h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I should just add that I think this would explain why the influence on early Old English seems to be more Latin than Brythonic, as you mention.

“So for more than two centuries, the situation of English in Britain could well have been parallell to what Latin had been earlier, but given that there must have been sizable communities of native English speakers, this would mean English had a better chance of entrenching itself more quickly.”

The language issue is vital in this discussion, and it is the thing that constantly brings back the ideas of genocide or the later theories of ‘elite dominance’. A good number of Romano-British place names survive in England, mostly of Roman regional capitals or military centres. What is puzzling is the lack of surviving Brythonic names for smaller towns and settlements. Some exist, but not many. The genocide or expulsion theories took this as evidence that the Brythonic speaking population of England was either destroyed or driven westwards by the English.

The etymology of place names follows the political map of the old Roman province of Britannia to a remarkable degree. Beyond the borders of the province, Brythonic names immediately start to reappear, but within it, they have largely disappeared.

English seems to have taken on the role of Latin as the dominant language. But we have to ask how and why this happened. The structure and archaeology of Roman Britain strongly suggests it was an urban culture, focussed on the larger towns and cities that survive today, many of which retain Latin-influenced names. Nothing I know of describes Latin names for what we know today as villages and hamlets. The countryside, in late Roman Britain, seems to have been a place for villas and large estates. The Saxons seem to have been responsible for the English villages and the structure of the countryside as it is known in England today. Before the Saxons, the Britons seem to have lived in largely invisible communities, possibly working on the large Roman villa estates that spread across southern England.

If the Britons remained separate from the Romans in this period, we would expect to see some archaeological evidence of the two cultures existing side by side, with different religious, cultural and technological traces. But what has been found so far suggests that in England the Roman system was completely dominant. Villas in the countryside are found and cities and towns are found. All distinctly Roman. I appreciate that traces of Celtic culture would harder to find; much smaller buildings, not built in stone, in more inaccessible locations, but I have never heard of a distinctly late Roman era Celtic cultural survival being found and excavated in any part of the mainstream Roman British province, by which I mean the centre and south of what is now England.

The contrast with Wales, Devon, Cornwall, Ireland and the far north of England is dramatic. All these areas, outside of the main Roman province retain evidence of surviving Celtic technology and culture; from language, placenames, legends, illuminated manuscripts, roundhouses, to field enclosures, and church dedications to Celtic saints.

The role of the Justinian Plague, which is an recorded historical fact, not a theory, in the mid 6th century seems to me to be the best explanation for what happened to urban Romano-British civilization, centred on southern and central England. Given what happened in the 14th century with the Black Death, we can assume a mortality of anything upwards from a quarter to a half of the population of post-Roman Britain.

Plague explains the collapse of agriculture, the abandonment of the cities noted in the time, the breakdown of the administration, the flight of the cultural elite to Brittany, and the collapse of the British resistance to the Saxons, who up until this point, appeared to have been held in the south-east where they had seized control from the Romano-British government in the 4th century.

Plague also gives an explanation for why the language changed, without any need for a man-made genocide ors theories of elite dominance. Latin Romano-British culture, centred on the villas and the towns and cities, was decimated by the plague, leaving the English with a blank slate in the south and the centre of the country. They found the empty buildings, but there were few people left living in them, and little viable administration. The English took over a country suffering the aftermath of a massive natural disaster.

English supplanted Latin because the Latin speakers had died in the plague. The administrators, the teachers, the engineers, the writers, the farmers of post-Roman society had died. If this seems extreme, read what happened to English society some 800 years later with the Black Death, and this was a population that had inherited some degree of natural immunity from to this disease from Roman times. The people of the 14th century were the descendants of survivors of the Justinian Plague, and still a third of the population died. Had England been invaded during the crisis of the Black Death, who knows what language and culture would be here now.

>>What is puzzling is the lack of surviving Brythonic names for smaller towns and settlements.<<

I'm not so sure that it's very puzzling. All it requires is for most villages to have formed at a time when English was in use in the area; not to mention the fact that etymologists (as has been mentioned on this site) have tended to operate on a "Germanic until proven Celtic" idea. Topographical features tend to retain their Celtic names; I'd suggest this is because unlike villages, they already existed, and had names, before the Saxon conquest.

