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Updated: May 18, 2025
Field-names are a very interesting study, they usually bear some significance to a peculiarity in the field itself, or its position with reference to its surroundings, and it has always been a hobby of mine to trace their derivations.
When nothing means anything, laughter is the only human language left. The Cratylus is a similarly conceived diversion. Most of it is occupied with fanciful derivations and linguistic discussions of all kinds. It is difficult to say how far Plato is serious.
That personal property has value is undeniable; whether it be worth what it costs us, in the long run, and from all points of view, may be left to the judgment of generations to come. Law in its origins is Divine; whether our human derivations from it partake of its high nature is debatable.
As a reward for what he had already done, Thoth decreed that Horus should be called the "Master-Fighter." Passing over the derivations of place- names which occur here in the text, we find that Horus and his Blacksmiths were again obliged to fight bodies of the enemy who had managed to escape, and that on one occasion they killed one hundred and six foes.
The translations, and derivations, and conjugations, and ratiocinations, and variations, and investigations that he gave, were all the most remarkably original I ever heard.
I have in my published vocabulary of the native language, under each family name, given its derivations as far as I could collect them from the statements of the natives. But as each family adopts some animal or vegetable as their crest or sign, or Kobong, as they call it, I imagine it more likely that these have been named after the families than that the families have been named after them.
As striking proofs of this, we refer our readers to Mr. Wedgwood's treatment of the words abide, abie, allow, danger, and denizen. When he differs from other authorities, it is never inconsiderately or without examination. Now and then we think his derivations are far-fetched, when simpler ones were lying near his hand.
Anyhow, they're a relief after such Devonshire horrors as Meavy and Hoo Meavy, which are like the lisping of babies. Sir Lionel thought the "derivations" of such names an absorbing subject! But living in the East so long has made him quixotically patriotic.
Unfortunately, like many other clever men, he had the notion that derivations can be elaborated from one's own consciousness as well as definitions, and he included in his work so-called 'etymologies' of this sort. But Etymology is simply Word-history, and Word-history, like all other history, is a record of the facts which did happen, not a fabric of conjectures as to what may have happened.
But even those who recognize the most fully this merit, must allow that he was ill equipped by any preliminary studies for tracing the past history of words; that in this he errs often and signally; sometimes where the smallest possible amount of knowledge would have preserved him from error; as for instance when he derives the name of the peacock from the peak, or tuft of pointed feathers, on its head! while other derivations proposed or allowed by him and others are so far more absurd than this, that when Swift, in ridicule of the whole band of philologers, suggests that 'ostler' is only a contraction of oat-stealer, and 'breeches' of bear-riches, these etymologies are scarcely more ridiculous than many which have in sober earnest, and by men of no inconsiderable reputation, been proposed.
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