|
THE forms which are on
record at various dates are Tanner, Taner, Tawner, Tannyr, and Tanyr
(MacDonald’s Names of West Aberdeenshire). The last is the earliest,
dating from 1450. The common modem spelling is Tanar. It will thus be
seen that, unlike many place-names whose history can be traced in
documents for so long a period, this one presents practically no
variations. In every reference the consonants t, n, r—the skeleton of
the word—are present. Whatever the name may mean, it is clear that for
four and a half centuries at least it has been sounded in the same
manner as it is to-day.
About a quarter of a century ago, however, the people of the district
were surprised to learn that they and their ancestors had been labouring
under a delusion, and that henceforth the correct name for the river,
glen, and parish was Tana. So at least Sir William Brooks, the shooting
tenant and afterwards owner of the glen, informed them; and in his zeal
for the new child of his fancy he decreed that it alone should enjoy the
rights of legitimacy, to the total exclusion of such pretenders as Tanar,
Taner, or Tanner.
Protests were of course raised on behalf of the wonted usage, but in
vain. The whimsical Baronet had mounted his hobby-horse and nothing
could get him off again. He carried on a constant crusade against the
letter which offended him. It became an act of faith to abjure it,
denounce it, and persecute it wherever found. On one occasion his
enthusiasm rose to the pitch of denying that Tanar “ could be considered
a word at all.”
The responsibility for this curious obsession lay, in the first instance
at least, at Michie’s door. He and Brooks had, we believe, been
discussing the meaning of the name on one occasion, when Michie casually
dropped the unhappy suggestion that possibly the name St Anna, who it
seems had some local celebrity, might be connected with Tanar. Such an
etymology is of course fanciful to a degree, and Michie himself did not
believe it (the derivation that he favoured was Tuath n'air, the
north-lying land), but he had unwittingly suggested doubts in Brooks’s
mind as to the correctness of the form Tanar which nothing could
afterwards exorcise. We have heard that Michie often expressed
astonishment at the conflagration which his spark had kindled.
The St Anna etymology was soon dropped as being too hopelessly
impossible, but another on the same lines was looked out. The Gaelic
adjective tana, meaning “thin,” “shallow,” seemed to meet the
requirements of the case, and was forthwith adopted. “So long,” wrote
Sir William triumphantly, “as appreciation of the poetically expressive
Gaelic language shall endure, so long will stand the word Tana as
descriptive of the stream called shallow in contrast to the adjacent
deep and mighty Dee.” If the sceptic still enquired what was to be done
with the letter r, and pointed out that it is recorded from a time when
Gaelic was still spoken in the district, he had to make the best of the
brilliant suggestion that it is a “Cockneyism, like Annar, Mariar! ”
The assumption which underlies this and the other etymologies of Tanar
which we have seen, is that all Scottish place names, if they are not
English, can be solved by the help of the Gaelic dictionary. Now there
are at least two serious errors here. In the first place, topographical
names sometimes preserve words which have become obsolete in modem
Gaelic, and so are unintelligible to Gaelic speakers themselves. In the
second place (and this is the important point for the present case), a
considerable number of names of places in certain parts of Scotland are
not Gaelic at all, but Pictish, which, though it was a Celtic tongue,
most scholars are agreed was more nearly allied to Welsh and the Celtic
languages of the Continent than to Gaelic, and sometimes contains roots
that are unrepresented in the latter. The neglect of both these
possibilities has led to much worthless etymologising, the usual method
being to twist, modify, or mutilate the name as commonly pronounced and
written till it resembles some current Gaelic vocable; in short, to
falsify the data. Most books on place-names will supply instances of
such etymologies, which have about the same value as the well-known
derivations of Forbes from “forebirse,” Coutts from “cooch!” and similar
curiosities.
To come then to the point, what is the derivation of Tanar? It is, we
believe, simple enough, provided it is sought for in the proper quarter.
(Etymologies like Tuath na air, “north-lying land,” and Tan-air, “scanty
land,” may be at once dismissed, apart from phonetic or grammatical
difficulties, by the well established rule that where glen and river
have the same name it is the river name that is the older.) The root of
Tanar is to be found in the Old Celtic tanar-os, which was used as a
river name on the Continent also. A tributary of the Po in Cisalpine
Gaul was so called in classical times, now the Tanaro in Piedmont.* The
stem is ten, seen also in Latin tonare, German Donner, English thunder;
and the meaning is the “noisy, loud-sounding stream ”—a description that
suits the Deeside river well, especially the part near its confluence
with the Dee, where there is an eas or waterfalL The name then is Celtic
and Pictish, as MacDonald (P.N. of West Abd.) conjectured though he did
not trace it This identification of the names of a Scottish stream and a
river in far-off Northern Italy may strike the general reader as
improbable; and so it might indeed be considered if this were a solitary
instance, or if the historical situation that gave rise to such cases is
forgotten. It must be remembered that before the Romans carried their
language into the north of Italy and Gaul, Celtic, in various dialects,
was spoken all over Western Europe, the British Isles included. It
naturally follows that the same roots appear on both sides of the
Channel in the designations of rivers, mountains and other natural
features. So far from the parallel of the Scottish Tanar and the Italian
Tanaros being exceptional, it would be nearer the truth to say that the
majority of the old Celtic place-names of Gaul and the parts of the
Continent where Celtic was formerly spoken are represented in Scotland.
