afield as America and Australia. Nearer home, in Ireland, the name seems to have been particularly popular among goods owners. A Directory to the Market Towns, Villages, Gentlemen’s Seats and Other Noted Places in Ireland (1814 Ambrose Leet) lists eight “gentlemen’s seats” called Hollymount and one other called Hollymount House. The name was clearly popular at the beginning of the 19th century. Perhaps John Birkenshaw, in choosing the name Hollymount Hall, was simply following the fashion of the Irish gentry. These Irish names are of particular interest because they are clearly not derived from any word meaning holy. We can see this by comparing their Irish Gaelic translations. This allows us to envisage how the name was much earlier in history. The name Hollymount translates to Cnoc an Chuillin where chuillin means Holly and Cnoc means hill. Here, there can be no doubt that the name refers to the Holly bush/tree because the word chuillin bears no resemblance to any of the Irish Gaelic words meaning holy: naofa, beannaithe, diaga or naomh and is therefore not a derivation or distortion of any of those words. The same result is obtained by comparison with another Celtic language, Welsh, and the name Bryn Celyn – Holly Hill. Here, celyn means holly while holy translates as cysegredig, gysegredig or cyseg-lân. There is a similarity, however, in the respective Celtic words for Holly, chuillin and celyn and we can also see a trend in the use of this bush/tree in place names. Another interesting linguistic comparison lies in the order of the words. In English we place the noun (the thing being described) last – Holly Mount. The modifier (the word describing or giving more information about that thing) is placed first – Holly Mount, Holy Mount. In the Celtic languages that order is reversed: Cnoc an Chuillin (Irish Gaelic) means literally ‘Hill the Holly’ as does the Welsh equivalent ‘Bryn Celyn’ - holy hill. As I said earlier, there aren’t many Celtic names left in Britain but I’ve managed to find one on Internet that illustrates the point: ‘Aberdeen’, where Aber means mouth (estuary) and is placed first while dee the name of the river is placed last. Compare that with: Tynemouth, Monmouth or Exmouth. This suggests that ‘Hollymount’ may be a later addition to the English language. Next, we'll have a look at the Old English period of the development of the English language. It's a period of great changes. To be continued ...