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

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-Gr?tz, 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 Buss?us, 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 through Bornholm, of which the eastern part is called the Cwen or Serminde, or Samatian Sea.
Be that as it may, the above is one of a series of deductions