It is only in recent years that this line of investigation has begun to
be followed up, but already it may be said with confidence that no
examination of Scottish place-names can be considered satisfactory which
neglects to compare the corresponding Continental forms. In order to
illustrate this parallelism, and by way of showing the high degree of
probability—we may say the certainty—attaching to the derivation which
we have suggested for Tanar, a few similar examples may be given, and
those selected from the immediate neighbourhood of our river.
Allachy is a tributary of the Tanar. The name presents no difficulty,
the primary part being a/7, a rock or boulder. The same root is seen in
Alis-ontia in Belgic Gaul, now the Elz, and in the famous Alesia, the
scene of Caesar’s siege, a rock fortress.
Gaim, The root here is gar, rough, seen with extension in garth. Cp. the
Gaulish Gar-unna, now the Garonne. The n is a river-ending common in
Pictland and is etymolo-gically the same as the Gaulish -ona, seen in
Calarona, now the Chalaronne; Matrona, now Marne, &c
Tarland. The spellings of this word at various dates, as given in
MacDonald, are Taruelun, Taruelone, Tharualund, Tharflund. The d is
unhistorical (cp. Macfarland for Mac-farlane, Lamont for Laomuinn), and
is absent in the native speech. The u and / after r point unmistakeably
to the source of the first syllable. It is no doubt tarbh, a bull The
most probable explanation of the second is that it is the same as the
old Celtic lan-on, seen in Ercolana, Vindolana, and Mediolanon* (“middle
plain,”) now Milan. The primitive form of Tarland would be something
like Tarvo-lanon, “ bull plain.”
Balmoral. The first part is, of course, batle, a town. The second occurs
in other parts of Scotland as well, and the difficulty has been to get a
derivation whose meaning will be applicable in all the cases. Gael,
mbral, majestic, looks tempting, and may be the word in some of the
morals. A more satisfactory explanation, however, is found in the Old
Celtic ialos or iaim, seen in a multitude of place names on the
Continent, and meaning “an open fair space or clearing.”Moral would be
thus for an older mor-ial(on)9 “great clearing.”
Mar. According to Stokes and other scholars this is originally a
tribe-name, cognate etymologically with the Marsi in Italy.
The same identity runs through the Celtic personal names. Thus Morgan,
on Scottish ground peculiarly associated with Aberdeenshire, is the
Gaulish Moricanios9 “sea bright”; Donald is for Dumno-valose
“world-ruler,” the first part of which is also found in Dumno-rix9 the
friend of our schooldays. But this line of enquiry cannot be more than
indicated here.
To return to Tanar. The Old Celtic tanaros, “loud-sounding,” from which
we have derived it, occurs with the same meaning in another connection,
this time as a personal designation. The Celts used it as a “by-name”
for the god who corresponded with them to the Roman Jupiter, m the same
way as the Romans themselves used “Tonans.” It seems to occur in an
inscription found on the Continent, and what is especially interesting
for us, it is also extant in one found at Chester belonging to the year
154 A.D., which runs loot optimo maxima Tanaro, “To Jupiter, best and
greatest, the thunderer.” (The reader need hardly be reminded that it
was the practice of the legionaries to honour the gods of the country
where they happened to be stationed, and that therefore Tanaros is with
certainty a Celtic divinity.)
This double use of tanaros as a river- and god-name may be due to
nothing more than the fact that its meaning suited both cases, but it is
at least worthy of remark that many of our river names are really names
of Celtic divinities as well, the river being regarded as a
manifestation of the divinity. Thus Dee and Don are both names of
goddesses. So is Nesa, now the Ness. Clouta, now the Clyde, was the name
both of the goddess and the river. The old name of the
Ribble was Belisama, “most bright one,” from Belos, the Gaulish sun-god.
One is tempted to put Tanar in the same category. But whether the Celts
who named it considered it associated with one of their deities or not,
the derivation is not affected.
From the above history of the word one fact emerges very strikingly—the
great antiquity of this river name. At the beginning of this article we
remarked that it is on record for four hundred and fifty years, but our
investigation has carried it back to far remoter times. Nearly 2000
years ago the Celtic-speaking Britons were using the word, as the
inscription just quoted proves, and presumably our river had its name by
that time. How much older it may be, who can tell? Equally noteworthy is
the absence of phonetic change during this long period of time. We can
say that the Deeside tribesmen who marched south to meet Agricola and
the Roman legions in battle called the Tanar by much the same sound as
is heard to-day. A fact like this brings to mind Canon Taylor’s
generalisation, and supplies another instance of its truth. “One class
of local names,” he says, “is of special value in investigations
relating to primeval history. The river names are everywhere the
memorials of the earliest races. They seem to possess an almost
indestructible vitality . . . Even the names of the eternal hills are
less permanent than those of rivers.”
It is satisfactory to note that, though Sir W, Brooks was extremely
anxious that the Ordnance Survey should lend their authority to his
innovation, the proper form has been retained in the revised, as in the
original, map.
|
