Further it may here be noticed—as an example of the complete identity of the Celtic and Oriental languages when all the “Disjecta Membra” are compared—that this word does not exist in the modern Celtic in the simple form of Ab, but in the derivative form of Avon, which is found in the Roman maps spelt “Abon,” &c. Now this form also occurs in the East. Abinn, “A River,” is given by Klaproth from the language of the inhabitants of the Mountains to the North of Bhagalpur. Apem means “Water,” in Zend, an ancient Persian dialect. Af is “Water,” in Kurdish.
“Berw” is the South Welsh name for the effervescence in the deep receptacle in which a Cataract foams after its fall; it is applied also to the Cataract itself, as “Berw Rhondda,” the fall of the River Rhondda.
Aber, in Cornish, means “a Confluence of Rivers,” also “_a Gulf_,” “_a Whirlpool_.”(61)
In Breton or Armorican Aber means “a confluence of Rivers.” “Dans le diocese de Vannes,” says Bullet, “le mot a encore une autre signification, c’est _celle de torrent_.” “In the diocese of Vannes this word has still another meaning, viz., that of ‘a Torrent!’ ” Compare Torr-ens (_Latin_), “Torrent” (_English_), from Torreo (_Latin_), “To boil.” “Aber, in a deflected sense,” he says, “has been applied to a Harbour; hence Havre de Grace!”
“It is a curious fact,” says Chalmers, “which we learn from the Charters of the twelfth century, that the Scoto-Irish people substituted Inver for the previous Aber of the Britons. David I. granted to the Monastery of May _Inver-In_ qui fuit _Aber-In_ in Chart May.”(62) This remarkable place is at the “_Influx of a small stream_, called the _In_, on the coast of Fife. Both appellations are now lost.”
Among the names of ancient Celtic regions we have Abrin-catui, that is (_without any change in the word_) Aber-In-Catui; the name of a Tribe in Normandy, about Avranches, which is at the mouth of a River now called the See. (Another stream flows into the same Estuary.)
“Estuary (of the) River—Tribes or People,” i.e. The Tribes living at the Estuary of the River or Rivers.
The name of the same place will also furnish an example of a corresponding term, primarily meaning “The Mouth,” in the modern Celtic.