Notes and Queries, Number 42, August 17, 1850 | Page 3

names is found in a locality that suits the
place we are in search of: in an arm of the Mediterranean stretching
from Greece northwards; viz. in the Adriatic, which had for its earliest
name _Sirus Venedicus_, translated in modern Italian into Golfo di
Venezia.
Of the multitudes of authorities for this assumption I need only mention
Strabo, who calls the first settlers on its northern end (whence the
whole gulph was denominated) [Greek: Everoi]; or Livy, who merely
Latinizes the term as _Heneti_, lib. i. cap. i., "Antenorem cum
multitudine Henetum." With the fable of Antenor and his Trojan colony
we have at present no further relation. The name alone, and its
universality at this locality, is all that we require. I shall now show that
we can follow these Veneti (which, that it is a generic name of situation,
I must now omit to prove, from the compression {179} necessary for
your miscellany) without a break, in an uninterrupted chain, to the
north, and to a position that suits Alfred's other locality much more
fitting, than the White Sea. The province of Vindelicia would carry us
to the Boden See (Lake of Constance), which Pomponius Mela, lib. iii.
cap. i. ad finem, calls Lacus Venedicus. This omitting the modern
evidences of this name and province in Windisch-Grätz,
Windisch-Feistriz, &c. &c., brings us sufficiently in contact with the
Slavonic and Wendic people of Bohemia to track the line through them
to the two Lausitz, where we are in immediate proximity to the Spree
Wald. There the Wends (pronounce _Vends_) still maintain a distinct
and almost independent community, with peculiar manners, and, it is
believed, like the gypsies, an elected or hereditary king; and where, and
round Lüchow, in Hanover, the few remnants of this once potent nation
are awaiting their final and gradual absorption into the surrounding
German nations. Whenever, in the north of Germany, a traveller meets
with a place or district ending in _wits_, _itz_, _pitz_, &c., wherever
situate, or whatever language the inhabitants speak, he may put it down
as originally Wendish; and the multitude of such terminations will
show him how extensively this people was spread over those countries.
Itzenplitz, the name of a family once of great consequence in the Mark
of Brandenburg is ultra-Wendish. It will, therefore, excite no wonder
that we find, even in Tacitus, Veneti along their coasts and Ptolemy,

who wrote about a century and a half later than Strabo or Livy, seems
to have improved the terminology of the ancients in the interval; for,
speaking of the Sarmatian tribes, he calls these Veneti [Greek:
Ouenedai par holon ton Ouenedikon kolpon]. Here we find the truest
guide for the pronunciation, or, rather, for the undigammaising of the
Latin V and the Welsh _W_, as _Ouenetoi_, which is proved in many
distant and varying localities. St. Ouen, the Welsh Owen and Evan, and
the patron saint of Rouen, no doubt had his name (if he ever existed at
all) coined from the French Veneti of Armorica, amongst which he
lived; and when foreigners wish to render the English name Edward as
spoken, they write Edouard and Robert the Wizzard, the Norman
conqueror of Sicily and Apulia, has his name transformed, to suit
Italian ears, into _Guiscard_, and as William into Gulielmi. Thus,
therefore, the whole coast of Prussia, from Pomerania, as far, perhaps,
as known, and certainly all the present Prussia Proper, was the _Sinus
Venedicus_, Ptolemy's [Greek: kolpon]; and this was also Alfred's
Cwen-Sae, for the north. I admit that when Alfred follows Orosius, he
uses Adriatic for the _Golfo de Venezia_, but when he gives us his
independent researches, he uses an indigenous name. Professor Porthan,
of Abo in Finland, published a Swedish translation, with notes, of the
Voyages of Othere and Wulfstan in the _Kongl. Vitterhets Historie och
Antiquitet Academiens Handlingar, sjette Delen_. Stockholm, 1800, p.
37-106., in which he expressly couples Finland with Cwenland; and, in
fact, considering the identity of Cwen and _Ven_, and the convertibility
of the F and V in all languages, Ven and Fen and Cwen will all be
identical: but I believe he might have taken a hint from Bussæus, who,
in addition to his note at p. 13., gives at p. 22. an extract from the _Olaf
Tryvassons Saga_, where "Finnland edr Quenland" (Finland or
Quenland) are found conjoined as synonyms. Professor Rask, who
gives the original text, and a Danish translation in the Transactions of
the Shandinavish Litteratur Selkskab for 1815, as "Otter og Wulfstans
Korte Reideberetninger," &c., though laudatory in the extreme of
Porthan, and differing from him on some minor points, yet fully agrees
in finding the Cwen-Sea within the Baltic: and he seems to divide this
inland sea into two parts by a line drawn north and south