A Tale of Five Barbys

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English - Britain
Barby could refer to the following places:

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barby

Wonder if Barby would be a placename with the most exact (looking) cognates around Europe or any other region?

Would be good to find all their etymologies and hear how they are spoken out. So far, according to here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...DAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=toponymie barby&f=false Barby, Ardennes is from "Barba ou Barbus (OTL) + -acum"

Note: reckon if anything to do with the English Barby and Swedish Barby, then the German Barby seems (somehow) to of gone and gotten itself to be a geographical isolate. Note: along with Barby, Savoy there is also an Amby knocking around in Savoy - itself a false cognate to Amby, Netherlands - itself a geographical isolate(?)

As with lastnames, reckon that France may well contain the most placenames and placename elements which are false-cognates to placename elements found in 'Germanic lands' Mostly due to the sundriness of spellings from only one French placename element, that being (after the layman's -ville) it's most well-known: -acum. Spell something so many sundry ways it will overlap at some point ...
-ton
-ey
-oy
-by
-(land)e
-ley
-ney
-dam-
-try
-tal
-nol
-nel
-berry
-lille-
-o(ing)
-a(ing)
end-
cote
-bost
-don
-combe-
berger
-sée
-etz-
corn-
-(gard)e
-lée
-trée
-cott
-sett
-aa-
-ay
roy-
roch-
-mer

vic, lin, fort, borne, bride, dale, ?

--------------------------------------------

Savoy was not a part of France not so long ago - so Barby as a placename has spanned five sundry nations!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
    • Place names in historical Roman Gaul ending in -y are usually derived from Latinized Gallic -acum, as you mentioned already (see previous thread here).

    In place name of Norse origin, -by means town, settlement, derived for Old Norse byr = farm, estate, similar in concept to a Roman villa. Individual estates were the basic unit of ancient Germanic settlement structure. Place names ending in -by are usually of Old Norse origin in Scandinavia, ancient Danelaw parts of England (to which Northamptonshire belongs) and parts of Northern Germany that were once Danish. In England, Old Norse place name ending in -by may originally have been of Anglo-Saxon origin (-burh = borough) with assimilated pronunciation and spelling in Danelaw times.

    The ending -by in the German place name is derived from Old High German/Old Saxon bogo = bow. In this case it means oxbow, meander. Why it is called so becomes immediately obvious, if you take a look at the map. The palatalization of the /g/ in the name becomes understandable when you look at the (inflected/derived?) form of bogo that appears is the oldest attested spelling barbogi.

    BTW: you wrote with the "most exact (looking) cognates". Please note that "exact looking [equal]" has absolutely nothing to do with being cognate. Also note that the Swedish place name does not look exactly the same as the other place name you mentioned. The letter ä is a letter in its own right in Swedish (the 28th letter of the Swedish alphabet) and not an ornamented version of a.
     
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