Also some towns names with apparently English meanings are actually derived from Celtic. York, for example, was Eoforwic in Saxon times, a name which would have been assumed to be totally Germanic in origin if it weren't for the fact that we know the British name was Ebrauc. Edinburgh is another example, derived from the British Din Edin, but known in English as Edwines burgh.

>>Given what happened in the 14th century with the Black Death, we can assume a mortality of anything upwards from a quarter to a half of the population of post-Roman Britain.<<

But didn't this plague affect the whole Roman world? In this case, one would expect that if it was due to plague, Gaul and other provinces would have become linguistically Germanic, no less than Britain.

“But didn't this plague affect the whole Roman world? In this case, one would expect that if it was due to plague, Gaul and other provinces would have become linguistically Germanic, no less than Britain.”

I have thought about this problem before, and came up with the following possibility.

The channel was an obstacle between Britain and post-Roman Europe that in the aftermath of the plague prevented mainland Latin culture, itself under stress, from re-entering Britain and re-establishing itself.

The Justinian Plague did not strike all of Europe simultaneously. As happened in later outbreaks it spread in waves, dying out in one place and then flaring up in another. Sources point to the plague’s arrival in Gaul in the 540s, and its spread to Britain and Ireland in the 550s.

I think Gaul was in a much better position than Britain to maintain its post-Roman Latin culture. Gaul was physically connected to the entire former Roman world through the pan-European Roman road system. In contrast, Britain was dependent on cross-channel shipping to stay in contact with the outside world.

In Gaul, even in the most worst circumstances, you could walk or ride a donkey down a Roman road to get in or out of the place. But to move to and from Britain you needed a ship, which was in a completely different technological and economic bracket.

In 6th century Britain, given the apparent decline or loss of technical skills in a host of other industries, it is reasonable to suspect that the quality and scale of ship building and maintenance had also suffered. Also, by then, the Saxons had seized and occupied a number of Britain’s key ports in the south east. Not being able to sail from the south east meant journeys between British territory and the continent would have become much longer and more hazardous.

I see Britain as simply becoming cut off. Few could afford to go there and with tales circulating of barbarian invasion and the same plague ravaging the land as in Europe, there would be few incentives to make the journey. Also, only the wealthy, or those with their own boats, would have been able to travel from Britain to the continent.

Regarding the placenames you mentioned;

“York, for example, was Eoforwic in Saxon times, a name which would have been assumed to be totally Germanic in origin if it weren't for the fact that we know the British name was Ebrauc.”

The Roman name for York was Eboracum, which also shows the old British name was adopted into Latin by the Romans, with a Latin ‘cum’ suffix added on. The name could have survived to Saxon times more because it had been a centuries-old Latinised name for an important Roman city.

“Topographical features tend to retain their Celtic names; I'd suggest this is because unlike villages, they already existed, and had names, before the Saxon conquest.”

Many of these English topographical names can be explained as being pre-Roman as well. Some of them, particularly rivers, such as the Thames, are regarded as being so ancient as to possibly be pre-Celtic. Many of them existed, as you say, when the Saxons arrived, but they may also been there when the Romans arrived, and in some cases, when the Celts arrived.

Germany has some Celtic river names, of which the Rhine is one. The river Isar, that flows through Munich, is regarded as being pre-Celtic. Britain, in this respect, looks pretty similar to the continent, regardless of whether the countries eventually turned out Latin or Germanic.

Edinburgh is an interesting one. Had Edinburgh been a Roman city in southern England, I reckon it would now be Edinchester or Edincester, or had the name remained Celtic, perhaps it would now be Dunedin.

There is a another slant on Celtic placenames - and realative scarcity thereof in England.

http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/dialect/celtpn.htm

There was an analysis of River names in Britain by Jackson in 1953 - which I have seen before.

There is a gradient of Celtic names in England, increasing as one goes west.

In the east only some of the major rivers have non-Saxon names, and some of these may be pre-Celtic. As one heads west Celtic names become more evident and certain, and survive for smaller rivers as well as major. Further west (Area 3 in the map) Celtic names apply to creeks, woods and hills. Devon is at the western boundary of Area 3.

