The place-names of Man are—in common with those of Ireland and Britain—of the simplest character, whether they be Gaelic or Scandinavian. A place-name is merely descriptive, and simply records the fact that here is a stream, there a glen, or yonder a hill. If several families settled at the foot of a hill, or near a glen, it was often found necessary to attach the personal name of the holder to his estate as a more certain means of identification. Often the male members of a family followed a certain profession or were skilled in a particular craft, and these were often hereditary for many generations. Thus came the first primitive place-names into being.

It is probable that Scandinavian settlers in Man named some of the more prominent physical features after places with which they were familiar in their own homeland. Manx Gaelic and the languages of Scandinavia have long been reduced from ancient to modern forms. The type of place-nomenclature however obvious the meaning of a modern form may appear to be, from its peculiar geographical features, shews that a common Maughold surname of the 16th century is the second element; a piece of high land surrounded by glens; its older spelling Balla Allen, ‘Allen’s homestead. One must obtain the oldest orthography of a name and the pronunciation as given by the older inhabitants. A place-name cannot always be explained by a natural feature, an historical incident or a local tradition, nor interpretation of place-names of a country. Most place-names are composed of two, or more, elements, and when these names were bestowed their meanings were perfectly intelligible to the inhabitants of the country. Scandinavians and Celts in the northwest of England,’ points out and discusses a number of names found in Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire, that contain two elements combined in the Gaelic order; the Norwegians who settled in the north-west of England, came from the Isle of Man, Ireland, and the Hebrides, and had been influenced to some extent in regard to their language by Gaels, thus they had adopted the Gaelic way of forming compounds.

Nouns are sometimes formed by prefixing the Manx definite article yn to nouns.

There are many suffixes in the Manx language by which new words may be formed from one root, but only a few of the more important which occur in place-names will be here mentioned. One of the most common of these is an or ane, although originally having a diminutive signification, now adds a collective meaning to the stem. Loghan, from logh, ‘a lake,’ is usually applied to ‘a pool’; carnane, from carn,’a cairn,’ often means ‘a hill’; creggan, from creg, ‘a rock,’ is applied to a piece of ‘craggy ground’; laggan, from lag, ‘a hollow,’ does not differ materially in meaning from the stem; and strooan, from stroo, has now the meaning of ‘a stream,’ whilst the stem has now acquired the meaning of ‘a current.’ The diminutive of the Irish cnap, ‘a knoll,’ is found in various parts of the Island as Nappin in Jurby; Crappan and Knappan in Lezarye in 1643, now Nappin. As a Manx word the Irish cna~a’n became cramman, meaning ‘a lump,’ and in more recent times, 'a button,’ where the original sense of a ‘little knob’ is preserved, as the Irish cnap is cognate with the English ‘knob.’

Names of places ending in ick, or wick, from the Norse vig, " a cove," abound. On the eastern coast we have Perwick, Sandwick, Dreswick, Greenwick, Saltrick, Soderick, Garwick; and on the west, Aldrick, Portwick, and Fleshwick, small coves. So also ending in ey, or ay, from the Norse vagr, "a bay," we have Ronaldsway, (anciently Rognvaldsvagr,) Laxey, (anciently Laxaa, Laxa, or Laxsy, i.e., Salmon Bay,) Coma, or Kennay, and Ramsey (Ramsoe).

---

    1, 2, 3, 4, 5,