Names of the Celts
Encyclopedia
The various names used since classical times
for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.
The name and is used in Greek and Latin, respectively, as the name of a people of the La Tène horizon
in the region of the upper Rhine and Danube
during the 6th to 1st centuries BC in Greco-Roman ethnography. The name is probably from a tribal self-designation, but its etymology is uncertain.
Likewise, the name of the / is probably from a tribal name, also of uncertain etymology.
The names of the Gauls
and of the Welsh
, on the other hand, are taken from the designator used by the Germanic peoples
for Celtic- and Latin-speaking peoples, *walha-
.
The linguistic sense of the name Celts, grouping all speakers of Celtic languages
, is modern. In particular, aside from a 1st-century literary genealogy of Celtus the grandson of Bretannos by Heracles, there is no record of the term "Celt" being used in connection with the Insular Celts
, the inhabitants of the British Isles
during the Iron Age, prior to the 17th century.
in Portugal
).
The name probably stems from the Indo-European
root or , but there are several such roots of various meanings: "to be prominent", "to drive or set in motion", "to strike or cut", etc. The same element is present in a set of Hispano-Celtic and Gaulish personal and family names: Celtiatus, Celtiatis (gen.), Arcelti (gen.), Concelti (gen.), Celtius, Celtus, Celtilla (fem.), Celta (fem.), and Celtilius.
in the mid-5th century BC. He says that "the river Ister (Danube
) begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe)". This confused passage was generally later interpreted as implying that the homeland of the Celts was at the source of the Danube, not in Spain/France.
According to the 1st-century poet Parthenius of Nicaea
, Celtus was the son of Heracles
and Keltine
, the daughter of Bretannus ; this literary genealogy exists nowhere else and was not connected with any known cult. Celtus became the eponymous ancestor of Celts. In Latin came in turn from Herodotus
' word for the Gauls
, . The Romans used to refer to continental Gauls, but apparently not to Insular Celts
. The latter were long divided linguistically into Goidels and Brythons, although other research provides a more complex picture (see below under "Classification").
The name Celtiberi is used by Diodorus Siculus
in the 1st century BC, of a people which he considered a mixture of Celtae and Iberi
.
.
The French celtique and the German celtisch appear in the 16th century. The English word Celts is first attested in 1607.
The adjective Celtic, formed after French celtique, appears a little later, in the mid 17th century. An early attestation is found in Milton's Paradise Lost
(1667), in reference to the Insular Celts
of antiquity: [the Ionian gods ... who] o'er the Celtic [fields] roamed the utmost Isles. (I.520, here in the 1674 spelling).
Use of Celtic in the linguistic sense arises in the 18th century, in the work of Edward Lhuyd
.
In the 18th century the interest in "primitivism
", which led to the idea of the "noble savage
", brought a wave of enthusiasm for all things "Celtic". The antiquarian William Stukeley
pictured a race of "Ancient Britons" constructing the "Temples of the Ancient Celts" such as Stonehenge
(actually a pre-Celtic structure) before he decided in 1733 to recast the "Celts" in his book as "Druid
s". The Ossian
fables written by James Macpherson
- portrayed as ancient Scottish Gaelic poems - added to this romantic enthusiasm. The "Irish revival" came after the Catholic Emancipation
Act of 1829 as a conscious attempt to demonstrate an Irish national identity, and with its counterpart in other countries subsequently became known as the "Celtic revival
".
), both variants being recognized as "correct" in prescriptive usage by modern dictionaries.
The English word originates in the 17th century, taken from the Celtæ of classical Latin.
Until the mid 19th century, the sole pronunciation in English was /selt/ in keeping of the treatment of the letter ‹c
› inherited by Middle English
from Old French
and Late Latin
.
Beginning in the mid 19th century, Celtic revivalist
and nationalist publications advocated imitating the pronunciation of classical Latin
in the time of Julius Caesar
, when Latin Celtæ was pronounced /keltai/.
An early example of this is a short article in a November 1857 issue of 'The Celt', a publication of the Irish Celtic Union
.
A guide to English pronunciation for Welsh speakers published in 1861 gives the alternative pronunciations "sel´tik, kel´tik" for the adjective Celtic.
The pronunciation with /s/ remained standard throughout the 19th to early 20th century, but the variant with /k/ seems to have gained ground during the later 20th century, especially among "students of Celtic culture".
On the other hand, the /s/ pronunciation remains the most recognised form when it occurs in the names of sports teams, most notably Celtic Football Club
and the Boston Celtics
basketball team.
The corresponding words in French
are pronounced with /s/, and English Celtic was formed in imitation of French celtique.