A subsequent section in the linked site discusses the adoption of Celtic placenames.

It has been suggested that where Saxons have settled in the first or perhaps second wave of expansion, typically Saxon names exclusively are used in the immediate area. Celtic names are only seen on the fringes.

Faull has suggested that an initial LACK of bilingualism, by both Celt and Saxon, may explain this pattern. Bilingualism developed after immediate placenames had been adopted by the newcomers, and so Celtic names rarely surplanted Saxon inventions and therefore never gained acceptance into English.

This suggests that Saxon arrival must have been large and sudden, and therefore probably planned. Saxon villages did not just accumulate over the years, but were probably "planted".

Neighbouring Britons who remained in the area naturally would have been disinclined to trade with the newcomers (as I doubt that there approval was sought first), and so bilingualism would likely be slow to develop.

Only where settlement was more gradual would towns have have experienced two names, British and Saxon, in circulation at the same time in the early stages of Saxon settlement - when names are generally given.

This is evidence of such dual placenames in the West. In Biddulph's booklet on Westcountry Brythonic there are references to Saxon documents which refer to a place, giving both Saxon and Celtic names.

“Plague also gives an explanation for why the language changed, without any need for a man-made genocide or theories of elite dominance. Latin Romano-British culture, centred on the villas and the towns and cities, was decimated by the plague, leaving the English with a blank slate in the south and the centre of the country. They found the empty buildings, but there were few people left living in them, and little viable administration. The English took over a country suffering the aftermath of a massive natural disaster.”

ExeValleyBoy,

If the English (Saxons and Angles) had taken over a near empty land in the south and centre of the country, wouldn’t the resulting population have been predominantly Germanic in origin? This is not what the genetic surveys indicate. In the south, the population is predominantly British in origin (70% - 75%), and even in the centre of the country (the Midlands), the British gene pool still accounts for 45% - 60% of the current population.

Plymouth Exile,

“If the English (Saxons and Angles) had taken over a near empty land in the south and centre of the country, wouldn’t the resulting population have been predominantly Germanic in origin?”

Not necessarily, as the genetically Briton population would not have been wiped out completely, just dramatically reduced. Then afterwards, it would have recovered. Population estimates from the aftermath of the Black Death in the 14th century show it took over a century for the population to recover to something like its former level. So taking this time scale, by the mid-7th century you would have a good sized genetically Briton population back again, easily outnumbering the number of Germanic settlers and invaders.

One strength of this explanation is that it accounts for how a relatively small number of Germanic settlers and invaders managed to alter British society in such a profound way. There was not necessarily a complete absence of Britons, just that their numbers had been severely reduced and the survivors were scattered in isolated rural locations. This allowed a small number of Saxons and others to take over culturally and economically. By laying claim to the land, infrastructure and settlements emptied of former Romano-British owners by the pestilence, the Germanic people quickly gained a vastly stronger political and economic status than the native survivors.

I am talking here of the takeover of the rest of what is now England, outside of the south east, from the 6th century onwards. The south-east having been wrested militarily from the Britons a century earlier by the Germanic mercenary rebellion and subsequent invasion. Taking this view of history, after the plague the previous viable Romano-British military resistance in the rest of the country crumbles, their urban centres and the rich productive lowland countryside are depopulated, and the people who were to become the English begin their westwards and northwards expansion.

Ozzie Exile,

I’m not sure about this bilingualism theory. Again it is another idea which suggests the Britons were incredibly resistant to language change during 400 years of intensive Roman settlement and occupation, but then for some reason, during the 6th century suddenly abandoned their resistance to speaking foreign languages.

Also it does not explain why in the south-east, the invaders managed to absorb the Romano-British place names of a number of settlements and features; like London and the river Thames, the name of Kent and the Romano-British ‘cant’ element of its capital Canterbury, and also went on to use throughout the country the chester, cester, caster suffix which appears to be of Latin origin, when the Germanic speakers had their own word, ‘burh’ which is also commonplace in England as ‘burgh’ or ‘borough’.

