What’s In A (Place) Name?
Readers of my work might have noticed that I’m interested in word origins. Maybe it’s because I like language and ancient history. Maybe studying Latin in high school helped. Who knows? The origins of my interest in word origins I find less interesting.
A word always has at least some history behind it, rather than a single, simple one-to-one meaning. That history can be long and dynamic, and it continues to evolve, just like language itself. When thought about this way, a word is a symbol that represents not just its currently understood denotation, but rather an accretion of meanings that tell a layered, complex story. Or thought of in a slightly different way, a word is a clue that can unlock deeper, hidden truths.
I live in New Jersey, whose name comes from Jersey, a semi-autonomous country which is also one of the Channel Islands (since they’re in the English Channel). But where does the name “Jersey” come from? The answer could be Vikings, or Normans (who originally were Vikings – “Norseman”), or a Roman emperor.
The island of Jersey has a long history of hominid habitation, starting some 250,000 years ago with Neanderthals, who hunted mammoth and wooly rhinoceros there. At the time, sea levels were lower, and Jersey was connected to present-day Normandy. Neanderthals get their name from the place in Germany where one of the first specimens of Homo neanderthalensis was found.
Hominids continued to live on Jersey through the Neolithic period, as evidenced by, among other things, the presence of dolmens on the island. Dolmens are large rock structures, usually arranged like tables. They were thought to serve primarily as tombs, although the archaeological record is unclear on that. The most famous collection of dolmens is Stonehenge, whose theorized purposes are, jointly or individually: tomb, church, sanatorium, and celestial calendar. But the highest concentration of dolmens in the world, about 40%, is on the Korean Peninsula, for some reason. The word dolmen might have come from the Cornish word tolmen (“hole of stone”), incorrectly transcribed as dolmin by an 18th century French antiquarian, Théophile Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne, in his work, Origines gauloises.
About 6,000 years ago, the sea level rose so much that Jersey became an island. After the Bronze and Iron Ages, the ancient Romans arrived in Jersey, although they may not have occupied it. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (modern-day France) in 51 BCE, and at a coastal heath on Jersey called Les Landes, there are what appear to be the ruins of a Gallo-Roman temple. You might recognize the word “Gallic” to mean “French,” as in “a Gallic shrug.” The Gallo-Roman ruins at Les Landes are situated on a plot of consecrated ground, which the Romans called a fanum. The English word “profane” comes from fanum, as the Latin phrase pro fano means something like “outside the sacred ground.”
Julius Caesar’s successor, Caesar Augustus, divided Gaul into four provinces, with Jersey being part of Gallia Lugdunensis. Lugdunensis refers to the province’s capital, Lugdunum, which may have been named after the Celtic god Lugus. Over time, Lugdunum evolved with natural use into its current name, Lyon. How is this possible? My guess is that the more commonly-used form of Lugdunum was Lugduno or Lugduna, since in Latin, different endings must be used according to the function of the word in a sentence, with “-o” and “-a” being two of the more common endings. Over the course of hundreds of years, the middle part of Lugduno/a was cropped for convenience, leaving something like Luo, which eventually became Lyon (remember, in French, you wouldn’t say the “n” sound).
The Channel Islands are listed in the Antonine Itinerary, which is like an ancient road map of the Roman Empire. The Itinerary is named after the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, but scholars believe its most likely patron, if it had one, would have been Emperor Caracalla, who ruled later, in the late second and early third century. The names of the Channel Islands are mentioned in the Itinerary – they are: Sarnia, Caesarea, Barsa, Silia and Andium. Apparently, in antiquity, Jersey was called Andium, or alternatively, Agna or Augia. Andium is a Latin version of the Gaulish word Andion, with “and-“ being a prefix meaning “very,” “much,” or “big.” So Andium basically means “big island,” which makes sense, as Jersey is the biggest Channel Island. Agna, Augia, and similar versions are probably just later developments of the name, if not misspellings.
Roman rule in Britain ended in around 410 CE, after which Anglo-Saxon tribes from modern-day Germany and Denmark (Saxony is a state in Germany) conquered the Romano-British. At that point, some Britons left Britain and settled in Jersey and in Brittany (hence the name). In the year 803, Charlemagne sent his emissary to the island, which was said to be called Angia or Agna at the time. Over the course of the next few centuries, Jersey was controlled first by the Franks, then by Vikings, who became the Normans. Through the Middle Ages, the island was fought over by France and England, but in the Treaty of Paris in 1259, England surrendered its claim to Normandy. Since then, Jersey has been a self-governing territory of the English, then the British crown.