The corresponding German terms are Kelten and keltisch, not only pronounced as /k/ but even spelled with ‹k›. This is a regular German treatment of names in Greek kappa
, also observed in cases such Cimbri
, Cimmerians
, Cambyses
, etc. These spellings with ‹k› arise in the later 18th century. From the 16th to the early 18th century, the prevalent spelling in German was celtisch.
The celt
, a stone tool, has a completely separate etymology from Celt and Celtic. In English its sole pronunciation is ˈsɛlt.
The Celts of the European Iron Age, the group of Celtic-speaking peoples in historical linguistics
, and the modern Celtic identity derived from the Romanticist Celtic Revival
.
linguistic context
After its use by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, the use of the word "Celtic" as an umbrella term
for the pre-Roman peoples of the British Isles gained considerable popularity.
Lhuyd was the first to recognize that the Irish, British and Gaulish languages were related to one another, and the inclusion of the Insular Celts under the term "Celtic" from this time expresses this linguistic relationship. By the late 18th century, the Celtic languages were recognized as one branch within the larger Indo-European family
.
historiographical context
The Celts are an ethno-linguistic group of Iron Age European peoples, including the Gauls
(including derived groups such as the Lepontians and the Galatia
ns), the Celtiberians
and the Insular Celts
.
The timeline of Celtic settlement in the British Isles is unclear and the object of much speculation, but it is clear that by the 1st century BC, most of Great Britain
and Ireland
was inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples now known as the Insular Celts
, divided into two large groups, Brythonic
or P-Celtic, and Goidelic or Q-Celtic.
The Brythonic groups under Roman rule were known in Latin as Britanni
, while use of the names Celtae and Galli was restricted to the Gauls
. There are no historical records of the Goidelic group prior to the appearance of Primitive Irish inscriptions in the 4th century AD.
Simon James
argues that, while the term "Celtic" expresses a valid linguistic connection, its use of both Insular and Continental Celtic culture is misleading, as archaeology does not suggest a unified Celtic culture during the Iron Age.
modern context
With the rise of Celtic nationalism in the early to mid 19th century, the term "Celtic" also came to be a self-designation used by proponents of a modern Celtic identity. Thus, the contributor to "The Celt" discussing "the word Celt" states "The Greeks called us Keltoi", expressing a position of ethnic essentialism that extends the first person pronoun to include both 19th-century Irishmen and the Danubian Κελτοί of Herodotus.
This sense of "Celtic" is preserved in its political sense in Celtic nationalism of organizations such as the Celtic League
, but it is also used in a more general unpolitical sense, in expressions such as Celtic music
.
, perhaps borrowed into Latin during the early 5th century BC Celtic expansions into Italy. Its root may be the Common Celtic *galno-, meaning "power" or "strength". The Greek (cf. Galatia
in Anatolia) seems to be based on the same root, borrowed directly from the same hypothetical Celtic source which gave us (the suffix -atai is simply an ethnic name indicator).
Schumacher's account is slightly different: He states that Galli (nominative singular *gallos) is derived from the present stem of the verb which he reconstructs for Proto-Celtic
as *gal-nV- (it is not clear what the vowel in the suffix, marked as V, should be reconstructed as), whose meaning he gives as "to be able to, to gain control of", while Galatai comes from the same root and is to be reconstructed as nominative singular *galatis < *gelH-ti-s. He gives the same meaning for both reconstructs, namely "Machthaber", i. e. "potentate, ruler (or even warlord)", or alternatively "Plünderer, Räuber", i. e. "raider, looter, pillager, marauder", and points out that both names can be exonyms
in order to explain their pejorative
meaning. The Proto-Indo-European
verbal root in question is reconstructed by Schumacher as *gelH-, whose meaning is given as "Macht bekommen über", i. e., "to acquire power over" in the Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben.
The English Gaul and are unrelated to Latin Gallia and Galli, despite superficial similarity. They are rather derived from the Germanic term walha
, "foreigner, Romanized person", an exonym applied by Germanic speakers to Celts, likely via a Latinization of Frankish *Walholant "Gaul", literally "Land of the Foreigners/Romans", making it partially cognate with the names Wales
and Wallachia
), the usual word for the non-Germanic-speaking peoples (Celtic-speaking and Latin-speaking indiscriminately). The Germanic w is regularly rendered as gu / g in French (cf. guerre = war, garder = ward), and the diphthong au is the regular outcome of al before a following consonant (cf. cheval ~ chevaux). Gaule or Gaulle can hardly be derived from Latin Gallia, since g would become j before a (cf. gamba > jambe), and the diphthong au would be unexplained; the regular outcome of Latin Gallia is Jaille in French which is found in several western placenames.
