Origin of the Place-Name ' ' Keswick " 221 THE ORIGIN OF THE PLACE-NAME KESWICK The name Keswick, Cumberland county, England, has not, it seems to me, as yet Been satisfactorily explained. In his volume on The Lake Counties ColHngwood, commenting on the uncertainty of the origin of the name, compares with Kelsick. 1 But the earliest recorded form of the latter name con- tains no Wj a fact which he also notes. It is extremely unlikely that the two names should have been identical before the date of the recorded forms. The name Keswick does not appear at all in Lindkvist's Middle English Place-Names of Scandinavian Origin. 2 As this work aims to give " The Scandinavian place- nomenclature which came into existence in Old and Middle English times east and north of Watling Street," 3 Lindquist would seem not to regard either component part as of Scandi- navian origin. Sedgefield in his Place-Names of Cumberland and Westmorland derives the ending from ON. vtk, adding with regard to the first part: "It is perhaps the same as in Keisley, Westmorland." 4 Finally, Moorman, The Place-Names of West Riding, Yorkshire, derives the identical Keswick in York- shire from OE. cese, 'cheese', +OE. wic, 'dwelling.' 5 The derivation of the first part Kes- from OE. cese presents first of all a formal difficulty. Old English cese, Modern Eng- lish 'cheese,' has in Cumberland and surrounding North Coun try dialects an initial c/f-sound and a long vowel. Wright's English Dialect Grammar 6 gives only forms with //, as tfeiz, tfiz, tfiez, and tfiz, the last for central Cumberland. It is, therefore, hardly likely that a non-palatalized c before e should have 1 P. 154. 2 Upsala, 1912. 3 I.e. Preface, p. I. 4 P. 69. 6 The name Keswick does not appear in B jorkman's Zur englischen Namen- kunde, 1912, pp. 6-11, where many names (mainly personal names) are dealt with.
6 P. 372.
