History
The oldest known reference to the name is in a document of 1417, written by an English scholar in Latin, which refers to Claves Mann and Claves Legis ("The Keys of Mann" and "The Keys of Law"). There is a dispute, however, over the origin of the name. The word "keys" is thought by some to be an English corruption of the Norse word kjósa meaning "chosen". However a more likely explanation is that it is a mishearing of the Manx-language term for "four and twenty", kiare as feed (pronounced kee-air...), the House having always had 24 members. The Manx-language name of the House of Keys remains Yn Chiare as Feed ("The Four and Twenty").
Read more about this topic: House Of Keys
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If usually the present age is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (18551916)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the Worlds history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar thats also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (18221896)