Note 67 — Chapter IX · Place-name Stories

There has been a good deal of confusion as to the name Ỻyr: thus for instance, the Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth make the Leir of his Latin into Ỻyr, and the personage intended is represented as the father of three daughters named Gonerilla, Regan, and Cordeilla or Cordelia. But Cordelia is probably the Creurđilad of the Black Book, p. 49b, and the Creiđylat of the Kulhwch story (the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 113, 134), and her father was Ỻûd Ỻawereint (= Irish Nuada Airgetlám) and not Ỻyr. Then as to the Leir of Geoffrey’s Latin, that name looks as if given its form on the strength of the legr- of Legraceaster, the Anglo-Saxon name of the town now called Leicester, of which William of Malmesbury (Gesta Pontificum, § 176) says, Legrecestra est civitas antiqua in Mediterraneis Anglis, a Legra fluvio præterfluente sic vocata. Mr. Stevenson regards Legra as an old name of the Soar, and as surviving in that of the village of Leire, spelled Legre in Domesday. It seems to point back to a Legere or Ligere, which recalls Liger, ‘the Loire.’ ↑