Tavy
| Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R) |
Tavy is a river on Dartmoor, Devon, England.
Origin of name
The name derives from the Brythonic root "Taff", the original meaning of which has now been lost.[1] It has given its name to the town of Tavistock and the villages of Mary Tavy and Peter Tavy. It is a tributary of the River Tamar.
The Thames, from Middle English Temese, is derived from the Brittonic Celtic name for the river, Tamesas (from *tamēssa),[2] recorded in Latin as Tamesis and yielding modern Welsh Tafwys "Thames". The name may have meant "dark" and can be compared to other cognates such as Russian темно (Proto-Slavic *tĭmĭnŭ), Lithuanian tamsi "dark", Latvian tumsa "darkness", Sanskrit tamas and Welsh tywyll "darkness" (Proto-Celtic *temeslos) and Middle Irish teimen "dark grey".[3] The same origin is shared by countless other river names, spread across Britain, such as the River Tamar at the border of Devon and Cornwall, several rivers named Tame in the Midlands and North Yorkshire, the Tavy on Dartmoor, the Team of the North East, the Teifi and Teme of Wales, the Teviot in the Scottish Borders, as well as one of the Thames' tributaries called the Thame.
Tributaries
It has as its own tributaries:
- Collybrooke
- River Burn
- River Wallabrooke
- River Lumburn
- River Walkham
At Tavistock it feeds a canal running to Morwellham Quay.
Its mouth is crossed by the Tavy Bridge which carries the Tamar Valley railway line.