The French term for "Welsh" is gallois, which is, however, not derived from the Latin Galli, but, like gaulois, borrowed (with suffix substitution) from Germanic *walhiska- "Celtic, Gallo-Roman, Romance" or its Old English descendant wælisc (= Modern English Welsh). The English form "Gaul" (first recorded in the 17th century) and "Gaulish" come from the French "Gaule" and "Gaulois", which translate Latin "Gallia" and "Gallus, -icus" respectively. In Old French, the words "gualeis", "galois", "walois" (Northern French phonetics keeping /w/) had different meanings: Welsh or the Langue d'oïl, etc. On the other hand, the word "Waulle" (Northern French phonetics keeping /w/) is recorded for the first time in the 13th century to translate the Latin word Gallia, while "gaulois" is recorded for the first time in the 15th century, and the scholars use it to translate the Latin words Gallus / Gallicus. The word comes from Proto-Germanic *Walha- (see Gaul: Name).
The English word "Welsh" originates from the word wælisċ, the Anglo-Saxon
form of *walhiska-
, the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word for "foreign" or "Celt" (South German Welsch(e) "Celtic speaker", "French speaker", "Italian speaker"; Old Norse "valskr", pl. "valir" "Gaulish", "French"), that is supposed to be derived of the name of the "Volcae
", a Celtic tribe who lived first in the South of Germany and emigrated then to Gaul.
The Germanic term may ultimately have a Celtic source: It is possibly the result of a loan of the Celtic tribal name into pre-Germanic, *wolk- changing according to Grimm's Law
to yield proto-Germanic *walh-. The Volcae were one of the Celtic peoples who for two centuries barred the southward expansion of the Germanic tribes (in what is now central Germany) on the line of the Harz mountains and into Saxony
and Silesia
.
In the Middle Ages, territories with primarily Romance
-speaking populations, such as France
and Italy
, were known in German as as opposed to , and the word is cognate with Vlach and Walloon
as well as with the "-wall" in "Cornwall". Other examples are the surnames "Wallace" and "Walsh". During the early Germanic period, the term seems to have been applied to the peasant population of the Roman Empire
, most of whom were in the areas immediately settled by the Germanic people.
The term Gael is, despite superficial similarity, also completely unrelated to Galli, see Gaels#Terminology.
were known as Brittanni
in Latin and as Βρίττωνες in Greek. This name like Galli and Celtae ultimately derives from a tribal name, in this case that of the Priteni, recorded by Pytheas
in the 4th century BC, apparently a self-designation of the people later known as Picts
.
—Lusones, Titi, Arevaci and Pelendones among others— who inhabited large regions of central Spain, Greek and Roman geographers also spoke of a people or group of peoples called Celtici or Κελτικοί, living in the South of modern day Portugal, in the Alentejo region, between the Tagus
and the Guadiana
rivers. They are first mentioned by Strabo
, who wrote that they were the most numerous people inhabiting that region. Later, the description of Ptolemy shows a more reduced territory, comprising the regions from Évora
to Setúbal
, being the coastal and southern areas occupied by the Turdetani
.
A second group of Celtici was mentioned by Pliny living in the region of Baeturia (northwestern Andalusia
); he considered that they proceeded "of the Celtiberians from the Lusitania, because of their religion, language, and because of the names of their cities".
In the North, in Galicia, another group of Celtici dwelt the coastal areas. They comprised several populi, including the Celtici proper: the Praestamarci south of the Tambre river (Tamaris), the Supertamarci north of it, and the Neri by the Celtic promontory (Promunturium Celticum). Pomponius Mela
affirmed that all the inhabitants of the coastal regions, from the bays of southern Galicia and till the Astures, were also Celtici: "All (this coast) is inhabited by the Celtici, except from the Douro river to the bays, where the Grovi dwelt (…) In the north coast first there are the Artabri, still of the Celtic people (Celticae gentis), and after them the Astures." He also mentioned the fabulous isles of tin, the Cassiterides, as situated among these Celtici.
The Celtici Supertarmarci have also left a number of inscriptions, as the Celtici Flavienses did. Several villages and rural parishes still bear the name Céltigos (from Latin Celticos) in Galicia. This is also the name of an archpriesthood of the Catholic Church, a division of the archbishopric of Santiago de Compostela
, encompassing part of the lands attributed to the Celtici Supertamarci by ancient authors.
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.
The name and is used in Greek and Latin, respectively, as the name of a people of the La Tène horizon
La Tène culture
The La Tène culture was a European Iron Age culture named after the archaeological site of La Tène on the north side of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where a rich cache of artifacts was discovered by Hansli Kopp in 1857....
in the region of the upper Rhine and Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
during the 6th to 1st centuries BC in Greco-Roman ethnography. The name is probably from a tribal self-designation, but its etymology is uncertain.
Likewise, the name of the / is probably from a tribal name, also of uncertain etymology.