I think the writers quoted on the page disregard the 400 years of Roman influence. When the Romans arrived in Britain in the year 43, there were a few small settlements and no known towns or cities. So the vast majority of Celtic names that passed into Roman usage would have been things like the names of rivers, hills and forests. The tribes of southern Britain had been in contact and had traded with the Roman empire before the successful invasion organised by the emperor Claudius in 43, so for this to be possible they must have already learned some Latin and to have been able to communicate in some meaningful way with the Romans.

Celtic topographical place names are found across Europe, as I mentioned in a previous post.

In other European countries that had been in the Roman Empire, it is assumed that Latin slowly replaced the Celtic languages over the many centuries the empire was in existence. These countries have similar kinds of surviving Celtic place names to England, which had the same kind of Roman experience.

If the Britons in what is now England had carried on with their original language completely oblivious to the Latin language being used for administration and commerce all around them for 400 years then you would think that by the late Roman times the Celtic speakers would have come up with more sophisticated kinds of place names that reflected the transition from a tribal pagan society dominated by natural features to a more settled organised society where later cultural and economic developments played a role in naming locations.

These more advanced Celtic place names are found in places like Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, and to a limited extent, in Devon and Cumbria. But I think many of the survivals in the rest of England, which seem to come from an older, simpler form of Celtic society than you would expect to find after 400 years of Roman civilization, may well go back to pre-Roman times and do not necessarily indicate the survival of widespread Brythonic speech in the centre and south-east of what is now England in the 5th and 6th century.

“Not necessarily, as the genetically Briton population would not have been wiped out completely, just dramatically reduced. Then afterwards, it would have recovered. Population estimates from the aftermath of the Black Death in the 14th century show it took over a century for the population to recover to something like its former level. So taking this time scale, by the mid-7th century you would have a good sized genetically Briton population back again, easily outnumbering the number of Germanic settlers and invaders.”

ExeValleyBoy,

I have come across this hypothesis before, but I find it difficult to swallow, as it seems rather artificial and constructed to me. It would require us to accept that, following the plague, the procreation rate of the Britons would have been much higher than that of the Saxons in order to convert a minority of plague depleted Britons into a 3:1 majority. I can see no obvious reason for this.

“I have come across this hypothesis before, but I find it difficult to swallow, as it seems rather artificial and constructed to me. It would require us to accept that, following the plague, the procreation rate of the Britons would have been much higher than that of the Saxons in order to convert a minority of plague depleted Britons into a 3:1 majority. I can see no obvious reason for this.”

It depends on how many Germanic invaders and settlers there actually were. Archeological evidence outside of the south-east seems to point to quite small numbers—before the 6th century at least.

It also depends on where the Britons actually lived, or were they went. It is not necessary in this scenario to assume anything like a majority of Germanic people.

Britons living the remote countryside, outside of mainstream urban Romano-British culture, would have been the least effected by the plague. These people would have been mainly Brythonic-speaking, poor, and illiterate. They would have lived mostly in the north and west of the old Roman province.

There were probably many more surviving Britons than Saxons, it is just that by this point they were in no position to offer either military or cultural resistance as, in the 6th century, the Germanic peoples spread out from the south-east to invade and occupy the rest of what is now England.

For example, this account of archaeology in Nottinghamshire shows it was a problem to find much actual evidence of Germanic people in the area before the 6th century.

This evidence here points again, to Romano-British culture disappearing not in the 5th century, but in the 6th.

http://www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/eastmidsfw/pdfs/30nottas.pdf

“Although there are early brooches... the parallels and date ranges for the
material culture in cemeteries suggest that most distinctively A/S settlement belonged
to the 6th C.”

And

“All this implies that during the 5th C and into the 6th century, Notts was populated by
British communites with a sub-Romano-British culture. In the absence of coinage and
mass-produced pottery, and the disappearance of towns and villas and with no
distinctive British material, it is very difficult to identify both the sites and character of
this culture.”

No explanation is proposed for this sudden 6th century disappearance of Romano-British culture in Nottinghamshire. In my opinion, all of this points to Romano-Britons in Nottinghamshire being cut off from the rest of Roman culture. They no longer had Roman coinage or the ability to produce or receive the same kind of consumer goods that had been available in Roman times, but they continued in a semblance of the kind of society they had while under Roman rule.

