At 9:07:34 PM on Monday, May 16, 2011, The Egyptian
Chronicles wrote:
[Quoting Wikipedia:]
> Many settlements are named Hamm, including possibly a
> modern city, Hamburg.
Since the oldest form is <Hammaburg>, the first element
seems likelier to be akin to OE <hamm> 'meadowland; enclosed
plot of land; solid land in a marsh; land in the bend of a
river' and OFris. <hamm> 'enclosed land'.
> The name may have come from the Germanic equivalent of
> Chamavi.
[...]
> The -AVI, an adjectival ending, later resulted in -au in
> other place names, but was dropped in this one Chamavi in
> this derivation would mean "men of the settlements" or
> "settlers." When and in what sense they were so is lost in
> prehistory."
I'm skeptical of this 'adjectival ending' (except in
originally Slavic names). I've not looked especially hard,
but so far I've found only three tribal names in <-avi>:
<Chamavi>, <Batavi>, and <Brisgavi>. In <Batavi> the <-avi>
is probably *awjō 'island, thing on the water', and
<Brisgavi> is <Bris-gavi>, not <Brisg-avi>, quite possibly
with second element OHG <gawi> 'Gau, Flur, Gefilde, Land,
Gegend, flaches Land, Provinz'. (<Bris-> may be Celtic, but
this is uncertain.) <Passau> goes back to <Batavis>, from
<Batavi>. In the handful of place-names that I've checked,
<-au>, when not of Slavic origin, appears generally to be
from *awjō when it isn't part of <-gau>.
Brian