Why is Cornwall called Cornwall? Tim Hannigan explains the history behind the name <\/p>
We know what the \u2018wall\u2019 bit means for definite. It has the exact same etymology as Wales, which is possibly slightly better known than the \u2018wall\u2019 bit of Cornwall.<\/p>\n
It is an English word \u2013 or, I should say, Old English, Anglo-Saxon\u00a0word \u2013 that was given to these two places that we now know as Cornwall and Wales. This word was W\u0113alas<\/em>, and it sometimes gets translated as \u2018foreigners\u2019 or \u2018strangers\u2019, but the best way to think of it is just \u201cnot us\u201d. Them. Other.<\/p>\n This is what the English name \u2018Cornwall\u2019 actually means \u2013\u00a0otherness. Its separateness from England \u2013 or certainly Anglo-Saxon territory \u2013 is really explicit in the name (just as it is in the name Wales).<\/p>\n Wales and Cornwall both had their own names too \u2013 Wales we know as Cymru,<\/em> and Cornwall in modern Cornish is Kernow<\/em>. But in English, they both became W\u0113alas<\/em>.<\/p>\n The \u2018corn\u2019 bit of Cornwall is probably from that local name. We\u2019re not exactly sure where that corn<\/em> bit actually means, but it\u2019s probably got an etymological link to cornu<\/em>, which would be a Latin word in origin, meaning horn. If you think about what Cornwall looks like, it juts out into the Atlantic, so \u2018corn\u2019 probably has something to do with the form of the place, a horn-like peninsula sticking out. So there you have it: Cornwall means something like \u2018the un-English others of the horn-place\u2019.<\/p>\n