“The cemeteries and this limited settlement evidence indicates that the landscape was
not significantly transformed in the Early and Middle Saxon periods... Rather, it appears that settlement was mainly dispersed across more or less reorganised Roman landscapes... settlements may have been small and well integrated with older ones in a pattern which was based on a population which was much reduced from that of the 4th Century.”

A society similar to the 4th century but “in a pattern which was based on a population which was much reduced from that of the 4th Century.”

Given that there is little evidence of the Germanic people in this area of England before the 6th century, that Romano-British culture in Nottinghamshire appears to have survived by a century the Roman withdrawal, that the Romano-British population seems to have fallen noticeably, and that after the 6th century the area became culturally Anglo-Saxon, seems to me more evidence for the plague explanation.

I was intrigued to come across the following reference to Devon's ancient tin mining industry.

http://www.dartmoorpress.clara.net/WalknPropsMewyValleyMid.html

It refers to 13th century tinmining workes called Mewyhevved.

The "Mewy" is relatively easy to determine. It is an early name for Devon's "Meavy" river.

The whole name "Mewyhevved" seems rather more difficult, and yet one would presume almost certain to be Celtic/Brythonic in origin.

However, despite its obvious celtic appearance I am unsure what the name may mean.

Any suggestions?

Ozzie Exile,

I took a look at this and, unfortunately, although it sounded promising, only the river part of Mewyhevved seems to be Brythonic.

It is probably Celtic-Old English Mewy + heafod, or Meavy Head in modern English, which can be found just to the west of Princetown.

“At Shaugh Bridge the R. Meavy joins the Plym from the north.(photo) Meavy Head is on the W. edge of Princetown...”
http://www.science.plym.ac.uk/plymvalleypath/NOWtext.htm

I reached this conclusion after looking on Warlinnen, the Cornish language website, for similar names to ‘hevved’ in Cornish.

An old name for Launceston was Dunheved, which again sounds Celtic. But apparently some Cornish people who use it thinking it is such are mistaken; it is actually Dounhed from Old English dun + heafod and means ‘hill-head’.

Given this example, and the existence of a modern day Meavy Head in the area nearby, I think the Old English ‘heafod’ explanation to be most likely.

However, the surname/placename Stenlake-Stenylake may contain a Celtic component. I found on Warlinnen that ‘sten’ is Cornish for tin, and as the 1281 record describes, Mewyhevved was a tin works and the Stenylakes family seem to have been involved in other tin-related activities.

“He might have been one and the same as the Richard Stenylake whom Newman (Tinners and Tenants) states coined tin at Ashburton in 1303.”

EVB,

Thanks for the response.

I did know of Launceston also being known as Dunheved, and it was that similarity to Mewyhevved that encouraged me to assume it was Celtic.

OzzieExile,

In addition to the ‘heafod’ (head) possibility mentioned by ExeValleyBoy, there is another (Brythonic) possibility. The Welsh word ‘hafod’ means ‘summer dwelling’, implying marginal land, which was only used in summer months. This word does occur in Middle Cornish in the form ‘hewes’ in the place-name ‘Hewes Common’. The Old Cornish variant of the word would have been ‘hewed’, which looks to be very close to the form ‘hevved’. I have noted that in a 1769 map of Devon, the village/hamlet of ‘Meavy’ is marked as ‘Meuick’, which could be a Middle Cornish adjectival form of the river name ‘Mew’.

>>Plymouth Exile, Thank you once again for the information. Of course I realize that the classifications used by Hoskins are dated and ‘politically incorrect’ but I thought it was still worth quoting this passage because it does demonstrate a considerable amount of insight. Clearly, Hoskins was simply using the jargon of the time to frame his otherwise insightful observations. Robert Graves uses basically the same system to distinguish between ‘Celtic’ and ‘Germanic’ physical types in “The White Goddess”.<<

Newvonian,

Physical anthropology is no less scientific than DNA testing really. It has perhaps gone out of favour somewhat due to its political misuse by people for justifying their racist ideas; but for all we know DNA testing might be politically incorrect in the future if it's misused.