The names of the Gauls
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
and of the Welsh
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
, on the other hand, are taken from the designator used by the Germanic peoples
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
for Celtic- and Latin-speaking peoples, *walha-
Walha
Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker". The adjective derived from this word can be found in , Old High German walhisk, meaning "Romance", in Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning "Romano-British" and in...
.
The linguistic sense of the name Celts, grouping all speakers of Celtic languages
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
, is modern. In particular, aside from a 1st-century literary genealogy of Celtus the grandson of Bretannos by Heracles, there is no record of the term "Celt" being used in connection with the Insular Celts
Insular Celts
The Insular Celts are the speakers of Insular Celtic languages.-Pre-Celtic Britain:Little is known of the culture and language of pre-Celtic Britain, but remnants of the latter may remain in the names of some geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar and Thames, whose etymology is...
, the inhabitants of the British Isles
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...
during the Iron Age, prior to the 17th century.
Celts
The ethnonym Celts seems to be based on a native Celtic tribal name (cf. CelticiCeltici
]The Celtici were a Celtic tribe or group of tribes of the Iberian peninsula, inhabiting three definite areas: in what today are the provinces of Alentejo and the Algarve in Portugal; in the Province of Badajoz and north of Province of Huelva in Spain, in the ancient Baeturia; and along the...
in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
).
The name probably stems from the Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
root or , but there are several such roots of various meanings: "to be prominent", "to drive or set in motion", "to strike or cut", etc. The same element is present in a set of Hispano-Celtic and Gaulish personal and family names: Celtiatus, Celtiatis (gen.), Arcelti (gen.), Concelti (gen.), Celtius, Celtus, Celtilla (fem.), Celta (fem.), and Celtilius.
Ancient uses
The first literary reference to the Celtic people, as , is by the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus in 517 BC; he locates the Keltoi tribe in Rhenania (West/Southwest Germany). The next Greek reference to the Keltoi is by HerodotusHerodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
in the mid-5th century BC. He says that "the river Ister (Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
) begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe)". This confused passage was generally later interpreted as implying that the homeland of the Celts was at the source of the Danube, not in Spain/France.
According to the 1st-century poet Parthenius of Nicaea
Parthenius of Nicaea
Parthenius of Nicaea or Myrlea in Bithynia was a Greek grammarian and poet. According to the Suda, he was the son of Heraclides and Eudora, or according to Hermippus of Berytus, his mother's name was Tetha. He was taken prisoner by Cinna in the Mithridatic Wars and carried to Rome in 72 BC. He...
, Celtus was the son of Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
and Keltine
Keltine
In Greek mythology, Keltine was the daughter of Bretannus and mother of Keltos. According to myth, she fell in love with Heracles and stole from him the cattle of Geryon, refusing to give them back unless he would first make love to her....
, the daughter of Bretannus ; this literary genealogy exists nowhere else and was not connected with any known cult. Celtus became the eponymous ancestor of Celts. In Latin came in turn from Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
' word for the Gauls
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
, . The Romans used to refer to continental Gauls, but apparently not to Insular Celts
Insular Celtic languages
Insular Celtic languages are those Celtic languages that originated in the British Isles, in contrast to the Continental Celtic languages of mainland Europe and Anatolia. All surviving Celtic languages are from the Insular Celtic group; the Continental Celtic languages are extinct...
. The latter were long divided linguistically into Goidels and Brythons, although other research provides a more complex picture (see below under "Classification").
The name Celtiberi is used by Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
in the 1st century BC, of a people which he considered a mixture of Celtae and Iberi
Iberians
The Iberians were a set of peoples that Greek and Roman sources identified with that name in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian peninsula at least from the 6th century BC...
.
Introduction in Early Modern literature
The name of the Celtae is revived in the learned literature of the Early Modern periodEarly modern period
In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...
.
The French celtique and the German celtisch appear in the 16th century. The English word Celts is first attested in 1607.
The adjective Celtic, formed after French celtique, appears a little later, in the mid 17th century. An early attestation is found in Milton's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
(1667), in reference to the Insular Celts
Insular Celts
The Insular Celts are the speakers of Insular Celtic languages.-Pre-Celtic Britain:Little is known of the culture and language of pre-Celtic Britain, but remnants of the latter may remain in the names of some geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar and Thames, whose etymology is...
of antiquity: [the Ionian gods ... who] o'er the Celtic [fields] roamed the utmost Isles. (I.520, here in the 1674 spelling).
Use of Celtic in the linguistic sense arises in the 18th century, in the work of Edward Lhuyd
Edward Lhuyd
Edward Lhuyd was a Welsh naturalist, botanist, linguist, geographer and antiquary. He is also known by the Latinized form of his name, Eduardus Luidius....
.
In the 18th century the interest in "primitivism
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
", which led to the idea of the "noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...
