THE word ‘duver’ is an under-appreciated Island speciality.

Lacking the memorable whimsy of ‘gallybagger’ or ‘mallyshag’, it is usually relegated to the role of a simple place-name, but in truth it is an old word with interesting origins.

For most Island people, ‘The Duver’ would be taken to mean the strip of dunes at St Helens.

If it wasn’t for nearby Seaview Duver we would probably not think twice about the meaning of the word ‘duver’ by itself.

A duver has been described by ecologist Colin Pope as ‘a low-lying piece of land along the coast, subject to occasional inundation by the sea’.

I would add to this the presumption that the land must be sandy, at least in part, and that it should have — or once have had — water on two sides of it.

This last is part of the suggested origin of the word by linguist Michael Goormachtigh who proposes that ‘duver’ means a two-sided beach, arguing that on the mainland the word as ‘dover’ can be found as far back as the Domesday Book in 1084; and that this is where the port of Dover got its name.

There are at least four duvers on the Island. Here is a clue — ‘duver’ is sometimes written as ‘dover’.

The third duver is now more of a linguistic fossil. Ryde Dover was the area of sandy coast between what is now Hovertravel, and Appley.

The area is now unrecognisable as dunes, except a few fragments by the boating lake.

We know that this was once called a duver because of Dover Street, the road down to the esplanade. This shows up on maps from the mid-1800s, although the duver itself must be older.

There is another clue in the name of Dover House nearby, one of only three named houses in The Strand on 1862 maps. It seems likely that both Dover House and Dover Street were named not for the Kentish port, but for the sandy coast they adjoined.

The fourth duver is the best-preserved — Hamstead Dover is the spit on the western lip of Newtown Estuary.

It’s a couple of miles walking from the road by land, and known better to passing mariners.

The debatable fifth duver got the name in 2016 when the ‘Lost Duver’ project was set up at Yaverland by The Common Space.

It’s not on The Solent, unlike all the others, there are no surviving duver/dover names nearby, so it may never have been called a duver before: but it is now.

And if you think there is a sixth, in East Cowes, you’re mistaken. True, Dover Road is the street that leads from the ferry, but it only came into existence in the twentieth century, and is probably nothing to do with a duver.

Finally, are there any other lost duvers on the Island? Tell me if you know any. Perhaps most controversially, how is the word pronounced? Do you rhyme it with ‘cover’, ‘rover’, or even ‘Hoover’?