I doubt that Hoskin's statements were anything to do with Beddoe. The kind of observations he refers to were a common part of analysis of historic migrations which have been largely replaced with genetics. Personally I think a combination of population genetics with these observations would give more insight to the study of historic population movements.

Such observations are frequently dismissed today as meaningless; but I know from my own observations that there is more to this than Victorian jargon; the "types" they refer to are based on the fact that certain physical characteristics have a tendency to occur together, indicating of course that certain genes tend to occur together. I'm not entirely sure whether this linkage is due to a biological phenomenon, or simply that new invaders tended to settle in groups (being relatively homogeneous to begin with) in a particular area, with their descendants remaining in the same area, tending to marry people from their own district. If the latter is the case, then this would indicate that there has not been a great deal of movement or intermarriage between districts, even up to modern times.

At any rate, anthropological surveys in the past have found that in much of Britain, short stature, a slim build and narrow head, tend to be associated with a dark complexion. Surveys have also found that British people with yellow hair and a broad head, tend to be tall with a large build. I have in fact noticed the latter tendency myself (this look is much more common in England than elsewhere in the British isles); it can be recognised as a "type". There are other "types" in Britain as well, but because most individuals have a mixture of traits from more than one such type, the correlations of traits don't tend to be noticed by many people.

Regarding Darracott, you might find the exact modern Breton counterpart in the several "Coat Dero" (I use the traditional spelling on purpose)- i.e. Oak Wood- encountered in Finistere. Regarding the river Dart, I should be more conspicuous if I look at a Breton example. I know a river called "la Flèche" in French and "ar Seaz" (i.e. "the Dart") in Breton... just because it is a swift watercourse.

Here are some more Celtic Devon place- and river-names that I don’t believe have been mentioned before in this forum. My source for all of these is: Richard Coates & Andrew Breeze with David Horovitz, “Celtic Voices, English Places: Studies of the Celtic Impact on Place-Names in England”. Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000. I’ve included the page numbers for each in brackets after the name for anyone who would like to check.


1. Clovelly - from “Clawdd” and the personal name “Felec” meaning “Felec’s Earthworks”. (pp. 117-123)

2. The River Clyst - from “clust” meaning “a sea inlet or river reach”. Places such as Clyst St. George, Clyst St. Mary, West Clyst and Broad Clyst all derive part of their name from this Celtic word. (pp. 124-125)

3. The River Creedy - from “cryddu” meaning “river of limited or weak flow”. Crediton is, of course, the town (Anglo-Saxon “tun” meaning settlement) on the Creedy. (pp. 129-130)

4. Croyde (eight miles west-north-west of Barnstaple) - from “Crud” meaning “cradle or cradle-shaped valley”. (pp. 131-132)

5. The River Culm - from “colom” meaning “dove”. Celtic people often named rivers after birds: for example, the three Rivers Bran (crow) in Wales. Breeze suggests that the Culm may have been thus named because “its waters were calm and unhurried”. Culmstock, Uffculme and Cullompton all derive their names in part from this Celtic river. (pp. 133 -135)

6. Treable Farm - from “tre” meaning settlement and “Ebil” meaning “a deep, fast moving stream” (literally an auger).(pp. 138-139)

I hope everyone is having a good September.

Can anyone offer a meaning to the placename 'YARNER'?

We're looking at Yarner Wood near Bovey Tracey. There is also a Yarner Beacon near Week, Dartington. Both of these have a Yarner farm nearby, with a third farm at Porlock, Somerset.

There are the obvious meanings 'one who works with yarn' and 'one who tells tales', but I'm not sure about these. If it was the former, I would have expected to find many more.

A Google search reveals the above places, but is hampered by many pages of info on a computer worm/virus taking the same name.

Any thoughts welcome...

I've just found an area of Porlock called YEARNOR, which I guess is a varient spelling.

From The Place-names Of Devon by J E B Gover, A Mawer & F M Stenton...

Yarner Wood: Possibly 'Eagle bank or slope'
Yarner Beacon: Possibly 'Eagle slope or bank'
Yarncombe: Eagles' valley

In the OED we find: Erne - an eagle, esp. the Sea-Eagle.

So, not quite what I expected.