Walpole_, t. i. p. 442., and t. iii. p. 174.

D. ROCK.

_Etymology of Totnes._--The Query of J.M.B. (Vol. i., p 470.) not having
been as yet answered, I venture to offer a few notes on the subject;
and, mindful of your exhortation to brevity, compress my remarks into
the smallest possible compass, though the details of research which
might be indulged in, would call for a dissertation rather them a Note.

That Totnes is a place of extreme antiquity as a British town cannot be
doubted; first, from the site and character of its venerable hill
fortress; secondly, from the fact that the chief of the four great
British and Roman roads, the Fosse-way, commenced there--"The ferthe of
thisse is most of alle that tilleth from Toteneis ... From the
south-west to north-east into Englonde's end;" and, thirdly, from the
mention of it, and the antiquity assigned to it by our earliest annals
and chronicles. Without entering into the question of the full
authenticity of Brute and the _Saxon Chronicle_, or the implicit
adoption of the legendry tales of Havillan and Geoffry of Monmouth, the
concurring testimony of those records, with the voice of tradition, the
stone of the landing, and the fact that the town is seated at the head
of an estuary the most accessible, the most sheltered, and the best
suited of any on the south-western coast for the invasion of such a
class of vessels as were those of the early navigators, abundantly
warrant the admission that it was the landing-place of some mighty
leader at a very early period of our history.

And now to the point of the etymology of _Totenais_, as it stands in
Domesday Book. We may, I think, safely dismiss the derivation suggested
by Westcote, on the authority of Leland, and every thing like it derived
from the French, as well as the unknown tongue which he adopts in
"Dodonesse." That we are warranted in seeking to the Anglo-Saxon for
etymology in this instance is shown by the fact, that the names of
places in Devon are very generally derived from that language; e.g.
taking a few only in the neighbourhood of Totnes--Berry, Buckyatt,
Dartington, Halwell, Harberton, Hamstead, Hempstin, Stancombe.

First, of the termination _ais_ or _eis_. The names of many places of
inferior consequence in Devon end in _hays_, from the Ang.-Saxon _heag_,
a hedge or inclosure; but this rarely, if ever, designates a town or a
place beyond a farmstead, and seems to have been of later application as
to a