Σιδουμανιου
Attested: Ptolemy 2,3,6 Σιδουμανιος (or Ειδουμανιου) river mouth
Where: Ptolemy's order of names and coordinates would fit one of the big estuaries in East Anglia. In the running are Colne-plus-Blackwater, Orwell-plus-Stour, and Crouch-plus-Roach. Possibly best is to guess that in Roman times the Crouch used to flow out some way through Foulness Sands, so that Ptolemy's coordinates were near TR052968.
Name origin: The first element of Σιδουμανιος is like Modern English side and/or Old English sid ‘wide, spacious, large’, from PIE *sē- ‘to sow, to spread out’, which survives as an adjective only in northern dialect, but it contributes to various place names, such as Sidestrand in Norfolk and also Sitomagus at Ixworth, Suffolk. Old Irish sith- ‘long’ might be cognate. The second element is related to Latin mano ‘to flow’ or μανος ‘loose’, from PIE *ma- ‘damp’. In Britain that element developed mainly towards marsh, leaving few clear parallels in river names (such as the Lincolnshire Witham, formerly Wi ma) and only debatable ones in place names (Manea, Manningtree, etc).
Notes: The lack of clear parallels in Celtic prompted Rivet & Smith to prefer a spelling Eidumanis (with Greek Epsilon easy to misread as Sigma) suggested by Ekwall(1928) on a theory that the name's first element might have come from PIE *widhu- ‘wood’ losing its initial W sound.
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Last edited 21 August 2023 To main Menu