Talk:Names of the Celts

Merge?

• No. this is about ethnonyms, not pronunciation. --Wetman (talk) 21:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

No influence from the French?

Charles Harrington Elster, in his book, 'The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations' disagrees. He specifically says that the word came to English through the French, and that the K pronunciation (with the C spelling) is the simple perpetuation of a Latin pedanticism. Does anyone have further information on the etymology of the word? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.113.198 (talk) 17:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Boston Celtics

I know that since it's a proper name for a basketball team this technically doesn't matter but it's been annoying the hell out of me: shouldn't they be called the Boston Celts? Vicious203 (talk) 14:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

et cetera

Maybe et cetera ought to not be the last word in that sentence in order to avoid confusion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.244.87.207 (talk) 05:35, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Inconsistency of style and attitude?

Early in the article it says that, "The English word [celt] is modern, attested from 1707". Later it says, "the term 'Celt' is probably too deep-rooted to be replaced and — what is more important — it has the definition that we choose to give it." These views I think are widely accepted in academia.

Yet in the middle we hear about, "Another area of Europe, inhabited by the historical celts ... retains a strong Celtic cultural identity and acknowledgement of their own Celtic past." Etc etc. Suddenly academia seems forgotten and we have a Wikipedian who not only knows who has and who has not got a celtic past and history, but can judge whether or not they acknowledge this properly themselves. There is not a single citation in the section called "Modern uses". Is it right to suggest that the whole section should be replaced by something more sound? --Nigelj (talk) 17:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

a modest proposal

When I was a schoolboy (60s) everybody (around Chicago) said "selt", I never heard "kelt". I have kept my old habit, which curiously seems to actually annoy some people. Anyway, when people write "Celt" but say "Kelt", it just makes our poor English language more confusing; we could do with less words like "pretty" or "women", not more. So, if you mean "Kelt", why not write KELT? If I see it that way, I'll pronounce it "kelt" too! This latter pronunciation has indeed been gaining ground, and that's because people have changed their (linguistic) behavior (I think it all started with some snobs who wanted to sound more like German professors, but who knows--the French have never fallen for it); so, why don't y'all change your spelling behavior too, then everything will be simpler, and when old farts like me die off, everybody will say "kelt" and write "Kelt" and that nasty old "selt" will be as forgotten as "piss-eez" (the former traditional pronunciation of "Pisces"). Jakob37 (talk) 15:34, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The OED says /selt/ and /kelt/ are equally acceptable. As long as the OED keeps saying so, you are perfectly free to pronounce the word either way without the need to apologize to anyone. --dab (𒁳) 12:13, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

For that matter, you're perfectly free to pronounce the word however you like regardless of what the OED says. +Angr 11:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly, I have encountered the alternative spelling Keltic in older (linguistic) literature. I agree that the habit to write Celtic and say Keltic is confusing, and may be a recent affection in academia; the pronunciation with /s/ is indeed the traditional one, as far as I'm aware. (Per Traditional English pronunciation of Latin, unless I'm completely mistaken, the pronunciation of Pisces with short [ɪ] is indeed the only historically correct one – I suspect that the replacement of [ɪ] by [aɪ] is a phonetic bowdlerisation, probably starting in American English, motivated by the phonetic association with piss, similar to how the pronunciation of names such as Cockburn is frequently garbled by their bearers in order to avoid unwelcome associations; ridiculous, considering that other modern language communities are not this sensitive with regard to accidental sound similarities.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:51, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes, now I see that the [k] pronunciation was already advocated in the 19th century by Celtic nationalists and revivalists. This is probably inspired by the use of ‹c› in the orthographies of modern Celtic languages, which does not show a sibilant pronunciation before front vowels, and instead is always a velar stop of some kind. In Welsh or Manx, pronuncing celt- as /kɛlt/ is totally fine and indeed the only correct way, but in English this makes no sense because it conflicts with the long-established orthographic convention distinguishing "hard" and "soft" C. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Dubious

There are two tags in the first line of the article saying that Celtus/Celti are only 'dubious' Latin bases for the word Celt. Who disputes this? On what grounds? If no one can come up with a realistic dispute, then we can remove the tags. --Nigelj (talk) 13:15, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the root Celt- is disputed, but rather the -i and -us ending. Is there a Latin corpus somehwere where we could check forms? Akerbeltz (talk) 13:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, both Lewis and Short and the Oxford Latin Dictionary list only Celtae. If Celtus or Celti were attested anywhere in Classical Latin, it would certainly be in these dictionaries. Perhaps it's attested in Medieval Latin, but I really don't think it is in Classical Latin. +Angr 14:20, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

