4. Appositional genitive without article.

4. Appositional genitive without article.

_Chytan_, the house of fire; _Chypons_, the bridge house; _Pentreath_, the head of the sands; _Portreath_ (=_Porth-treath_), the creek of the sands.

_Nancemelling_ (=_Nans-mellan_), the valley of the mill.

5. Proper names as appositional genitives:—

_Trejago_, the house of Jago (or James).

_Chykembra_, the Welshman’s house.

_Gûn-an-Guidal_ (or _Anguidal Downs_), the down of the Irishman.

In West Cornwall, especially in Penwith, where the spoken language lingered latest, there is a greater tendency to the use of the article _an_ than in the more eastern part of the Duchy. Sometimes the article is prefixed to the noun itself. Thus, _Andrewartha_ (=_an dre wartha_), the upper town, in Gwithian, now called _Upton_, but inhabited by a family of the older name; _Angarrack_, the rock, between Hayle and Gwinear Road; _Angove_, the smith, and _Angwin_, the white, family names; _Angrouse_, the cross, in Mullion; _Angear_, the castle; _Annear_ or _Ennor_, the earth; _Angilley_ or _Anguilly_, the grove. {196}

Generally when the article comes between the generic noun and some other word the latter is a noun also, an appositional genitive, but occasionally it is an adjective, as in _Ponsanooth_ (in Perran Arworthal and Gluvias), which is probably _Pons-an-nowedh_, the new bridge. The generic prefix _Pleu_ or _Plou_, parish, so common in Brittany, is altogether unknown in Cornish place-names of to-day, unless, as some hold, _Bleu Bridge_ in Madron means “the parish bridge,” and is a partial translation of _Pons-an-bleu_, but the word is common enough in Cornish, and the names of parishes called after saints frequently began in Cornish writings with _Pleu_ (_plu_, _plui_)—_Pleu East_, St. Just; _Pleu Paul_, St. Paul; _Pleu Vudhick_, St. Budock. Though the word occurs in the expression _tîz pleu_, people of [his] parish, in the tale of _John of Chy-an-Hur_, the three parishes mentioned there, St. Levan, St. Hillary, and Buryan, are called by their ordinary English names. The prefix _lan_, originally an enclosure (cf. the English _lawn_), but later used to signify a church with its churchyard, is still frequently found, with occasional variants of _la_, _lam_, and _land_, but it is nothing like so frequent as the Welsh equivalent _llan_. In earlier days it was more common in Cornwall than it is now, and a number of parishes which now have the prefix “Saint” appear in the Domesday Survey with _Lan_.

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The family names of Cornwall, omitting those of the few great Norman houses, Granvilles, Bevilles, Fortescues, Bassets, St. Aubyns, Glanvilles, etc., which do not concern us at present, fall into at least four classes.