John Maidment's Blog

Porth Joke. Credit: Charles Winpenny, Cornwall Cam

However, the basic meaning of this element appears to be “entrance”. It is true that it is often used to mean “cove” or “harbour” and thus overlaps with the meaning of POL. That it doesn’t always have one of those meanings is demonstrated by the the name Bosporthennis (pron: bəzˈprenɪs). This place is not far from here and is in the centre of the peninsula, quite a long way from the sea. The name means “dwelling at the entrance to Ninnes“. Ninnes derives from an ennis, which means either “the island” or “the isolated place”.

The problem with PORTH is that it quite often has changed into POL, and vice versa. Polperro, which I left hanging at the end of the last posting is an example. This name was recorded in 1303 as Porthpira. The second element is either a personal name or the name of a stream. Just to scramble your braincells a little more Polperro is situated on the River Pol.

Another example of the PORTH – POL confusion is the place in the picture. Porth Joke has an alternative local name Polly Joke. There is disagreement about the meaning of the second element. Some say it means “jackdaw”, others say it means “rich in plants”.

An example of the change from POL to PORTH is the wonderfully named Porth Kidney. This is situated not far from here near St. Ives. The name was recorded in 1580 as Polkymyas. The second element means “permission (to land goods)”.

So now you see why I titled this and the previous posting Place-name Merry-Go-Round. And I haven’t finished yet.

Credit: Paul Henjum Photo in public domain.

I think it’s about time for another foray into Cornish place-names.

We’ll start with the element POL. This according to Padel means: pit, pool, stream, cove or creek. Quite a choice. He remarks drily: “It is often difficult to decide which of the various meanings is present in a particular place-name.”

There are quite a few POL names in these parts. Less than a mile away from here there is a dwelling called Pol Teggan (“beautiful POL”, I think) and about the same distance away is a vineyard called Polgoon (“POL on the moor”). A little further afield there is Polpry (usually glossed as “clay pit”) which has the rather unexpected pronunciation pɒlˈpraɪ. And much further away in north Cornwall there is my favourite, Polyphant (“toad pool”).

Perhaps the best-known POL name is Polperro, which is a very picturesque tourist destination. But more on this name in a later post.

Polperro. Credit: Mick Knapton. Used under this licence.

Last Monday was a public holiday in the UK. The weather was very kind. Here are some pictures from a stroll around the harbour in Penzance.

The building you can see in the picture used to be a pub. Unfortunately, it fell on hard times, was sold, and the building has been converted into student flats.

The name is one I know well. The building is in an area of Plymouth which bears the same name and is quite close to the main railway line from the west country to London. I have passed it many, many times on the train. Apparently, the locals believe that the area was named after the pub rather than vice versa. Wikipedia, however, suggests a “Brythonic derivation of the name Pen y cwm coet, meaning the head of a wooded valley, or Pen y cwm gwyk, referring to the nearby creek, is possible, but must be treated with caution as it is unproven“.

As Sidney Wood points out in a comment on my post about Bessy Beneath Pennycomequick is also a putative earlier name for the town of Falmouth. The Wikipedia article on the town is less cautious about relating this to a Celtic source – Peny-cwm-cuic.

The trouble with all of these derivations is two-fold. First, y as the definite article is Welsh. Cornish has an. Secondly, the word cwm is Welsh. I don’t think Cornish orthography ever used w to represent a vowel sound. Oliver Padel gives comm as the Cornish place-name element meaning “valley” and comments that it occurs very rarely in Cornish names. He hypothesises that the many occurrences of comb or combe in West Country names, either as simplexes or in compounds such as Ilfracombe (Devon) and Wiveliscombe (Somerset) are of English origin. English borrowed the word from Welsh.

So if Pennycomequick does derive from a Celtic source, it would have to be from a name beginning something like pen an comm. The problem is that the Plymouth name is not in Cornwall, but in Devon, and the Falmouth name is only a putative former name, so Pennycomequick does not appear in any of my Cornish place-name reference books.