Blencathra (NY 320276) Blenkarthure c.1589 Blencarter, Blenkarthur 1794. PNCu give Welsh (Cumbric) blaen as the first element but find the rest too obscure. Blaen regularly appears as “blen” in this area. Among the meanings of blaen given by GPC are “summit, headwaters, uplands”. John Morris Jones gives meanings as “point, front”.
Whaley (2006) suggests the earlier spellings may belie an association with King Arthur and suggests that the second element is cadair such as in Cadair Idris in Meirionnydd SH710130.
Cadair would suit the shape of a mountain, which does look like a chair. When Owen and Morgan discuss the element cadair under Cadair (Cader) Idris "Idris' Chair" and say it occurs regularly in hill-top names "…occasionally refers to a hill shaped like a chair but more commonly extended 'fortress, fortified settlement' (Owen & Morgan, 2007: 61). There was no fortress on either Blencathra or Cadair Idris to the best of my knowledge.
Interestingly, Blencathra (868m) and Cader Idris (893m) are similar mountains with high wide-ish ridges running south west to north east that drop off on south and north sides steeply for Cader Idris but only on south and north east side for Blencathra - both drop into coombs that contain small lakes. The ridge leading to the summit of Cader Idris is called y cyfrwy "The Saddle" and Blencathra is also known as Saddleback. Cader Idris is composed of Ordovician age igneous rocks, while Blencathra of Ordovician age mudstones and sandstones. I like to think they would be friends.
In their Manual of Modern Scots, (Grant & Dixon, 1921:23) note a feature where Scots develops a voiced fricative where standard English has a voiced stop before the sequence -er /ər/ so, blether for bladder, consither for consider.
MacAfee notes in the first half of the 15th Century (in Scots) /d/ gives /đ/ between vowels or between a nasal/liquid and a vowel (MacAfee & Aitken, 2002 §6.31.4), e.g. father from OE fæder, and similarly mother and weather which all had original /d/. This happened in English too of course.
So, it is phonologically possible that Blaen Cadair "Chair Summit" became "*Blen Kather" in the 15th Century through the sound change just described, and then the magic of King Arthur influenced it to become Blenkarthur 1794. It suffered metathesis (very common with /r/) to make it Blencathra. My only slight reservation is that the -th- in Blencathra is voiceless so /θ/ not the /đ/ it should be if it was created from /d/ in the development noted by MacAfee. It was this that made me wonder whether Blencathra was actually Blaencaethfre - or at least contained the element ceith (from Latin captus) that we see in Cricieth (Crug Ceith) "Hill of the Captives". The village below Blencathra is Threlkeld, Norse for the the "slaves' well."
On reflection it is still more likely to be Blaen Cadeir but the /θ/ does bother me.
James (2016) also comes to the conclusion that Blencathra is Cumbric blajn cadeir.
Blencathra / Blaen Cadair
with Cadair Idris for comparison (links click through to copyright owners):
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