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

Those who know me may know that in addition to my Wessex Society activities, I also do a bit of writing in my spare time. Without wishing to give too much away about a work in progress, there are some characters in a story I am writing who I want to give names based on Old Devonian, or proto-South West Brythonic, or whatever you want to call it. I'd imagine these would be similar to Cornish names, but are there any differences with modern forms of Cornish that I need to be aware of? I realise that little of the language survives, but are there any fragments that may shed some light on the distinction (eg. word x uses an "a" instead of an "o" or whatever)?

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the original author has posted since 2002.

The best place I can think of to ask the question is <./>Askh2g2</.>, where most of the h2g2 Community tend to be. Your question is quite specialised though, so they may not have an answer.

The best of luck finding out, and I'm sorry I can't help you more!

Vip

Nick,

There are few surviving records.

There are some Celtic Ogham Incription Stones and these do have some personal names, however these are 5th or 6th century they appear "romanised".

For example one states

Safaqqucus, son of Qicus or to be precise SVAQQUCI MAQI QICI - and MAQI is the same as the Mac or Mc found in Scottish surnames today

Another simply reads

ENABARR

If you are looking for names from this era these might give you a starting point, and are real names.

If you are looking for names in a later period let me know.

Nick,

Some further thoughts.

Although not directly related to personal names there are some changes between older forms of Cornish and more recent forms.

For example around the 11th century there was a tendancy to epenthesis - which (in this case) was to insert vowels between consonants.

In placenames there was also a more from the "ok" sounding suffix to "ek" or "ik" at around the same time (11th Century).

Devon has examples of both - such as Dunchideock and Hemyock with the former and Gaverick and Dowrich with the latter. Devon also has a large list of placenames showing epenthesis.

These suggest that the language must still have been "alive" in Devon at this time - or the names would not have changed this way.

Biddulph (in his book "A handbook of West Country Brythonic") notes the otherwise unusual ancient "ok" suffix in placenames, and also the use of the "Kw" sound (e.g. Quantocks).

"For example around the 11th century there was a tendancy to epenthesis - which (in this case) was to insert vowels between consonants."

You might be onto something there. For example, I know that the Cornish name Morwenna has an older variant, Merewenna. Do you think it would be fair to say that Merewenna would have been the form used in proto-South Western Brythonic?

Nick,

To add to the information supplied by Ozzie Exile, may I suggest the names of the Kings of Dumnonia as a source of names. These include: Caradoc, Mauric, Donaut, Conan, Gadeon, Guoremor, Tutwal, Conomor, Erbin, Merchion, Gerren, Dywel, Cado, Iestyn, Selyfan, Bledric, Petroc, Culmin.

Of course the legendary founders of Wessex also had Brythonic names, i.e Cerdic and Cynric.

The name Morwenna is that of a Celtic Saint, the Latin form being Merewenna (according to Oliver Padel).

Another change that occurred after 1100AD was the word “pont” (bridge), which became “pons”. Hence Ponsford in Devon was of the ‘pont’ form in Domesday Book (1086AD).

There are few online sources of name origins, but it's hard to find anything as specific as an area within a country. The first link gives Ancient Celtic, Scottish, Welsh and Breton names - if that's any use to you.

http://www.behindthename.com/usage.php

http://www.behindthename.com/

http://www.behindthename.com/nmc/eng.php

http://www.babynames.co.uk/Name_origins.htm

Tibley: It's easy enough to find Cornish names, I guess the question I was getting at was whether Devonian Celtic names were any different.

Having found some names on some Ogham stones, I decided to extend the search to other inscribed stones.

These are often written in lastin but with Brythonic names.

A couple of examples are

"Igerni Fili Tigerni" (Igerni son of Tigerni) - from Lundy

and

"Nepkam Fili Condevi"

In fact I came across an interesting site which outlines the various insribed stones of Devon and surrounding area.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=-aVLVsCybM0C&pg=RA1-PA63&lpg=RA1-PA63&dq=british+%22inscribed+stones%22+devon&source=bl&ots=hRj0E3lqwB&sig=7gG56iWBEavaG0Z1q2P17PYIv9g&hl=en&ei=XF-CS8WLLYzm7AOv56jJBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=british%20%22inscribed%20stones%22%20devon&f=true

This gives some analysis of both British and Saxon stones in the area.

There is an interesting map on page 62 which shows the preponderence of Celtic stones in Devon, compared to Somerset and Dorset.

I would like to expand my comments on the link to inscribed stones (above), for those who may not have trawled through the contents.

