On the place Dover

This article is meant to be published as a academic paper. You can comment it. Please write to (eliminate all 'x') antxxhony.durxhamx@xntlxworld.coxm.

A Celtic etymology for Dover is almost universally accepted, but almost certainly wrong.

It has problems in three separate strands of language that require lengthy explanation. Dover's earliest known mentions are in Roman documents. The Antonine Itinerary, from about AD 300 but probably based on Roman army marching orders from before AD 100, mentions ad Portum Dubris twice. Then Dubris occurs once as a single word in Notitia Dignitatum, once in Tabula Peutingeriana, and once in the Ravenna Cosmography (which also mentions Durbis). Ptolemy, writing in about AD 140, did not mention Dover, nor its small rivers.

The conventional Celtic interpretation was stated by Rivet and Smith (1979) thus: "the British name was *Dubras 'waters, stream' (perhaps 'streams'), plural of *dubro- 'water' (Welsh dwfr, dwr, Cornish dofer, dour, Breton dour; Old Irish dobur)". They wrote of Latin dubris that: "all records of the name, even those of the Antonine Itinerary set in a grammatical structure, show it as a locative plural in -is". This is a mistake. In ad Portum Dubris, the is ending most likely indicates a genitive singular, giving a meaning of 'to the port of Dubris'.

However, an is ending could also arise in Latin from the rare locative case (giving a meaning of 'at Dubris') for certain nouns in the singular and for other nouns in the plural. Medieval Latin writers unhesitatingly used the genitive not the locative after ad portum, but there appear to be no suitable texts to reveal the genitive/locative preferences of classical Latin writers. However, two close approaches are noteworthy. The Itinerarium Maritimum contains ad portum ritupium, where ritupium looks very like a genitive plural. And Julius Caesar wrote ad portum itium about his departure point for the invasion of 55 BC, where itium has always been interpreted as an adjective, but looks suspiciously like a condensed form of itinerium 'ways'.

Latin dubris manages to unite in one word many of the spelling difficulties that ancient scribes would have encountered when writing down unfamiliar phonemes. So a nominative singular form *duber or *dubris could have arisen from local spoken originals that modern English speakers would write as diversely as thover, dooprus, or tobbris.

Among English place names, a topographical feature like 'waters' unaccompanied by a qualifier would be a rarity, while 'port of the waters' looks daft. However, if a watery meaning is considered acceptable, Celtic is not in fact the best source. The hypothetical *dubro- derives from a PIE root *dheub-, with many other descendants such as the English words dub (northern dialect for a dark or muddy pool) plus deep, dimple, and dip. The exact word dubris appears to have existed in ancient Illyrian, which was the native language of some of the Roman army's best troops, including part of the Britannia garrison between at least AD 105 and 400, and officers up to the level of emperor. Illyrium (near modern Dubrovnik) was where Julius Caesar spent the winter of 55 BC between his two invasions near Dover, and it would also have been a logical place to recruit for the Roman navy, the Classis Britannica, based at Dover.

A common element in place names is the Old English word ofer, derived from proto-Germanic *obera- (Philippa, Debrabandere & Quak, 2007), which had a primary meaning of river bank or shore. Ekwall (see Mills, 2003) thought ofer primarily applied to a firm beach or gravelly shore, which fits ancient Dover's very essence as a port: a place where boats could be beached at the only gap in 22 miles of cliffs through which goods can be transported inland. One can imagine Caesar's troops remembering "the beaches" in the same way as Allied troops remembered the D-day landings.

Ancient travellers on land or sea had a rich vocabulary, which modern people no longer remember, to describe particular landforms that made recognisable landmarks. The distinctive topographical feature in more than 170 places around England with names built around ofer, or its variants ufer, yfre, and ora (Gelling and Cole, 2003) was a 'flat-topped ridge with a convex shoulder' (like the end of an upturned canoe). Most such names probably date to early Anglo-Saxon times, but the ora element seems related to or derived from Latin ora, 'sea shore', which hints at Latin-speaking sailors (Cole, 1990).

One cluster of more than 20 ofer/ora place names is near the Isle of Wight, where to this day boats navigate mostly by reference to lighthouses, seamarks, forts, church steeples, etc. A sailor proceeding east from there along the coast and round into the Thames Estuary would pass by the following ofer/ora places on or near the coast, all distinctively visible though often not particularly high:
- The Owers, near Bognor
- Oreham, inland from Shoreham
- Ore, near Hastings
- Drellingore and River, inland from Dover
- Stonar, at the south-east end of the Wantsum Channel
- Oar Farm, at the north end of the Wantsum Channel
- Oare, near Faversham
- The Nore, near Sheerness
- Upnor, in the Medway
Dover was not mentioned as an ofer/ora place by Gelling and Cole (2003), but it obviously fits in this sequence of landmarks. Every local seaman would know its very visible notch in the white cliffs as a double ofer.

Modern ofer/ora place names have often developed far from their probable originals. Some have gained just a single letter prefix, presumably by transfer from a preceding word. Transferred letters include N in The Nore (which was formerly atten ore), R in River (which also occurs as a place name outside Kent), H in Hever (inland Kent) and D in Duver, the Isle of Wight local word for sea-shore.

Various possibilities might explain the initial D of dubris. No known form of the definite article in Old English matches modern Dutch aan de oever 'on the shore', but a Latin D could also have served to indicate consonants Þ or Ð or T. Old English æt ofer 'at the shore' is just one example of a phrase built with prepositions and/or articles (such as æt, oþ, to, or thæt) serving grammatically as a locative or possessive. Alternatively, D may have signified 'two' or 'double' in a phrase like Latin duae orae 'two banks'.

In summary, the likelihood that Dubris came from a Celtic root is not zero, but it is so low that Dover should stop being cited as positive evidence for ancient Celtic speech.

References:
Philippa, M., Debrabandere F., Quak, A. (2007)
Etymologisch Woorden van het Nederlands (Ke-R) Amsterdam University Press, ISBN 9789053567470
Mills, A. D., 2003, Dictionary of English Place Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198527586.
Gelling, M and Cole A (2003) The Landscape of Place-Names, Shaun Tyas, ISBN 1900289261.