Dittisham
What's in a Name - Dittisham
Dittisham is a wonderful place – for visitors it seems the living embodiment of a simple, peaceful idyll of Devon life.
Its name is one of the simplest and yet most wonderful things about it – it’s a test of how much you know about the area and it sums up the soft burr to the accent.
Dittisham was founded sometime around 660AD when some Saxons found their way up the river Dart, which by then was the last leg of a well-used trading route.
A Devon Llegend states that Brutus (from Troy, not the one to whom Julius Caesar is supposed to have said ‘Et Tu?’) sailed up the river and stepped off at Totnes onto a granite stone (now set halfway up the high street) and said ‘Here I stand and here I rest and this place shall be called Totnes.’
Legends are normally lies which we wish were true, but sometimes they have a nugget of truth in them which is then stretched into a darn good tale.
So, putting aside the fact that this warrior from the Mediterranean is supposed to have stepped out of his ship and delivered a perfectly rhymed bit of English verse, there are those that think that traders from the south would often sail up the river to sell and buy goods. So perhaps the guy from Troy represents the traders that came here and helped a town develop.
Totnes became one of the most prosperous towns in the South West, and more and more people would have been attracted to the opportunities created by its success – as they are in any time or place. If there is a living to be made, people come.
So it was, perhaps, that a Saxon called Deedas, leading a group of his kin, came along that very same river and decided to make a home. The area was at the time being slowly overrun by the Saxons - Germanic warriors who would raid in Britain but often also settle. There is no actual evidence that they raided and pillaged up the Dart – despite tales of a great battle between the Britons and the Saxons somewhere around this area – but it seems they visited and liked it so much they stayed.
The Saxons were pushing the old ‘Britons’ further and further south west. They did it so effectively that many ‘Britons’ sailed across the Channel to escape where they would eventually be called ‘Bretons’.
Breton and Cornish are very similar language, because that’s where the Briton’s ended up. In fact the incoming Vikings and Saxons pushed all the indigenous, Gaelic tribes Westwards and Northwards.
It’s because of this that Welsh, Cornish, Scots Gaelic and the Breton languages having a lot in common – it’s where those people held out. English is a mixture of Latin, Greek, Saxon and later Anglo Saxon and then finally French from good old William the Conqueror’s Normans. In many ways your language is the best indicator of your heritage and we are definitely a cosmopolitan lot.
So Dittisham comes from ‘Deedas’ Him’(or Ham) meaning, simply Deedas’ Home’. By the time it is recorded in the Doomsday book that there was a church and 22 villagers – normally indicating the number of families - so if you work on 5 per family that’s a population of more than 100.
So the village of Dittisham has a long and proud history.
But its not really Ditt – I –sham, is it?
No, it’s Dit’sum.
And if a visitor asks a local: ‘How do I get to Dittisham?’ or ‘Which is the boat to Dittisham’ pronouncing ALL the letters on the road signs, they are liable to get a look which says – ‘You ain’t from round ‘ere’.
Where has that come from? A place name with one fewer syllable and three fewer letters?
It comes from the accent, the Devon burr, which contracts and elongates various parts of the language in ways which can be mysterious to unwary visitors.
Try ‘directly’. A simple word, contracted by the Devonian mouth to ‘drectly’.
But ‘boy’ becomes a strangely longer ‘buey’. Longer to say and, actually, harder to say some might think.
I’ve now lived in Devon for fourteen years, and I have been thinking about this ever since I got here.
I think its down to hard sounds – the changes in the words all seem to be based around a softening of the sound, to allow the easier running together of letters and words. It’s a more flowing sound, creating a softer, often deeper, resonance to the language which is created from these changes to words.
I think that reflects a fundamental part of the Devon nature – to soften, to slow down and to relax – Dit’sum’s contracted name reflects the determination of the entirety of the Devonian nation to slow down and take it easy – and who can blame them.
First Published December 2012 By The Dart
