Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/212

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198
Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.

Wilte. When we compare the name Wendelmestrei with the place-name Wendelstein in one of the old Wendish parts of Germany, we can scarcely doubt how the Sussex name arose, if considered in reference to the survival in Sussex of an old Wendish custom.

There are other Anglo-Saxon names of places in this county which may also have been derived from persons who were called by some tribal name, such as Bucgan-ora,[1] now changed to Bognor, and Buckingham, which may have come from the name of the pagus of the Bucki, in the Engern country of the Old Saxons. The name Bexwarena-land for the country around Bexley occurs also in a charter of Offa,[2] and, as it is written in the genitive plural, it must be considered to refer to a settlement of people known as Bexware.

In the extreme West of Sussex there is a place near Selsea called Wittering, which is mentioned in a charter of the tenth century as Wedering,[3] a name presumably derived originally from a settler called Weder, from his tribal name—that of the Wederas or Ostrogoths from the Wedermark, on the east of Lake Wetter. The name occurs in the boundaries of Selsea, another boundary-name of the same land being Cwuenstane.[4] This latter is much like Cwén, the Norrena name for a Fin. Another Fin settlement appears probable from the Sussex Domesday place-name Fintune.

Similarly, the Domesday name Angemare—the Angemeringum or Angemæringtun of Saxon charters[5]—reminds us of the ancient Swedish province of Angermanland, on the west of the Gulf of Bothnia, opposite to Finland. As already mentioned, there are still existing in the north-eastern provinces of Sweden stone monuments with runic inscriptions to those who ‘resided westward in

  1. Cart. Sax., i. 82.
  2. Ibid., i. 294.
  3. Ibid., iii. 193.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Codex Dipl., Nos. 314 and 1067.