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Celtic toponymy is the study of place names wholly or partially of Celtic origin. These names are found throughout continental Europe, Britain , Ireland , Anatolia and, latterly, through various other parts of the globe not originally occupied by Celts .
The study of place names is known as toponymy, and it can tell us a lot about who held power in an area and the amount of influence they had over the local language.
The place-names of Scotland fall into two great divisions, Celtic and Teutonic, representing the types of languages which have been spoken over the whole or a part of the country within historic times. Of these the Celtic division is the older and the larger.
May 14, 2024 · Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is a Celtic language taxonomically located within the Indo-European family of languages. It forms part of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, along with Irish and...
- 1.1 General remarksThe English language is the only language relevant to the United Kingdom as a whole. In certain parts of the United Kingdom, oth...
- 2.1 General remarksEnglish is a Germanic language taxonomically located within the Indo-European family of languages. Its origins stem from the Ang...
- 4.1 General remarksWelsh (Cymraeg) is a Celtic language taxonomically located within the Indo-European family of languages. It forms part of the Br...
- 5.1 General remarksApart from English, Gaelic and Welsh, three other languages are also very well established in the United Kingdom and are current...
- 6.1 General remarksThere is no national names authority in the United Kingdom. Instead, the geographical names as portrayed on hard-copy and digita...
- 7.1 Ordnance SurveyThe Ordnance Survey is the official mapping organisation of Great Britain and its products carry standardized geographical names...
- 8.1 Gaelic glossaryA full glossary of Gaelic appellatives, adjectives and other words relevant to geographical names is too lengthy for inclusion i...
- A full set of abbreviations encountered in official mapping of Great Britain is too lengthy for inclusion in this document. Instead such a set can...
- 10.1 Timeline By about the 11th century AD England and Scotland had each become a kingdom, each with a geographical extent recognisable today. In t...
Ultimately, most of the toponyms derive from the Celtic, North and West Germanic and Italic (including Romance) branches of the Indo-European language family, although there is evidence of some Pre-Indo-European languages.
The principal substrate of British toponyms is thus Celtic in origin, and more specifically Brittonic ('British'), ancestral to modern Welsh and more distantly related to the Goidelic languages of Ireland and Scotland. The oldest place-names in England appear to be the names of rivers, many of which are interpreted as being Brittonic in origin.
The introductory Chapter 1 (pp. 1–15) summarises previous work on ancient Celtic toponymy and sets out the criteria via which Sims-Williams identifies names as Celtic, the most important of which are the presence of regular Celtic sound changes and cognation with ancient, medieval, or modern Celtic etyma.