It's a bit shaky but the Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum only has one incident of Celtus and none of Celti [1]. Delete? Akerbeltz (talk) 15:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

My schoolboy Latin is not authoritative by any means, but I would have thought that if we have the root celt-, then we could have celta and celtus for the masculine and feminine singulars and celtae and celti for the respective plurals. The other possibility would be that celta is a 1st declension noun only in both masculine and feminine meanings so that only celta and celtae exist (sing. and plural). In either case we should expect to find celtum, celtorum etc also in use, depending on meaning. --Nigelj (talk) 21:51, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

In theory that is correct but it's also true that a language does not normally have *all* possible combinations of root + suffix. For example, English has no word such as *unpregnant or (at least historically) late-ish (which used to be restricted to colours mostly. So just because Celtus is a possible formation doesn't mean it actually existed. Akerbeltz (talk) 22:40, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from the dictionaries, Celta is a 1st-declension masculine noun like agricola, and the corresponding adjective is Celticus, -a, -um. However, the noun is actually only ever attested in the plural, Celtae, -arum, which isn't surprising as the Roman authors were far more likely to talk about the Celts in general than about an individual Celt. If they did want to talk about an individual Celt, they would have referred to him by name (e.g. Vercingetorix), or probably would have said something like vir Celtarum/femina Celtarum. +Angr 01:14, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll go along with that. Shall we delete -us and -i? Can we cite one of your dictionaries? Or shall we put something in our own words about 1st declension only into ref tags? --Nigelj (talk) 18:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I've deleted -us and -i, as well as the Greek singulars Keltos and Keltēs since even if they're attested (I haven't checked) it's just TMI for a parenthetical tangent. I don't think a cite is really necessary if no one doubts the existence of the word Celtae. +Angr 19:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this. The tags were mine, and you have interpreted their motivation correctly, but I couldn't be bothered to look into it myself at the time. --dab (𒁳) 12:10, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Some input regarding the meaning of the name "Celt"...

Mark Kurlansky says in his book "Salt: A World History" (2002, ISBN 0802713734) that the name "Celts" is derived from the ancient Greek word for salt (hals), and actually means "The Salt People". Just thought I'd throw that in, because I haven't seen in mentioned anywhere here. His book is referenced in the articles for Salt and History of salt, BTW, and I'm quoting from the Wikipedia article on Salt:

"Salzach literally means "salt water" and Salzburg "salt city", both taking their names from the Germanic root for salt, salz. The root hal(l)- also gave us Gaul, the Roman exonym for the Celts, Halle and Schwäbisch Hall in Germany, Halych in Ukraine, and Galicia in Spain: this list of places named for Celtic saltworks is far from complete."

--109.186.190.74 (talk) 19:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Zi

I don't know who this Mark Kurlansky guy is, but he obviously knows nothing about etymology. The word "Celt" is not related to the Indo-European word for "salt", or any of the other placenames mentioned above. The only ones of them that have the word for "salt" in them are Salzach and Salzburg; the others don't have any word for "salt" in them either. +Angr 20:09, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

None of the other Kurlansky books I've read have anything as hair-raising in them and on the whole are reasonably well-researched (thinking of Cod and the Basque History of the World). Either way, I agree with Angr, ignore. Akerbeltz (talk) 22:19, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, I was just adding what the guy wrote in his book. I saw the book referenced here, so I thought it's considered a reliable source in Wikipedia's eyes... It was quite fascinating and enlightening as well. BTW, Angr, I just quoted here from the Wikipedia entry on salt, so I don't really get why you disregard it as BS. There's also a Wikipedia article on Mark Kurlansky, so you can read about him, if you don't know who he is. 93.173.9.133 (talk) 00:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Zi

