Ancient/Iron Age Tribal names....Latin or Local.

[66kbm]

Hi all,
Something that has bothered me for a long time now, are the names of the so called Iron Age tribes in Britain under Roman rule. Are they in. the native tounge/the language spoken in that area, or in Latin, the Roman name given to thoise peoples? OR, is it a mix of the two. I am in the South West of the UK so i use the Dumnonii for example. As far as i can gather, this means the dwellers of deep/dark valleys, makes sense for south Devon but not for the whole peninsula. Dunomnii sounds Latin, Isca Dunomniorum being the Civitas, now that has to be Latin as it was acredited after the Legion had left and a civilian administration had been established.
Another quick one, the Atrebates, Civitas being named Calleva Atrebatum.
Now Civitas names vary but the point is, Who called Who what? and in what language.
I hope this generates some usefull feedback from those in the know.
Thanks in advance,
Kevin

[Prasutagus]

I believe it is a mix of the two in some cases, and in others full latin and others solely a tribal name. I couldn't tell you which ones, but Sean will probably be able to.

[Ariovistus]

"Gaul is a whole divided into three parts... a third by a people called in their own tongue Celtae, in the Latin Galli."
- Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War

As you can see it would not be unlikely that the Romans would have their own names for certain tribes/groups. Names could also have been given as a misunderstanding; the first Germanic tribe that the Romans came into contact with were the Germani, subsequently it became a blanket term for the entire cultural group. Since the only accounts that we have of such tribes are primarily Latin, we would not necessarily know whether it was the native name or the Latin interpretation. I believe the most reasonable explanation is that the tribal names are simply a Latinized form of its native counterpart.

[Urselius]

The names would largely be local but given a Latin form. The fact that Italic and Celtic languages were relatively closely related would have made the differences imposed by giving a Latin form to them minimal. The Brigantes were named after a recorded Celtic godess - Brigantia (modern Irish Brigid) - and the Catuvellauni name means something like "battle-experts" in British Celtic. The only totally Latin name for a British tribe I can think of is the Regnenses, ie "the kingdom people" this is understandable as the Regnenses seem to have been a part of the Attrebates tribe who were ruled by the Roman client king Claudius Cogidubnus.

[66kbm]

Once, when i asked several knowledgable persons about the language spoken in Britain before the invasion i was told it would have been a sort of Welsh/Cornish/Breton with dialect.....I would love to hear the tribal names in these dialects.
Kevin

[Ariovistus]

Here are a few that I found, not necessarily tribes but some place names that are from Common Brittonic (Brythonic):

Britain from Pritani
Dover from Dubris meaning waters
Kent from the prefix "canto-" meaning border
Thames from Tamesis meaning dark
York from Eburakon meaning a stand of yew trees

Its not much but it gives an interesting look into the tongue of the ancient Britons. What can also be taken from this is that not all names were changed from the native language into a latin version. Dubris, Eburakon, and the River Tamesis are a few that I have definitely read in Roman sources and were not changed at all (perhaps a slight variation of spelling).

[Flavivs Aetivs]

The Catalauni had a city called Catalaunum for the next few centuries, I'd Imagine that one is Latin.

[Ariovistus]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46565524/Gallo...ic-Lexicon

I found this to be fairly interesting. I always thought that "Albion" was a name given to the island of Britain by the Romans, but it turns out that "albiyon" means universe or world in proto-Celtic.

[66kbm]

Thanks Sean
A difference in spelling is inevitable over the Centuries,. Isca Dunomniorum went to Exeter but easily explained.....others were not. Its my ref to the above Civitas being named so and the fortress of the same location being named so simiilar that leads me to believe that at the very least, Civitas were Latin named. I am working on my own assumption.
Kevin

[Ariovistus]

Have you ever read "The Eagle and the Wolves" by Simon Scarrow (or any of the Eagle series for that matter)? Excellent book(s), but that particular novel is based primarily inside Calleva and the Roman military depot that was added on to it.

The ruins of Calleva are definitely on my list of places to go, especially now that it has become such a sacred place to me.

[Ariovistus]

"In the history of Rome, the Latin term civitas (plural civitates), according to Cicero in the time of the late Roman Republic, was the social body of the cives, or citizens, united by law (concilium coetusque hominum jure sociati)."

This may shed some light onto the name "Civitas". Calleva most likely became the capital for the military province when it was annexed around 44 AD, hence the change to Civitas.

[66kbm]

In my neck of the woods again we have a first century fort.....
http://www.roman-britain.org/places/nemetostatio.htm
I do not know how accurate this is but it shows for this site at least that an older name was incorporated into the ,at then, modern site. There must be many more but probably "untranslatable" if they exists at all, as the sites have probably been lost over time.
The Durotriges Civitas becomes Durnovaria......not as i would say...Durotrigesium...........big change from the others. Has that to do with local names that could not be translated into Latin?
The mind boggles.
Kevin

[Urselius]

Eburacum, became Eoforwicescaestre in Ango-Saxon, which retains the Celtic/Latin structure Ebor-vicus-castrum almost unchanged, except that 'eofor' meant wild boar in Old English, so that the English would have considered it to mean Boar-town-fort. The Vikings then changed it to Jorvik which then became York. Eburacum and York do not look connected as names but they are; many other apparently entirely English names probably conceal Celtic origins in a similar way.