Editing Tintagel (section)

==Toponymy==
[[File:Around Tintagel, Cornwall (461181) (9458675814).jpg|thumb|left|"Tintagel" sign]]

[[Toponymy|Toponymists]] have had difficulty explaining the origin of 'Tintagel': the probability is that it is [[Norman French]], as the [[Cornish language|Cornish]] of the 13th century would have lacked the soft 'g' ('i/j' in the earliest forms: see also [[Tintagel Castle]]). If it is Cornish then 'Dun' would mean ''Fort''. [[Oliver Padel]] proposes 'Dun' '-tagell' meaning ''narrow place'' in his book on place names.<ref>[[Padel, O. J.]] (1985) ''Cornish Place-name Elements''. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society {{ISBN|0-904889-11-4}}</ref> There is a possible cognate in the [[Channel Islands]] named ''Tente d'Agel'', but that still leaves the question subject to doubt.<ref>Canner (1982), p. 97.</ref>

The name first occurs in [[Geoffrey of Monmouth]]'s ''[[Historia Regum Britanniae]]'' (c. 1136, in Latin) as ''Tintagol'', implying pronunciation with a hard [g] sound as in modern English ''girl''. But in [[Layamon's Brut|Layamon's ''Brut'']] (MS [[List of manuscripts in the Cotton library#Otho|Cotton Otho]] C.xi, f. 482), in early [[Middle English]], the name is rendered as ''Tintaieol''. The letter ''i'' in this spelling implies a soft consonant like modern English ''j''; the second part of the name would be pronounced approximately as ''-ageul'' would be in modern French.

An oft-quoted Celtic etymology in the ''Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names'',<ref>Mills, A. D. (1998) ''Dictionary of English Place-Names''; 2nd ed. Oxford University Press {{ISBN|0-19-280074-4}}</ref> accepts the view of Padel (1985) that the name is from Cornish *''din'' meaning ''fort'' and *''tagell'' meaning ''neck, throat, constriction, narrow'' ([[Celtic toponymy#Frequent elements|Celtic]] *''dūn'', "fort" = Irish ''dún'', "fort", ''cf''. Welsh ''dinas'', "city"; *''tagell'' = Welsh ''tagell'', "gill, wattle").

The modern-day village of Tintagel was always known as Trevena ({{langx|kw|Tre war Venydh}}) until the Post Office started using 'Tintagel' as the name in the mid-19th century. Until then, 'Tintagel' had been restricted to the name of the headland and of the parish.