A recognition of the principles according to which Cornish Surnames have been usually formed will, however, furnish a key to most of them. On this point something may be gathered from Polwhele,[1] who, speaking of the tracts of land around the castles of the ancient captains and princes of Cornwall, says:—"These little territories, the demesne lands of their several lords, were not divided into regular farms till the Romans. But before the Romans they probably gave name to their possessors. And the first Cornish families, deducing their names from their places, seem to have been distinguished by the appellations pen and tre.[2] The pens, it is likely, were the more remarkable hill-pastures; the tres, the agricultural spots or places.[3] In process of time each lordship was separated into various farms, by strong and permanent enclosures; and the farms borrowed their respective names from their site on high or low ground—their relative situations—their vicinity to rivers and the sea—from the forma loci and its qualities — from woods, and particular trees and other vegetable productions—from their pasture and corn—from native animals — from tame or domestic animals, and from various circumstances which it would be tedious to enumerate. These names they imparted (like the origi-
- ↑ Vol. i. b. i. ch. v. p. 166.
- ↑ "Camden says, 'tre, pol, and pen;' but if pol mean a pool, it must be classed amongst names of places enclosed after the Roman arrival, and can only be referred to husbandry or otherwise, as the syllable or syllables in conjunction with it may direct." (Polwhele.)
- ↑ Richards (Welsh Dict.) says that tres in Cornwall were for the most part only single houses, and the word subjoined only the name of a Briton who was once the proprietor; thus Tref-Erbin, Tref-Annian, Tref-Gerens, Tre-Lownydd.
