-----Original Message----- From: Roy Louis D Cox [mailto:roy.cox@btinternet.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 12:00 PM To: 'norman.lee1' Subject: RE: [OEL] not old English exactly Good Morning - Flattery will get you everywhere! As it happens we have our French students at present and I posed the question to them and their French Teacher. As far as they know the two letters -ac placed at the end of a French name is meaningless! Unlike the word or letters -'ville' which means 'town' of course and in use in others countries. Interestingly though as Audry points out, this does seem to apply to that area between Perigord Blanc and Perigord Noir which looks to be mostly greenland. Two further pieces of evidence exist but not necessarily in France: Saxon and Middle English both list - ac as a word in its own right, both meaning the same - 'but' - The Saxon definition however, goes a bit further than the conjunction and gives it also as its interrogative particle - Why- Wherefore- Whether. It also gives an ancient definition of it meaning OAK - sourced from several Saxon charters, wills and other documents of European origin and finally states - "Ship of Oak" - There is no mention in any of my other English or French dictionaries. What if the greenland area between Blanc and Noire once supplied Oak for ship building? Bergerac is on La Dordogne river which joins La Garonne north of Bordeaux where wooden ships were without doubt once built? To confound that theory however, there are several other places going west to the coastline that also have this ending of -ac, although they might also have supplied Oak? That is of course the Oak tree was grown in France? Kind Regards June & Roy (SANHS Member No 1066) http://www.btinternet.com/~roy.cox/index.htm -----Original Message----- From: norman.lee1 [mailto:norman.lee1@virgin.net] Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 8:52 PM To: OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [OEL] not old English exactly Knowing how knowledgeable you all are, perhaps you can help me with a query raised by my visit to France. In mitigation for it not being English, I have to say that it was the Aquitaine part that Eleanor brought to the English crown. The question is this: does anyone know why so many towns in the Perigord region of France have 'ac' at the end of their names, e.g. Bergerac; Issyjac; and many others? There are even quite small places like Cahujac and many of the place names end in 'ac'. I am hopeless at surfing the Net and, despite trying, have found nothing to tell me the answer to this. If you can just point me in the right direction to find the answer, I'd be very pleased indeed. It's like an itch in an unreachable part of the body at the moment. Audrey ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== OLD-ENGLISH Web Page http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/