Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[cagwinn]

2) the swords made in the Province of Pontus by the Chalybes-- "ex"= "from the" and "chalybis"= "Chalybean steel." AKA-- Exchalybur. Strange, on the other hand, that no famed or even mediocre swordmakers are recorded in either Roman Britain or sub-Roman Britain. hock:

No one can seriously suggest that Geoffrey of Monmouth's Caliburnus (and, thus Excalibur, which is simply a later rendering of Caliburnus with the Latin intensive prefix ex- added to it by late medieval poets to make the name seem grander) was derived from any source other than Old Welsh *Caletbulc, which meant something like "Hard-breaker" or "Battle-breaker". Yes, Latin chalybs "steel" was borrowed from Greek ?????, which in turn was derived anciently from the Anatolian tribal name Chalybes, but even if Caliburnus was somehow derived from this word (which does not at all seem likely), what possible bearing on anything could this ancient etymological path have? Are folks seriously trying to suggest that a quite ancient etymological origin of a loan word (and common noun) in Latin somehow has somehow influenced the naming of Arthur's sword? It's bizarre!

One last thing. Sarmatian was not dead until fairly recently. It was a recognised language of Jayzyges in the 1600 1700.s

Good info. Thanks! And now I'm going back to writing a histro-sci-fi novel about the End of Times (11:59 plus 59 seconds).

Well, to be precise, the language that are referring to was introduced to Hungary in the 13th century by nomadic Jasz tribes from the North Caucasus who were fleeing Mongol invasions and were invited into the region by the Hungarian king Béla IV Árpád. They were relatives of the modern Ossets and their language (as far as we can tell from what little scraps were recorded) was very close (if not identical) to Ossetic.