The article was entitled the “Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture: Volume 7”, which is not the place I would have started a search if I were looking for a discussion on the Celtic British, but there you go…

I started looking at inscribed stones for some Devonian Celtic personal names, which I found, but I found a little more than just this.

Although the stones are often written in Latin - both Celtic and Saxon stones - but it appears there is enough of the native languages to tell us more than just some personal names.

There are a minimum of 17 Brythonic inscribed stones in Devon, compared to only one which is “clearly” Anglo-Saxon (in Braunton) - plus a handful of stones of questionable parentage! The Brythonic stones are very similar in style to those found in Cornwall, Wales and even Ireland.

The differences between Celt and Saxon stones are not just linguistic as the British and Saxon peoples followed different forms of Christianity at this time. The Celtic church looked west, the Anglo-Saxons to Rome.

The Brythonic stones are found throughout Devon, with one in West Somerset, and a handful (oddly) near Wareham in Eastern Dorset. On the other hand the Saxon stones dominate in eastern Somerset and points further east.

There is some debate about the age of these stones and I was drawn to comments about a study by Sims-Williams in 2003, where he used the relative timing of Celtic sound changes (and presumably the spelling used on the stones) to try to date the inscriptions. Although not all could be dated this way those that could tended to suggest some later dates than had been supposed. Further it is commented that the results of this study was broadly compatible with dates based on typologies of letter forms and similar.

What are the dates? Only a couple of examples are shown in the link but one of those is for Stowford and the date is no earlier than the ninth century. For comparison the one in West Somerset is dated as before 600AD.

Some pages are not shown to the casual web browser and it is a pity that not all of this part of the article is available on-line.

What are the specific sound changes that Sims-Williams was looking for and found? Unfortunately I could not find any references. Perhaps we need to look directly to his article?

Nevertheless this work provides some additional evidence of the survival of a Brythonic identity in Devon until a relatively late date – in terms of personal names, language, and (because of the differing nature of the stones themselves) in terms of religion.

The seems the stones can provide a linguistic record and show a pattern of Celtic language development - however limited the inscriptions are.

What the domination of Celtic stones in Devon (but not further east) indicates for the general populations is unclear, but at a minimum it would indicate the survival of an independent culture. The indications that a British ‘enclave’ was tolerated in east Dorset (at least for a while) is also interesting.

What is also interesting is what is not there. Why are there virtually no Saxon inscription stones in Devon? It is not as if the Brythonic ones flourished for a period, but were then superceded by the Saxon equivalent.

There is evidence of some Saxon influence in the later period, such as the occasional personal name which may (or may not) be Saxon or English, but virtually nothing that is indisputably just Saxon.

If Nick is writing about this period in history he might consider the impact of the interplay between the Celtic church and the Saxon equivalent.

The following site is dedicated to Celtic Inscription Stones

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/index/site_geog.html#devon

As you can see there are quite a few in Devon, heaps in Cornwall, but very few in the rest of "England" - surprisingly even in Cumbria.

The following is a list of names that I extracted from the Devon entries, which shows the name as written and the likely origin as given on the site

CELTIC BRITTONIC NAMES

Igerni
Tigerni
Valci
Fanini
Datuidoc
Conhinoc
Cavvdi
Gunglei
Conbevi

CELTIC GOIDELIC NAMES - showing an association with Ireland

Maccodecheti
Safaqquci
Qici
Enabarri

LATIN NAMES

Potit
Restuta/Resgueta - the only name known to be female (most are male)
Timi
Veddanas
Sabini
Poplici
Civili
Principi
Audeti
Neprani

NAMES OF UNKNOWN OR UNCLEAR ORIGIN - some may be female

Dap
Nicinsci
Caoci
Rini
Sagravni
Dobunni
Gorevs

The allegiances are not strightforward as the inscriptions often say things like X (Brittonic name) son of Y (Latin name) and vice versa.

Many names have the ubiquitous ending with the letter "i". In many "translations" I have seen these are dropped - so that Enabarri becomes Enabarr. V is often translated as W as well, so Cavvdi is sometimes translated as Cawdi.

I don't know if any of these real names are useful to Nick, but if you choose to use you may elect to lose the "i" as well, although the shorter names might then look odd.

With regards my earlier post on dating the stones linguistically, I have found an online (edited) version of Sims-Williams work.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=vn0g6ItICtUC&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=cawdi+britain&source=bl&ots=fa2Vekxl6g&sig=SgT40XstlfnNRHC_Ulc-txEfbvY&hl=en&ei=lcyES-P4BI2cswOoyZizDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=cawdi%20britain&f=false

It appears that Sims-Williams has based his phonetic changes on work by Jackson, who identified about 100 changes between 400 and 1200 AD and S-W numbered and ordered these and has looked for examples in the inscriptions. He refers to South West Brittonic (amongst other languages).