Oh the bit about salt place names is fairly mainstream, wasn't doubting that. Just the connection to the word Celt, which for starters, first appears as an exonym used by the Greeks. We don't even know if the Celts of antiquity ever saw themselves as some form of group overall. Akerbeltz (talk) 08:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I was doubting it though, in particular for Gaul, Halych, and Galicia, all of which begin with etymological "g" and therefore bear no similarity at all to the PIE or Proto-Celtic word for "salt". For Halle and Schwäbisch Hall I'd like to see evidence that the s > h sound change that happened in Brythonic also happened in Continental Celtic before I believe those names are from the "salt" word. +Angr 16:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Fair point. I just checked on the German Wiki and they're refuting the Hallstatt/salt thing as folk etymology and deriving it from Germanic hallan "salt crust" instead. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

what do you mean, "instead"? Germanic hallan "salt crust" is a long-standing etymology for placenames like "Halle", and also "Hallstadt". This is the (debatable) hypothesis that Kurlansky managed to garble beyond recognition. This quote

"The root hal(l)- also gave us Gaul, the Roman exonym for the Celts, Halle and Schwäbisch Hall in Germany, Halych in Ukraine, and Galicia in Spain: this list of places named for Celtic saltworks is far from complete"

fails at many levels. The "root hal(l) is Greek, not Indo-European, and would never result in Germanic hall even if the Germans had loaned the word from Greek. Second, if the Germanic word hal(l), whatever its origin, has given rise to Halle etc, it certainly never gave rise to either Gaul or Galicia. Thirdly, he does not mean Gaul, which isn't the Roman exonym for the Celts, he means Gallia. Gaul is really from Germanic walh-.

In other words, the book by Kurlansky should be used for fuel. Unless you already know what he is talking about, you have no hope of unravelling what exactly he heard and in which way he misunderstood it. --dab (𒁳) 12:00, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

"Used for fuel", heh. The book might be perfectly good as a history of salt, it's just worthless for linguistics. Gaul is from Germanic walh-? You mean it doesn't come from Gallia??? —Angr (talk) 12:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

the similarity is striking, of course, but French Gaule "Gaul" is distinct from French (pays des) Galle(s) "Wales", and English Gaul is from Gaule. Gaule is from *Waule like garde is from *warde --dab (𒁳) 12:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I just read about it at Gaul#Name. Now that I think about it, of course it would have had to be Jaille; I just never thought about it before. As for Kurlansky, our article calls him a "journalist and writer of general interest non-fiction", so he seems to know as much about language as other journalists and writers of general interest non-fiction, like Bill Bryson. —Angr (talk) 12:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

my gripe is not with journalists not knowing, but with journalists failing to look up information that is readily available in standard reference works. You should think it is a journalist's job to be able to look things up. But reality taught me that this is expecting too much. --dab (𒁳) 12:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The name Hallstatt

The German toponyms in Hall- have long been recognized as being somehow connected with salt. The question is just, what is its etymology. Connection with Greek hal- immediately suggest itself, but probably isn't tenable, certainly not via PIE, and hardly via a loan. Here is what Jacob Grimm has to say on the question:

Halle: der platz für die bereitung und aufbewahrung des salzes. man hat geglaubt, dieses halle von deutschem ursprunge völlig lösen und ihm auf grund des kymrischen hal salz eine keltische abkunft zulegen zu müssen; indes Diefenbach in Jahns jahrb. 1858 s. 751 fg. hat uns belehrt, dasz dieses wort, sowie die nach ihm gebildeten ortsnamen Halle, Hallein, das echt deutsche halle ist, hier auf den offenen schuppen in dem die salzwirker arbeiten, κατ' ἐξοχήν bezogen, wofür auch die zusammensetzung salzhalle neben salzkothe (Frisch 1, 401c) spricht: 'komet ouch eine clage usz der halle umb kothstete .. so sollen die bornemeister mit den scheppen zcu hand darczu gehen miteinander.' Hallisches thalrecht aus d. 14. jahrh. in den mittheil. des thür.-sächs. alterthumsvereins bd. 11 s. 441; 'armen knechten die sich in der halle vorerbeithet haben.' s. 442; 'vor der .. bornknechte häuser, die nicht gar zu weit von der halle oder den thale gelegen seind.' Hohndorf beschreibg. des salzwerks zu Halle in Sachsen, neu von Dreyhaupt s. 35. in Baiern und Schwaben steht dafür das neutr. hall. das ungewöhnliche neutrale geschlecht des wortes scheint durch allmähliche kürzung eines compositums veranlaszt, ahd. hiesz salina halhûs (Graff 4, 1055), das hat sich später in Schwaben zu halles verflüchtigt (Schmid 255, woneben haal n. sowol den platz der salzsiedehäuser, als auch die siederschaft selbst bezeichnet) und ist in der form hall noch weiter zurück gegangen, so dasz von dem nun ganz gewichenen haus nur noch das geschlecht zeugt.

in brief, connection with Welsh (not Greek) hal was suggested, but is without merit. This is simply the word "hall", but in a specialized sense of "a hall built above the salt quarry" (as for obvious reasons you don't want rain in your salt).

