Yesterday was the feast of Saint Cornelius and it seemed opportune to meet a new young colleague, a seminarian, at Groenendaal to explore the old racecourse, the site of the former Priory and the little chapel dedicated to him..
Many of you will know that there was also once a major route through the Forest named for him, and although it has been interrupted in places, much of it remains. It connected the Drève de la Longue Queue just to the north of the Priory to Joli-Bois, now part of Waterloo.
It was in mentioning Boitsfort that I said something along the lines of ‘its name refers to a castle by the woods’. A few years ago I was surprised to learn that there was a fort at Fort Jaco and since then I take the names of places seriously, often, like yesterday, at face value.
A couple of hours later I started to think that things weren’t as they seemed. The Dutch name is Bosvoorde. Yes, it too seems to mention ‘wood’ but ‘𝑣𝑜𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑒’ is ‘𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑑’ in English, a place where a stream is easily crossed without the need of a bridge. Hmm.
I know that Boitsfort is an old place, having developed independently from Brussels. So some etymological digging was necessary. Armed with Pierron’s 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑒 𝑙𝑎 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒̂𝑡 𝑑𝑒 𝑆𝑜𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑒𝑠 from 1905 and 𝐷𝑒 𝑉𝑙𝑎𝑎𝑚𝑠𝑒 𝑔𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛 which I unearthed earlier today I started to trace the name. And what shifting sands!
Page 53 of the second source gives the following evolution:
1220 Bouchefort - 1225 Bostfort - 1469 Baudsvoort - 1773 Boitsfort.
The Sanderus image from 1659 gives Boetsfort which fits the timeline rather nicely.
The name seems to derive from 𝐵𝑎𝑙𝑑𝑎𝑠, the genitive form of the Germanic personal name 𝐵𝑎𝑙𝑑𝑜 (think Baldo’s, showing possession) and 𝑣𝑜𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑒. Baldo’s ford.
Both French and Dutch separately corrupted Baldo to associate the name with the very obvious nearby forest instead. Dutch remained faithful to ‘ford’, but the French perversely didn’t use ‘gué’, just a Francified version of ford.
Not a castle in sight. Things are sometimes not what they seem, as Magritte himself observed:
𝐶𝑒𝑐𝑖 𝑛’𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑒 𝑝𝑖𝑝𝑒