THE NAME OF SWANAGE.
[To THE EDITOR OE THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—It is to be regretted that your correspondent should give further circulation to the guess that Sy? anage derives its name from a Dane named Swein. Canon Taylor, in "Words and Places," which accepts most of the wild, unscientific etymologies of local names produced by the misguided enthusiasm of antiquaries, explains it as " Sweyn'a Bay" (which is better than your correspondent's " Swein's ford"), although be quotes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under 877 the form Swanawic, which at once proves the impossibility of the derivation from a ninth-century hypothetical Swein. As it stands, it would seem to embody the genitive plural of "swan," but it may (since long vowels are not usually marked) represent equally the genitive plural of swan or min," swine- herd," the English cognate of old Norse sveinn, with early shortening. There are Swanwicks in Derbyshire and Hants. In all these names usie means, of course, village. The old forest court of the swainmoot, a sixteenth-century misreading
of swanimote, embodies the word am, Sir, &e.,
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