This has been known since 1858, and has been widely available on the mass market in the standard German dictionary since 1961, so Mark Kurlansky (b. 1948) doesn't really have an excuse for ignoring it. --dab (𒁳) 12:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Insular Celts

The 1707 use by Lhuyd is important because Lhuyd was the first to recognize the linguistic group. But "Celtic" could already include the Insular Celts in 17th century usage, as illustrated by Milton's 1667 utmost Isles, clearly intended to the British Isles. After all, the close relation of the Galli and the Britanni is evident even in classical literature. --dab (𒁳) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Etymologies

No one knows the correct etymologies of the names Keltoi/Celt, Gallia and Galatai, but we know the PIE roots and "they" say: "These names must come from those roots..." It's like that! (but are they the correct etymologies?) Gallia; -ia means "land" so their names were Gall. Gall and Gael look similar! What are the correct etymologies of Gaidheal and Goidhel? Böri (talk) 09:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but that didn't make any sense to me, what do you mean again? Gàidheal/Goid(h)el are derived from Brythonic Gwyddel. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:16, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Böri, you have made abundantly clear in numerous instances that you do not have the first clue about linguistics or etymology. Please try to find an area of interest in which you have some basic education and try to contribute there. --dab (𒁳) 10:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

These are not correct etymologies! "They" say: "it may be like that!" Show me an ancient source! Wiki says: probably, maybe, but there are several such roots of various meanings, might be, seems to be, etc. (& I know Latin and Ancient Greek) Böri (talk) 10:52, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

While we do not know the original meanings of the names you've listed (despite the existence of plausible conjectures), we can tell that Celtae, Gallus, Gaul and Gael, despite their superficial similarity, have completely unconnected origins. How can we tell that? By tracing them back as far as we can, so that we have some idea what language they are originally from, and by using the insights of historical phonology. This is probably the single most powerful instrument in etymology (and historical linguistics in general) we have, although morphology and various other tools are also important, and because it allows linguists to predict developments and thus actually test claims, it separates etymological speculation, where "anything goes" and you have no way to prove or refute suggestions, from scientific etymology, where many proposals can be shown not to work. That you don't realise the importance of the central tool of historical linguists shows that you have no idea about the field and its methods, hence dab's dismissive remark. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:51, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

German term *Wahl

There is a term in the Celtic languages that is close to the German terms, Gall in Breton, which means "non-breton speaker" and was used for the people who spoke Gallo in eastern Brittany, and which is still used to designate France Bro-C'hall (with a mutation) or galleg which means "French". It exists also in Irish, since I heard yesterday the term of Galltacht refering to the territory where English is spoken as a primary language.

I don't know if the terms are really related, but I think so. I'll make some researches to check, but if anyone knows anything upon this subject, would it be interesting to add it to the article ? It seems to be a common concept of celtic and Germanic people to use this term for speakers of another language.

A galon - Lekemok (talk) 14:34, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Breton Gall is a direct borrowing of Latin Gallia/Gallus (the Latin name for Gaul/a Gaulish man) and is etymologically unrelated to Germanic *Walh- (a borrowing of the Celtic ethnic name Uolcae). Cagwinn (talk) 15:36, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

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Probably true, but looks like OR and subjective

Under "Modern Use", it currently says:
Thus, in a discussion of "the word Celt," a contributor to The Celt states, "The Greeks called us Keltoi,"[29] expressing a position of ethnic essentialism that extends "we" to include both 19th-century Irish people and the Danubian Κελτοί of Herodotus
Everything after ref 29 looks to me like OR, and isn't supported by any reference. (In fact, the reference was originally at the end of the sentence: I moved it to more accurately indicate what actually came from the source). It's probably true (or true-ish), but also seems a bit more judgemental than is warranted, and the link to "ethnic essentialism" doesn't actually point to anything informative (just redirects to the "see also" section at the end of Essentialism) Iapetus (talk) 15:21, 10 August 2020 (UTC)