Adwy
Gwm - "Gap leading to the Coombe".
Welsh:
Adwy "gap, mountain pass" plus Cwm "bowl
shaped depression, valley". Cwm was borrowed into Old English as cumba and is found as an English word locally, but
this name seems to be from the Cumbric directly.
Welsh names that are similar to the proposed Adwy Gwm - are Adwy'r Waun, Adwy'r Ddol, Adwy'r Llan, all with the definite article but see also Craig Adwy Wynt (SJ125535) in Denbighshire. The -g- is Realised as -k- as there was not medial /g/ in Old English (Hogg 1992).
Dating Issues
We
see that Welsh -wy- /ui/ -which developed before 700 (Jackson 1953) -
was borrowed into Old English as the Anglo-Saxon rounded front vowel /y/ (Campbell
1959) which then by 1100 had unrounded into /i/. We see that
/wy/ had arisen in the Brittonic speech of Staffordshire and Yorkshire before
the English Conquest of those areas: - Luitgoed -> Litchfield and
Gedluid, which King Ecgfrith gave to St Cuthbert in 677, and of course in North
Wales so it is very likely the sound was found in place names in Cumberland and
Northumberland. After c.1100, the Old English /y/ was not available and so it
had to be borrowed differently. If Addacomb is Adwy Gwm, it was
borrowed after the loss of /y/ in the late Old English period but before
the development of /ui/ due to French influence in Middle English
and also before the development of medial /g/ in Middle English, which was due to Norse influence (Minkova 2013). So Adwy Gwm seems to have come into English before significant Norse influence - perhaps the 10th Century, which dates it to the resurgent
Cumbrian kingdom of Strathclyde.
Other
Points
Addacombe
is not mentioned in Place Names of Cumberland (Armstrong et al. 1950), or
by Diana Whaley (Whaley 2006). There is a an Addycombe, near Rothbury,
Northumberland. The Addy- here could be a diminutive of the personal name Adam,
but I think it's also possible that Addycombe is the same name as Addacomb
(i.e. Adwy Gwm) but borrowed earlier than Addacomb, which is no surprise.
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