Ward & Lock's descriptive and pictorial guide to the Isle of Man ...

•Guide4to the Isle of Man.on) derives the word from the Saxon mang, or " among,"although it is not easy to see why the islesmen should borrowa word from what was to them a foreign language. Ptolemy,the Greek geographer, who wrote about a.d. 139, some fivehundred years before the Saxons set foot in Britain, nrmcdit Monceda, or further Mona, to distinguish it from Anglesea,the Mona of Tacitus. There is an old British word, IJon,signifying, according to Owen's dictionary, "isolated," andperhaps Caesar and Tacitus, when they wrote of Mona, onlyLatinized an old British name. Mr. J. M. Jeffcott, who, in1873, published a little book, " Mann;its Names and theirOrigins," derives the name of the island from a tribe or raceof the Manapii, by whom it is occupied. The Celtic, mcun,a stone, or moncn'lh, a hill, may have had something to dowith the origin of the name.One learned writer has discovered that Maune was thesurname of St. Patrick, and was therefore adopted for theisland ;but Mr. Cummings, a local antiquary, goes farther :" I am of opinion that the name anciently given to it incommon with Anglesey had to do with the reputed holycharacter of the isle, as the Sales Druidorum, the abode ofthe holy wise men;and that it has tlie same connection withthe Sanscrit root, Man, in reference to religious knowledge,as our word monk; so also moonslice, and the names ofancient lawgivers, as Mann, son of Brahma, Menu, Minos,and Menus.'" Here we may well pause. It is a long flightfrom India, Greece, and Egypt to the island in the Irish Sea;and if, after all that we have quoted, the intelligent touristis still uncertain as to the origin of the name, it is a consolationthat he is in no worse case than many learned men havebeen in before him.Boetius, the author of King Alfred's favourite book, " TheConsolations of Philosophy," is, in one historical sketch ofthe island, credited with the assertion that the Isle of Manwas " the fountain of all pure learning, and the acknowledgedresidence of the Muses." If Boetius was really the authorof this remark, he must have referred to the condition ofthe island at the beginning (tf the fifth century, for the writerwas almost a contempoEJiry of St. Patrick. Perhaps, however,the quotation was really taken from the history ofScotland by Hector Boecc, or Boetius (the Latinized formof the name), who wrote in the early part of the sixteenthcentury, and who was far more likely to refer to the Isle ofMan than the other Boetius, the Iloman philosopher whonvcnted the waterclock, ai^d was prime minister to Thecdore,