Shortly after the Treaty of Paris was signed, the positions of warden and bailiff were created, to run Jersey on behalf of England. The word “bailiff” comes from the Vulgar Latin baiulivus, meaning “official in charge of a castle.” The Vulgar Latin comes from the Latin baiulus, meaning “porter.” Today, Jersey itself is part of a bailiwick, which is an area within a bailiff’s jurisdiction. The “-wic” ending is an Anglo-Saxon suffix meaning “village.” A version of the suffix ended up in a lot of British, then American, town names, like Ipswich, Norwich, and Warwick.
In the 16th century, an English historian named William Camden began his magnum opus, Britannia, the first chorographical survey of Great Britain and Ireland. From the Greek, khoros (“place”) and graphein (“to write”), chorography refers to the art of describing or mapping a place. In Britannia, Camden names Jersey as Caesarea, one of the other Channel Island names listed in the Antonine Itinerary.
The name Caesarea, of course, comes from Caesar – and unsurprisingly, there were lots of towns called Caesarea all across the Roman Empire, from northern Europe to the Levant. There were also other variations on the theme, such as Zaragoza, a city in Spain (and now in Mexico too), whose name comes from Caesaraugusta.
So did “Jersey” evolve from Caesarea? I find the transformation plausible, as do others. If the “c” at the beginning of the word started out being pronounced like a “k,” as the ancient Romans would have, it’s not a huge leap to imagine that the “k” softened to a hard “g” sound over time. And if the word began to be spelled with a “g,” then the pronunciation could conceivably then vary between the hard and soft “g” sounds. Interestingly, Jersey did used to be spelled with a “g.” According to Wikipedia, as of at least the early 11th century, it has been variously spelled, in roughly this order: Gersoi, Gerseii, Gersey, Gersei, Gersoi, Gersus, Gerzoi, Gersui, Gersoio, Gersuy, and Gersui. Some people believe that the name of the Norman city Cherbourg derives from Caesar as well (Caesaris burgis – “Caesar’s town”). Wikipedia says this etymology “is easily discounted,” but doesn’t explain why. If the name Caesar did mutate into Cher over the years, then it’s easy to see how it could similarly mutate into Jer.
It's hard to believe though, that the name changed from Agna to Gersoi over the course of a mere 200 years, between the visit of Charlemagne’s emissary in 803 and the early 11th century, when apparently, we see the first recorded instance of Gersoi. Maybe instead, some people called it Agna or its variations, while others contemporaneously called it Gersoi or its variations. Or maybe those who wrote down the names through the years got them wrong.
And there is still another set of possibilities, which some scholars find persuasive – that “Jersey” comes from Old Norse and/or Old English. There are Old Norse words like hjörr (“sword”) and jarl (“earl”) that could conceivably have provided the name. There are also Old Norse people names, for example Geirr, that could be the answer. And the “-ey” ending in Old Norse and Old English originates from the words for “egg” (it looks similar after all) and means “island.” So Jersey could have been named by Vikings, as “Sword Island,” “Earl’s Island,” or “Geirr’s Island,” for example.
I should also say a word about two other Jersey meanings. The name for the article of clothing comes from the island, as Jersey was famous for its knitting trade during the Middle Ages. This is similar to how the words “denim” and “jeans” come from places where the fabrics were produced, Nîmes, France (“de Nîmes”) and Genoa, Italy (Gênes is the French name for Genoa), respectively. Apparently, the British still use the word “jersey” to refer to a type of knit cloth or a light sweater. In America of course, “jersey” typically means the official shirt of a sports team, presumably because these used to be more like sweaters. Interestingly, there is a sweater called a guernsey, which comes from the Channel Island of the same name. Jersey and Guernsey are also the names of cattle breeds, which originated on the islands.
During the English Civil War, the bailiff of Jersey was a man named George Carteret. Under Carteret, Jersey remained loyal to the crown through the course of the war. In fact, on two occasions, Jersey sheltered King Charles I’s son in exile, and in 1649, after the execution of the king, Carteret declared the son, Charles II, king. After the war, in recognition of Carteret’s loyalty (and as a debt settlement), the crown granted him a tract of land between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, which was named after Carteret’s home. The rest is Jersey history.