but afterwards shortened this to Dornceaster, whence the modern form. The inhabitants of the region about 'Dornceaster' were called Dorn-sǣite (sǣte being a word for settlers or dwellers), and this has now become, in the form Dorset, the name of the county.
The Roman-British name Regulbium (in Kent) seems to have meant 'promontory', from gulbā, a beak, with a Celtic prefix ru- or ro-, corresponding to the Latin pro-. The name became in Old English times Raculf and Reculf,[1] and subsequently Raculfesceaster. The modern form, Reculver, shows abnormal contraction.
Another name of the same region, Rutupiæ (whence the 'Rutupine oysters' mentioned by Juvenal), seems also to contain the prefix ru-, but its etymology has not been determined. The name has undergone strange transformations. In Bæda it appears as Reptacæstir; at a later time the affix 'borough' was substituted for 'Chester', and the place is now called Richborough, an intermediate form being Ratesburgh.
The modern Wroxeter, in Old English Wrocenceaster or Wreocenceaster, is the Roman Viroconium or Uriconium. The name has obviously some connexion with that of the Wrekin, the conspicuous hill in the neighbourhood. According to Sir John Rhŷs, Viroconium was so called from a local tribe whose eponymus was an ancestor or chief named Virocū (genitive Viroconas). This personal name is a compound of viros, man, and cū, dog, these words occurring frequently as elements in Celtic personal names. The Wrekin is by the
- ↑ The b of the British name seems to have already changed to v by the time of the Jutish conquest of Kent, and in Old English spelling this sound was represented by f. The sound of g (as in go) did not exist in early Old English (the letter g having a different value), and the nearest approach to it was k (written c). Compare the Old English Crēacas for Graeci, Greeks. The change by which an original g between vowels has disappeared in Welsh had, we may infer, not taken place (or, at least, did not yet affect the initial of the second element of a compound) when Regulbium fell into English hands.
