Re: Kossack's Conclusions

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 2:21:05 PM on Friday, March 21, 2008, fournet.arnaud
> wrote:
>
> >> I was wondering also if Hoby might be *Hod-by "Chatti
> >> village", there are some Hodby's in England.
>
> > I thought British-Isles place-names
> > in -by and -thorp were
> > dating back to the Northmen.
>
> > Can it be they are earlier and
> > Angles/Saxons creations ?
>
> Names in <-by> definitely show Scandinavian influence. The
> situation with <-thorp> is more complicated. There was an
> OE <þorp> ~ <þrop> 'a farm, a village', and it was used as a
> place-name element before the arrival of the Scandinavians.
> In the Danelaw the two elements are largely indistinguishable,
> but the high density of <-thorp> names there suggests that a
> great many of them are of Scandinavian origin. Outside the
> Danelaw the OE element seems to be associated especially
> with the West Saxons.

The -thorp names are a Carolingian/Frankish invention and spread from
there.

> <Hoby> is in record as <Hobie> 1086, <Hoby> from 1212 on,
> <Houbi, -by> from sometime after 1150 through 1454, and
> <How(e)by> ~1291-1629. This is entirely consistent with the
> usual derivation from OE <ho:h> 'a spur of land' and <by:>:
> 'the farm or village at the spur of land'. As the later
> medieval spellings suggest, the local pronunciation was
> ['hu:bi], pointing to an original /o:/.

But I was talking about Hoby on Lolland, possinly the one in Blekinge.
Losing a ð from a hypothetical *hoð "Chattus" would be thinkable in
Danish, losing a d from a hypothetical English *hod wouldn't.

> I've not run across <Hodby> as a place-name, and without
> early forms I'd not try to guess at an etymology for the
> first element: there are far too many reasonable
> possibilities.

A lot of Hodby's came up when I googled. It's easter, the library is
closed.


Torsten