With regard to the _-by_, I have already, in these pages, taken occasion to suggest a doubt whether, in that particular instance, the Worsaaen theory be not as fallacious as it is dogmatical. And, adopting the same method with the _-ness_, I think it will be evident, on examination of the following list of almost identical forms of the expression, that, as to this point also, no argument can be founded upon it, one way or the other, beyond the fact of its derivation from some of the Scandinavian tribes who, in the fifth and succeeding centuries, established themselves on our shores: if, indeed, I do not, even with this enlarged extension, assign to the presence of the term in our topography a too restricted application.
I have a list now before me of 521 places with this suffix, distributed over twenty-five counties. It does not pretend to be complete; but as it offers a more extended view of the question than in Vol. ix., p. 136., I subjoin the results:
Yorkshire 173 Lincolnshire 163 Leicestershire 49 Norfolk 22 Cumberland 21 Westmoreland 18 Northamptonshire 17 Lancashire 14 Nottinghamshire 14 Suffolk and Derbyshire, 5 each 10 Durham and Warwickshire, 3 each 6 Essex and Isle of Man, 2 each 4 Cardiganshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Kent, Monmouthshire, Northumberland, Pembrokeshire, Salop, and Wiltshire, 1 each 10 --- 521 ===
Our termination _-ness_, then, is the old northern or Icelandic _nes_, the parent of the Dan. _næs_, and the Ang.-Sax. _nese_ and _næs_, signifying "a neck of land, or promontory." From this _nes_ came, naturally enough, the old northern _naos_ or _nös_, whence the Dan. _næse_, the Germ. _nase_; the Ang.-Sax. _nase_, _næse_, _nose_; the Norman-Fr. _naz_, and Su.-Goth. _naese_ (in Al. and Sansc. _nasa_, and in Gall. _nes_); the Latin _nasus_, and Eng. _nose_, or _nase_ as it is spelt by Gower in his _Conf. Am._ b. v., "Both at mouth and at _nase_." Closely akin to the same word, and probably derived from an identical source, is the old northern _nef_, whence were formed the Vulg.-Isl. _nebbi_, the Dan. _neb_, and the Ang.-Sax. _nebbe_ and _neb_ (in Pers. _anef_; in C. Tscherh. _ep_, in Curd. _defin_), the beak or bill, the _neb_ or _nib_ of a bird; and also used of the prominent feature of the human face divine, to which the term is applied by Shakspeare and Bacon, as it is occasionally at the present day by the older inhabitants of the Yorkshire dales.