Swan
Cygnus
Swan - OE swan, elfetu
One of those names that has not altered at all and goes back to probable Proto-Indo-European *swon or *swen, literally meaning ‘sound’, the root of any word that comes to us via Latin sonus (ironically in the case of modern ‘mute swan’ (Thomas Pennant, 1785), which is, anyhow, inaccurate—the whistling sound of this species in flight has been long mythologised and admired). The early English had another word for swan, elfetu (pronounced ‘elv-etu’), although we cannot be certain whether the two terms were applied with conscious distinction (to wild and tame/feral swans, for instance) or interchangeably to all swan species. The elfetu that turns up in the famous seabird passage in the elegy known as The Seafarer (see here, from line 20), is probably one of the Arctic species that journeys to Britain and Ireland from across the sea to spend the winter.
Old English swan is spelt identically to the word for a swinesherd, so in some cases it is impossible to know which of the two meaning is intended, although the habitat mentioned in each name can give us reasonable clues as to the more likely of the two. Asterisks below indicate those names for which the meaning ‘swineherd’ is more likely.
Elveden (Suff)
Elvet (Co Dur)
Elvetham (Hants)
Saniger (lost, Glos)*
Swanbourne (Berks)
Swanmore (Hants)
Swanage (Dor)
Swanley (Kent)
Swannington (Leics)*
Swanthorpe (Hants)*
Swanton Abbott, Swanton Morley and Swanton Novers (Norf)*
Swanwick (Derbs)*
Swanwick (Hants)*
Swans appear in charters relating to the following places: Kingston Bagpuize, Oxon (10th cen.), Long Sutton, Som (9th cen.), Manningford Abbots, Wilts (10th cen.), [land on the] River Parrett, Som (8th cen.), Winslow, Bucks (8th cen.).
Sources (see ‘About’ page for the full bibliography): Watts, Cambridge Dictionary; Ekwall, Oxford Dictionary; epns.nottingham.ac.uk; Gelling and Cole, Landscape of Place-Names; landscape.org.uk.