", brought a wave of enthusiasm for all things "Celtic". The antiquarian William Stukeley
William Stukeley
William Stukeley FRS, FRCP, FSA was an English antiquarian who pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work for which he has been remembered as "probably... the most important of the early forerunners of the discipline of archaeology"...
pictured a race of "Ancient Britons" constructing the "Temples of the Ancient Celts" such as Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
(actually a pre-Celtic structure) before he decided in 1733 to recast the "Celts" in his book as "Druid
Druid
A druid was a member of the priestly class in Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, and possibly other parts of Celtic western Europe, during the Iron Age....
s". The Ossian
Ossian
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...
fables written by James Macpherson
James Macpherson
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.-Early life:...
- portrayed as ancient Scottish Gaelic poems - added to this romantic enthusiasm. The "Irish revival" came after the Catholic Emancipation
Catholic Emancipation
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century which involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics which had been introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws...
Act of 1829 as a conscious attempt to demonstrate an Irish national identity, and with its counterpart in other countries subsequently became known as the "Celtic revival
Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...
".
Pronunciation
The initial consonant of the English words Celt and Celtic can be realised either as /k/ or /s/ (that is, either hard or soft ‹c›Hard and soft c
In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages , a distinction between hard and soft ⟨c⟩ occurs in which ⟨c⟩ represents two distinct phonemes...
), both variants being recognized as "correct" in prescriptive usage by modern dictionaries.
The English word originates in the 17th century, taken from the Celtæ of classical Latin.
Until the mid 19th century, the sole pronunciation in English was /selt/ in keeping of the treatment of the letter ‹c
C
Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
› inherited by Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
from Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
and Late Latin
Late Latin
Late Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...
.
Beginning in the mid 19th century, Celtic revivalist
Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...
and nationalist publications advocated imitating the pronunciation of classical Latin
Classical Latin
Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
in the time of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, when Latin Celtæ was pronounced /keltai/.
An early example of this is a short article in a November 1857 issue of 'The Celt', a publication of the Irish Celtic Union
Robert Cane
Dr. Robert Cane, was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1807. He was a member of the Repeal Association and the Irish Confederation. He qualified as an M.D. in 1836, became a member of Kilkenny Corporation and was Mayor twice....
.
- "Of all the nations that have hitherto lived on the face of the earth, the English have the worst mode of pronouncing learned languages. This is admitted by the whole human race [...] This poor meagre sordid language resembles nothing so much as the hissing of serpents or geese. [...] The distinction which English writers are too stupid to notice, but which the Irish Grammarians are perpetually talking of, the distinction between broad and narrow vowels—governs the English language. [...] If we follow the unwritten law of the English we shall pronounce (Celt) Selt but Cæsar would pronounce it, Kaylt. Thus the reader may take which pronunciation he pleases. He may follow the rule of the Latin or the rule of the English language, and in either case be right."
A guide to English pronunciation for Welsh speakers published in 1861 gives the alternative pronunciations "sel´tik, kel´tik" for the adjective Celtic.
The pronunciation with /s/ remained standard throughout the 19th to early 20th century, but the variant with /k/ seems to have gained ground during the later 20th century, especially among "students of Celtic culture".
On the other hand, the /s/ pronunciation remains the most recognised form when it occurs in the names of sports teams, most notably Celtic Football Club
Celtic F.C.
Celtic Football Club is a Scottish football club based in the Parkhead area of Glasgow, which currently plays in the Scottish Premier League. The club was established in 1887, and played its first game in 1888. Celtic have won the Scottish League Championship on 42 occasions, most recently in the...
and the Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics are a National Basketball Association team based in Boston, Massachusetts. They play in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. Founded in 1946, the team is currently owned by Boston Basketball Partners LLC. The Celtics play their home games at the TD Garden, which...
basketball team.
The corresponding words in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
are pronounced with /s/, and English Celtic was formed in imitation of French celtique.
The corresponding German terms are Kelten and keltisch, not only pronounced as /k/ but even spelled with ‹k›. This is a regular German treatment of names in Greek kappa
Kappa
Kappa is the 10th letter of the Greek alphabet, used to represent the voiceless velar stop, or "k", sound in Ancient and Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 20. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Kaph...
, also observed in cases such Cimbri
Cimbri
The Cimbri were a tribe from Northern Europe, who, together with the Teutones and the Ambrones threatened the Roman Republic in the late 2nd century BC. The Cimbri were probably Germanic, though some believe them to be of Celtic origin...
, Cimmerians
Cimmerians
The Cimmerians or Kimmerians were ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.According to the Greek historian Herodotus, of the 5th century BC, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in what is now Ukraine and Russia...
, Cambyses
Cambyses
Cambyses can refer to two ancient rulers and two plays:-*Cambyses I, King of Anshan 600 to 559 BCE*Cambyses II, King of Persia 530 to 522 BCE*Cambyses, a tragedy by Thomas Preston...
