Note 8 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Caius, writing in 1447, says that the town is divided into two parts by the Canta and the Rhee, called earlier le Ee; and by Spenser the Cle. We have Granta, Guant, and Cante: the r dropped out, and G was replaced by C in the name of both town and river (see supra). Cante does not seem to have been the name of a river at all. The river bank by Castle Mound is spoken of in the xiv c. as “the common bank called Cante“: one arm at least of the Cambridge river was known simply as “the water” [Prof. Skeat has pointed out that Ee is the xii, xiii, and xiv c. form of the A-S. éa, cognate with aqua] and for centuries there would appear to have been no need for any other name. In Henry of Huntingdon’s Chronicle (1130) the river is called the Grenta; but Lydgate writes

In the same decade Spenser knows only the Guant (Faery Queene, Book iv, Canto xi. 1590) and Camden for the first time tells us that it was called both Granta and Cam (alii Grantam, Camum alii. 1586) the name used as we have seen by Milton. If there was no river Cante à fortiori there was no river Cam; for the m in the name of the town is only another change in the original first syllable of Cambridge. See footnote, p. 6.