clearly refers to a place that was named after a man called Windel at the time of its settlement. If, therefore, there were some places in Dorset called Wintr, Windr, or Windel after Wends, it is very probable that other Wintr place-names in this and other counties had a similar origin. In the West Riding of Yorkshire the old name Winterset[1] survived at a later period, and this may originally have denoted the settlement of Wends.
The name Winthr for Vandals, which was used by the Northern Goths and other Scandians in the sixth century, may have partly lost its significance as the dialects became blended into one speech. There is linguistic evidence of a great commingling of nations in the body of the English settlers.[2] The Anglo-Saxon, in its obscure etymology, its confused and imperfect inflections, and its anomalous and irregular syntax, furnishes an abundant proof of diversity of origin. It has the characteristics of a mixed and ill-assimilated speech, and its relations to the various ingredients of which it is composed are just those of the present English and its own heterogeneous system. It borrowed roots and dropped endings, and appropriated syntactical combinations without the inflections which made them logical.[3] There is no proof that Old English was ever spoken anywhere but on the soil of Great Britain.[4] The language grew as the tribal people who formed the settlers became fused. Anyone who will compare the oldest remnant of Anglo-Saxon poetry now extant, a few lines of Cædmon, and the same lines as they were modernised by King Alfred in his Old English version of Bede about 200 years after Cædmon’s time, will have no doubt about the changes which time brought in the dialects and language of the Old English people. In this development, the Northern name Windr or Winthr for a