, etc. These spellings with ‹k› arise in the later 18th century. From the 16th to the early 18th century, the prevalent spelling in German was celtisch.
The celt
Celt (tool)
Celt is an archaeological term used to describe long thin prehistoric stone or bronze adzes, other axe-like tools, and hoes.-Etymology:The term "celt" came about from what was very probably a copyist's error in many medieval manuscript copies of Job 19:24 in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which became...
, a stone tool, has a completely separate etymology from Celt and Celtic. In English its sole pronunciation is ˈsɛlt.
Modern uses
In current usage the terms "Celt" and "Celtic" can take several senses depending on context:The Celts of the European Iron Age, the group of Celtic-speaking peoples in historical linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
, and the modern Celtic identity derived from the Romanticist Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...
.
linguistic context
After its use by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, the use of the word "Celtic" as an umbrella term
Umbrella term
An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of concepts that all fall under a single common category. Umbrella term is also called a hypernym. For example, cryptology is an umbrella term that encompasses cryptography and cryptanalysis, among other fields...
for the pre-Roman peoples of the British Isles gained considerable popularity.
Lhuyd was the first to recognize that the Irish, British and Gaulish languages were related to one another, and the inclusion of the Insular Celts under the term "Celtic" from this time expresses this linguistic relationship. By the late 18th century, the Celtic languages were recognized as one branch within the larger Indo-European family
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
historiographical context
The Celts are an ethno-linguistic group of Iron Age European peoples, including the Gauls
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
(including derived groups such as the Lepontians and the Galatia
Galatia
Ancient Galatia was an area in the highlands of central Anatolia in modern Turkey. Galatia was named for the immigrant Gauls from Thrace , who settled here and became its ruling caste in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC. It has been called the "Gallia" of...
ns), the Celtiberians
Celtiberians
The Celtiberians were Celtic-speaking people of the Iberian Peninsula in the final centuries BC. The group used the Celtic Celtiberian language.Archaeologically, the Celtiberians participated in the Hallstatt culture in what is now north-central Spain...
and the Insular Celts
Insular Celts
The Insular Celts are the speakers of Insular Celtic languages.-Pre-Celtic Britain:Little is known of the culture and language of pre-Celtic Britain, but remnants of the latter may remain in the names of some geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar and Thames, whose etymology is...
.
The timeline of Celtic settlement in the British Isles is unclear and the object of much speculation, but it is clear that by the 1st century BC, most of Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
was inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples now known as the Insular Celts
Insular Celts
The Insular Celts are the speakers of Insular Celtic languages.-Pre-Celtic Britain:Little is known of the culture and language of pre-Celtic Britain, but remnants of the latter may remain in the names of some geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar and Thames, whose etymology is...
, divided into two large groups, Brythonic
Britons (historical)
The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...
or P-Celtic, and Goidelic or Q-Celtic.
The Brythonic groups under Roman rule were known in Latin as Britanni
Britons (historical)
The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...
, while use of the names Celtae and Galli was restricted to the Gauls
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
. There are no historical records of the Goidelic group prior to the appearance of Primitive Irish inscriptions in the 4th century AD.
Simon James
Simon James (archaeologist)
Simon James, PhD is an archeologist of the Iron Age and Roman period and an author. He is Reader in Archaeology at the University of Leicester, England...
argues that, while the term "Celtic" expresses a valid linguistic connection, its use of both Insular and Continental Celtic culture is misleading, as archaeology does not suggest a unified Celtic culture during the Iron Age.
modern context
With the rise of Celtic nationalism in the early to mid 19th century, the term "Celtic" also came to be a self-designation used by proponents of a modern Celtic identity. Thus, the contributor to "The Celt" discussing "the word Celt" states "The Greeks called us Keltoi", expressing a position of ethnic essentialism that extends the first person pronoun to include both 19th-century Irishmen and the Danubian Κελτοί of Herodotus.
This sense of "Celtic" is preserved in its political sense in Celtic nationalism of organizations such as the Celtic League
Celtic League (political organisation)
The Celtic League is a non-governmental organisation that promotes self-determination and Celtic identity and culture in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man, known as the Celtic nations. It places particular emphasis on the indigenous Celtic languages...
, but it is also used in a more general unpolitical sense, in expressions such as Celtic music
Celtic music
Celtic music is a term utilised by artists, record companies, music stores and music magazines to describe a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic people of Western Europe...
.
Galli, Galatai, Welsh, and Gael
Latin might be from an originally Celtic ethnic or tribal nameTribal name
A tribal name is a name of an ethnic tribe —usually of ancient origin, which represented its self-identity.Studies of Native American tribal names show that most had an original meaning comparable to "human," "people" "us"—the "tribal" name for itself was often the localized ethnic...