I am sure there is a lot of information in Sims-Williams article - but based on my brief read through it is very academic and as dry as a ships biscuit.

Whoops I should be embarrassed for sticking my ignorant and unhelpful oar in. Sorry. But I'm glad I stumbled upon this thread. It's really very interesting. I've learned things

Me too - I'm glad you two managed to find the same thread. I'm reading, but I have nothing useful to contribute so I'm staying in lurk mode.

It would seem that Ozzie Exile has just beaten me to it, as I was about to post the same reference to the UCL (CISP) database.

The period of interest seems to be from 400AD to 1100AD. In addition to the personal names contained in the database, there is a link to a guide to the database in pdf format. This includes a section on criteria for inclusion in the database (Chapter 2.1), which states:-
“The database is to include all ‘early medieval inscribed stone monuments from Celtic-speaking regions’ defined as follows:
All of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Dumnonia, Brittany but exclude:
- stones inscribed solely in runes (Anglian or Scandinavian)
- Roman period Celtic (Gaulish) inscriptions from the Continent
- Unambiguously Anglo-Saxon inscriptions from southern Scotland and the Welsh and Dumnonian marches

Included are inscriptions from elsewhere in England and France and the Channel Islands which are written in a Celtic language or are otherwise of distinctively ‘Celtic’ type”

The database also includes a map showing the locations of the inscribed stones, which Professor Stephen Oppenheimer has also included in his book “The Origins of the British” (figure 7.4, page 290). Apart from a very few exceptions, all of the Celtic inscribed stones in Britain are to be found in the Celtic-speaking regions defined above. It is interesting to note that if the geographic distribution of Celtic inscribed stones is compared with the geographic distribution of archaeological finds of Anglo-Saxon burials and pottery, there is virtually no overlap, implying separate cultures with a distinct boundary between the two (apart from the very few exceptions).

In the South West (and elsewhere in Britain) the boundary line also correlates precisely with the DNA record collected by Professor Bryan Sykes. The most marked Y-chromosome boundary in England is between the region that was Dumnonia and the rest of Southern England. In the South West (Dumnonia) the Oisin (R1b) haplogroup accounts for 78.2% of the male population, but this figure drops markedly to 57.7% in the rest of Southern England.

The high correlation between these stone monument, burial, pottery and DNA boundary lines would seem to indicate marked differences in culture and language during the period 400AD to 1100AD.

Tibley Bobley and Vip

Welcome to the thread. You are quite right that the subject is rather a specialist one, but I am glad that you find it interesting. Stick around.

Thanks Plym Exile. I certainly will

And I hope you'll stick around too!

Thanks for the real names, though I thought Dobunni was a tribal rather than a personal name.

I wasn't really intending to talk about Saxon names, since I figured they were outside the scope of this forum, but this thread was actually inspired by my discovery of a downloadable version of William George Searle's Onomasticon Anglo Saxonicum at http://www.archive.org/details/onomasticonangl00seargoog

It's a list of Anglo Saxon personal names compiled from the historical records. It's a 19th century work, so new documents may have been discovered since then, but at least the fact that it is merely a catalogue means that it is not subject to the flights of fancy that normally make Victorian history books less than reliable. You know what I'm talking about, the sort of book where the author presumes to know, say, exactly what Julius Caesar was thinking when he landed in 55BC.

The names are not indexed by county, so if you want to search for specifically Devonian names, you have to do it the hard way: typing "Devon" into the search box and then repeatedly clicking the Next button in order to scroll through them all.

Nick,

I think this might be a list of all personal names from Anglo-Saxon literature, rather than just Anglo-Saxon names.

For example Gerent (King of Dumnonia) appears.

Another name I noticed was Maccus, son of Anlaf, slayer of Eric the last king of the North. Sounds epic, but who was Eric??

With regards to Devon, a quick read through indicated a high proportion of dux, earls, landowners, and the like. Serfs do appear but less frequently than I would have thought. Perhaps not noteworthy enough?

Quite a few entries for Cornwall (most under the abbreviation Corn) and quite a few for Scotland as well.

Yes, you're right about it being all names from OE sources, not just OE names. Even Macbeth is in there! High-status individuals are better represented than serfs, as you say, and men are better represented than women. Such is the bias of the historical record from that time, unfortunately.