The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps
CATTI OR HITT-ITE NAMES IN BRITAIN 203
of that title as “ Gad” or “ Cad’ upon many others of their new colonies, rivers and hills in Britain.
The dialectic differences in the spelling of these place-names, as seen in the forms in which they are now fixed in their modern spelling—such as the occasional alteration of the vowel a into e, 7, o or u and the ¢ into a d and the initial K softening sometimes into C, G and S and occasionally Jare obviously due partly to local dialectic provincialisms, and partly to individual vagaries in the early phonetic spellings of the same name, as were widely current before the forms were rigidly fixed by printing and the press.
[It is interesting to notice that the not infrequent use of i for the a vowel in the original ‘‘ Khat’’ is in series with the Hebrew and Semitic Chaldic corrupt spelling of this name as “ Khit” ot Hit or Hitt (‘‘ Hitt-ite ”), and this 7 dialectic form is seen to be especially common in Kent and Sussex, ¢.g., in “ Kit’s Coty.’’ Moreover, the initial K is sometimes dropped out in the later spellings, as in the Hebrew and Semitic Chaldic spelling of this name—just as in the Welsh Keltic dropping of the G in “ Gwalia ”’ to form “‘ Wales,’’ and of the G in “ Gwith ” to form ‘‘ Wight ”—so that an original ‘‘ Khatt-on '’ becomes “ Hatt-on,’ and we actually have “‘ Hith” or © Hithe,” a seaport of Kent, which thus literally corresponds to the Hebrew “ Heth” and “ Hitt” for ‘‘ Khaiti.” These dialectic variations in the spelling are thus somewhat like the mosaic of architectural styles in an ancient cathedral which has been added to or restored from time to time, so as to display the earlier and more primitive style, side by side, with the styles of the later periods. Probably some of these dialectic variants are due to later immigrations speaking slightly different provincial dialects of the primitive Sumerian Khatti or Gothic, Indeed this practice of dropping out the initial C (=Kh) is well seen on the Briton coins stamped “ Att” or “Atti” for “Catti’”’ (see Fig. 3, p. 6).]
The early settlements of the Hitto-Phcenician Catti or Khatti, as indicated by the incidence of that tribal name, are especially numerous in the South of Britain, which was the first part to be colonized and civilized. The names of the early settlements often merely designate the place simply as ‘‘The Settlement of the Catts or Chats,’ such as “ Catt-on,” “ Cade-by,’ “ Chat-ham”’ or “ Cater-ham”’ or “ Home of the Cafti,” in contradistinction to the settlements