, perhaps borrowed into Latin during the early 5th century BC Celtic expansions into Italy. Its root may be the Common Celtic *galno-, meaning "power" or "strength". The Greek (cf. Galatia
Galatia
Ancient Galatia was an area in the highlands of central Anatolia in modern Turkey. Galatia was named for the immigrant Gauls from Thrace , who settled here and became its ruling caste in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC. It has been called the "Gallia" of...
in Anatolia) seems to be based on the same root, borrowed directly from the same hypothetical Celtic source which gave us (the suffix -atai is simply an ethnic name indicator).
Schumacher's account is slightly different: He states that Galli (nominative singular *gallos) is derived from the present stem of the verb which he reconstructs for Proto-Celtic
Proto-Celtic language
The Proto-Celtic language, also called Common Celtic, is the reconstructed ancestor language of all the known Celtic languages. Its lexis can be confidently reconstructed on the basis of the comparative method of historical linguistics...
as *gal-nV- (it is not clear what the vowel in the suffix, marked as V, should be reconstructed as), whose meaning he gives as "to be able to, to gain control of", while Galatai comes from the same root and is to be reconstructed as nominative singular *galatis < *gelH-ti-s. He gives the same meaning for both reconstructs, namely "Machthaber", i. e. "potentate, ruler (or even warlord)", or alternatively "Plünderer, Räuber", i. e. "raider, looter, pillager, marauder", and points out that both names can be exonyms
Exonym and endonym
In ethnolinguistics, an endonym or autonym is a local name for a geographical feature, and an exonym or xenonym is a foreign language name for it...
in order to explain their pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
meaning. The Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
verbal root in question is reconstructed by Schumacher as *gelH-, whose meaning is given as "Macht bekommen über", i. e., "to acquire power over" in the Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben.
The English Gaul and are unrelated to Latin Gallia and Galli, despite superficial similarity. They are rather derived from the Germanic term walha
Walha
Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker". The adjective derived from this word can be found in , Old High German walhisk, meaning "Romance", in Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning "Romano-British" and in...
, "foreigner, Romanized person", an exonym applied by Germanic speakers to Celts, likely via a Latinization of Frankish *Walholant "Gaul", literally "Land of the Foreigners/Romans", making it partially cognate with the names Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
and Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
), the usual word for the non-Germanic-speaking peoples (Celtic-speaking and Latin-speaking indiscriminately). The Germanic w is regularly rendered as gu / g in French (cf. guerre = war, garder = ward), and the diphthong au is the regular outcome of al before a following consonant (cf. cheval ~ chevaux). Gaule or Gaulle can hardly be derived from Latin Gallia, since g would become j before a (cf. gamba > jambe), and the diphthong au would be unexplained; the regular outcome of Latin Gallia is Jaille in French which is found in several western placenames.
The French term for "Welsh" is gallois, which is, however, not derived from the Latin Galli, but, like gaulois, borrowed (with suffix substitution) from Germanic *walhiska- "Celtic, Gallo-Roman, Romance" or its Old English descendant wælisc (= Modern English Welsh). The English form "Gaul" (first recorded in the 17th century) and "Gaulish" come from the French "Gaule" and "Gaulois", which translate Latin "Gallia" and "Gallus, -icus" respectively. In Old French, the words "gualeis", "galois", "walois" (Northern French phonetics keeping /w/) had different meanings: Welsh or the Langue d'oïl, etc. On the other hand, the word "Waulle" (Northern French phonetics keeping /w/) is recorded for the first time in the 13th century to translate the Latin word Gallia, while "gaulois" is recorded for the first time in the 15th century, and the scholars use it to translate the Latin words Gallus / Gallicus. The word comes from Proto-Germanic *Walha- (see Gaul: Name).
The English word "Welsh" originates from the word wælisċ, the Anglo-Saxon
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
form of *walhiska-
Walha
Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker". The adjective derived from this word can be found in , Old High German walhisk, meaning "Romance", in Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning "Romano-British" and in...
, the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word for "foreign" or "Celt" (South German Welsch(e) "Celtic speaker", "French speaker", "Italian speaker"; Old Norse "valskr", pl. "valir" "Gaulish", "French"), that is supposed to be derived of the name of the "Volcae
Volcae
The Volcae were a tribal confederation constituted before the raid of combined Gauls that invaded Macedon circa 270 BC and defeated the assembled Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 279 BC...
", a Celtic tribe who lived first in the South of Germany and emigrated then to Gaul.
The Germanic term may ultimately have a Celtic source: It is possibly the result of a loan of the Celtic tribal name into pre-Germanic, *wolk- changing according to Grimm's Law
Grimm's law
Grimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
to yield proto-Germanic *walh-. The Volcae were one of the Celtic peoples who for two centuries barred the southward expansion of the Germanic tribes (in what is now central Germany) on the line of the Harz mountains and into Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
and Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
.
