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Abstract
The three current theories of the origin of the name of the American state of Maine are reviewed and rejected. The connection of the colonist Sir Ferdinando Gorges with Ireland is explored, and a possible origin is proposed in the circumstances of the Anglo-Irish wars of 1594–1603 and their impact on his thoughts and motives.
Notes
1 The basic facts about Maine history are readily available, e.g. in Clark (1977) and Shain and Shain (1992).
2 But he never set foot in America. Mason, who never set foot in New England although he became its Vice-Admiral, is less important to the eventual development of Maine; he is associated with New Hampshire. We will therefore focus on Gorges, mainly through the biography by Clark (2004). Further Gorges family details may be found in Gorges and Brown (1944).
3 The full text of the grant can be read at <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/me01.asp>.
4 I have not found the source of Stewart’s claim (1970: 274) that there is an earlier charter, of 1620, referring to “the country of the Main Land.”
5 Oxford English Dictionary, main, noun 1, II, 4. and 5. The sense is clearly seen in the words of Archer (1602): “This Maine is the goodliest Continent that ever we saw […].”
6 “[…] Wee Doe name ordeyne and appoynt that the porcon of the Mayne Lande and Premises aforesaide shall forever hereafter bee called The Province or Countie of Mayne and not by any other name or names whatsoever.” The full text can be read at <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/me02.asp>. Note the appearance of the name Mayne and the expression the Mayne Lande, in the same sentence, without comment, and without any species of therefore to link the two. We shall see that this coming-together is probably coincidental. Why should something which is just a portion of any land be deliberately and calculatedly named by an expression for the whole?
7 It is no longer believed that the French queen of Charles I, Henrietta Maria, had anything to do with (French) Maine at all. This was made clear over a century ago by Matthews (1910: 368–369). In any case, the (American) name first appears before Charles I was king and before his betrothal — indeed, before they first met in 1623. She has Maryland named after her.
9 The fanciful suggestion was reported in 1883 that it might have been named after “Frankfort-on-the- Main” in Germany. But this view has, if anything, even less substance than the French theory. See the item in the Rockland County Journal for that year available at <http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2011/Randolph%20NY%20Weekly%20Courant/Randolph%20NY%20Weekly%20Courant%201882-1884%20Grayscale/Randolph%20NY%20Weekly%20Courant%201882-1884%20Grayscale%20-%200364.pdf> [accessed January 15 2013].
10 It has only recently begun to disappear in The Ivory Coast, and that presumably under the influence of its current article-less official French name Côte d’Ivoire.
11 This occurred when he and Mason split the patent in 1629. Mason called his part New Hampshire.
12 Shipton Gorge village website.
13 Details of this campaign may be found in, e.g., Falls (1950: 232–247) and Hammer (2004: 214–215).
14 There was a substantial house at Mayne in later centuries, but I do not know whether there was around 1600.
15 The map is reproduced from M’Aleer (1936), who interpreted the townland name as being from Irish meadhán “middle town or little plain.” In the absence of early spellings, we can also speculate that it may represent maighín “(little) place.” For maighín, see Toner and others (eDIL entry no. M31: 076).
16 Annals of the Four Masters, vol. 6 (O’Donovan, 1856: 2083: caislén na mainge); annal M1598: 33 in the second draft of the online translated edition.
17 Elizabeth’s Secretary of State Sir Robert Cecil refers to the castle (as Castle Maine) and to the event mentioned (as likely to be pleasing to the queen) in a letter to the President of Munster Sir George Carew dated October 1 1600, published in Maclean (1864: 40–42: letter XII).
18 Stafford (1633/1896, 1: facing 111). In this book, the castle is referred to both as Castle Mayne (e.g. 111 of the 1896 edition) and as Castle Mange (e.g. 134, 143).
19 See, for instance, Gibbs (1998), 2nd edn, vol. 3, under Castlemaine.
20 Dublin Quit Rent Office, Land Revenue Series letter books, Commissions of Woods to Burk, 2 March 1841, referenced at the Ancestry website “Stateaided emigration scheme: Castlemaine,” <http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/˜irlker/castlemigr.html>, note 1.
21 The history of the spelling of the castle-name includes a reinterpretation as Castle Magne (pronounced as in Charlemagne, presumably — see Carmody (1908–1909)). This is also, as Grand Ma(i)gne, the French name of a castle in Máni in the Peloponnese, Greece, which was the thirteenth-century home of the Frankish Villehardouin dynasty (Wagstaff, 1991). Some complex cross-referring or free-associating by historians may have been going on.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Richard Coates
Richard Coates is Professor of Onomastics at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He has a special interest in place-names, and has been Hon. Director of the Survey of English Place-Names since 2003. He is currently also Principal Investigator of the project Family Names of the United Kingdom, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom (2010–2014). His interests also cover name theory, the philology of western European languages, historical linguistics, the cultural history of English, dialectology and dialect literature, and local history.
Correspondence to: Richard Coates, Bristol Centre for Linguistics, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Bristol bs16 1qy, UK. Email: richard.coates@ uwe.ac.uk