In the Middle Ages, territories with primarily Romance
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
-speaking populations, such as France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, were known in German as as opposed to , and the word is cognate with Vlach and Walloon
Walloons
Walloons are a French-speaking people who live in Belgium, principally in Wallonia. Walloons are a distinctive community within Belgium, important historical and anthropological criteria bind Walloons to the French people. More generally, the term also refers to the inhabitants of the Walloon...
as well as with the "-wall" in "Cornwall". Other examples are the surnames "Wallace" and "Walsh". During the early Germanic period, the term seems to have been applied to the peasant population of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, most of whom were in the areas immediately settled by the Germanic people.
The term Gael is, despite superficial similarity, also completely unrelated to Galli, see Gaels#Terminology.
Britanni
The Celtic-speaking people of Great BritainGreat Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
were known as Brittanni
Britons (historical)
The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...
in Latin and as Βρίττωνες in Greek. This name like Galli and Celtae ultimately derives from a tribal name, in this case that of the Priteni, recorded by Pytheas
Pytheas
Pytheas of Massalia or Massilia , was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony, Massalia . He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe at about 325 BC. He travelled around and visited a considerable part of Great Britain...
in the 4th century BC, apparently a self-designation of the people later known as Picts
Picts
The Picts were a group of Late Iron Age and Early Mediaeval people living in what is now eastern and northern Scotland. There is an association with the distribution of brochs, place names beginning 'Pit-', for instance Pitlochry, and Pictish stones. They are recorded from before the Roman conquest...
.
Celtici
Aside from the CeltiberiansCeltiberians
The Celtiberians were Celtic-speaking people of the Iberian Peninsula in the final centuries BC. The group used the Celtic Celtiberian language.Archaeologically, the Celtiberians participated in the Hallstatt culture in what is now north-central Spain...
—Lusones, Titi, Arevaci and Pelendones among others— who inhabited large regions of central Spain, Greek and Roman geographers also spoke of a people or group of peoples called Celtici or Κελτικοί, living in the South of modern day Portugal, in the Alentejo region, between the Tagus
Tagus
The Tagus is the longest river on the Iberian Peninsula. It is long, in Spain, along the border between Portugal and Spain and in Portugal, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon. It drains an area of . The Tagus is highly utilized for most of its course...
and the Guadiana
Guadiana
The Guadiana , or Odiana, is an international river located on the Portuguese–Spanish border, separating Extremadura and Andalucia from Alentejo and Algarve...
rivers. They are first mentioned by Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
, who wrote that they were the most numerous people inhabiting that region. Later, the description of Ptolemy shows a more reduced territory, comprising the regions from Évora
Évora
Évora is a municipality in Portugal. It has total area of with a population of 55,619 inhabitants. It is the seat of the Évora District and capital of the Alentejo region. The municipality is composed of 19 civil parishes, and is located in Évora District....
to Setúbal
Setúbal
Setúbal is the main city in Setúbal Municipality in Portugal with a total area of 172.0 km² and a total population of 118,696 inhabitants in the municipality. The city proper has 89,303 inhabitants....
, being the coastal and southern areas occupied by the Turdetani
Turdetani
The Turdetani were ancient people of the Iberian peninsula , living in the valley of the Guadalquivir in what was to become the Roman Province of Hispania Baetica...
.
A second group of Celtici was mentioned by Pliny living in the region of Baeturia (northwestern Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
); he considered that they proceeded "of the Celtiberians from the Lusitania, because of their religion, language, and because of the names of their cities".
In the North, in Galicia, another group of Celtici dwelt the coastal areas. They comprised several populi, including the Celtici proper: the Praestamarci south of the Tambre river (Tamaris), the Supertamarci north of it, and the Neri by the Celtic promontory (Promunturium Celticum). Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died c. AD 45.His short work occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print. It is laconic in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing...
affirmed that all the inhabitants of the coastal regions, from the bays of southern Galicia and till the Astures, were also Celtici: "All (this coast) is inhabited by the Celtici, except from the Douro river to the bays, where the Grovi dwelt (…) In the north coast first there are the Artabri, still of the Celtic people (Celticae gentis), and after them the Astures." He also mentioned the fabulous isles of tin, the Cassiterides, as situated among these Celtici.
The Celtici Supertarmarci have also left a number of inscriptions, as the Celtici Flavienses did. Several villages and rural parishes still bear the name Céltigos (from Latin Celticos) in Galicia. This is also the name of an archpriesthood of the Catholic Church, a division of the archbishopric of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
, encompassing part of the lands attributed to the Celtici Supertamarci by ancient authors.