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By Root 563 0

fish, full, over, before) turn up still in modern Irish Gaelic as athair, iasc, lán, for, roimh. The same phenomenon can be seen in some of the remaining vestiges of Gaulish or British: Cambo-ritum, the British name of Lackford in Suffolk, seems to mean ‘Crooked Ford’, the last element, like rhyd in Welsh, meaning ‘ford’ (cf. Greek poros, Latin portus). And it is conjectured that the source for the name of the notorious ‘Hercynian forest’ mentioned by Caesar and Tacitus (now the Black Forest, but extending all the way across the German highlands to modern Leipzig) must have been a Celtic speaker who dropped his Ps: if its real name were Perkun this would make it the same as some Germanic words for mountain (Gothic fairguni, Old English firgen), but also allow a nice tie-up with the origin of the old Latin word quercus, ‘oak’. It is natural to derive this from *perquus (cf. known parallels such as quinque, ‘five’, from *penque, coquo, ‘cook’, from *pequo). And then it looks very like the name of the Lithuanian god Perkūnas, known for his association with oak trees!*

In other ways, Celtic languages of the period are remarkably like Latin. The system of inflexion for Gaulish nouns was just a little more complex than the Latin one, with seven cases to Latin’s six, but tantalisingly close to it. So, for example, the noun EQVOS, ‘horse’, has the genitive EQVI, ‘horse’s’—the very same words in Latin and Gaulish. ‘He has given to the mothers of Nîmes’ comes out as DEDE MATREBO NAMAUSIKABO; in Latin it could be *DEDIT MATRIBUS NEMAUSICABUS. An everyday piece of authentic Gaulish could be very close to its Latin equivalent: take for examples two typically frisky inscriptions on spindle whorls: MONI GNATHA GABI BVθθVTON IMON and NATA VIMPI CURMI DA would translate to MEA NATA, CAPE MENTVLAM MEAM and NATA BELLA, CERVISIAM DA: ‘my girl, take my todger’ and ‘pretty girl, give some ale’.22

On a modern estimate, these divergences would represent something like one and a half millennia of separate development, or sixty generations. Although both were speaking variants of what had once been the same language, this was enough time for very different traditions to have developed in each variant.

Celtic literacy

The earliest known Celtic inscriptions (from c.575 to 1 BC) are found in the southern foothills of the Alps near Lakes Como and Maggiore. This was the home of the Lepontii. Their language is hence known as Lepontic, and is written in a script, the ‘Lugano’ alphabet, evidently borrowed from the Etruscans, who were the dominant literate people in northern Italy.* The texts are usually only two or three words long, which can make interpretation difficult, and it is likely that most of the words are proper names.

No classical author characterised the Lepontii as Celts (despite vague rumours of a very early Gallic settlement of this region in Polybius and Livy).23 Nevertheless, there are grounds for viewing Lepontic as a form of Celtic. It seems to have lost P, having uer- and latu- in place of Indo-European uper-, ‘over’, and platu-, ‘flat’; it also has some proper names very reminiscent of Gauls, for example alKouinos, like Alkovindos, which would contain the root windo-, ‘white’, seen also in Winchester (once more clearly called Vin-dobona) and Guinevere.

Over four hundred years later, from about 150 BC, the same Lugano alphabet was used in mirror image (now left to right), a little farther south round Novara, to record a more clearly Gaulish language. This would be the written footprint of the Insubrians, who had invaded the north of Italy in the historic period. Livy (v.34) remarks that the city of Mediolanum (Milan—Gaulish for ‘mid-plain’) was founded by Gaulish incomers, pleased to find that the name Insubrian (familiar to them as a cantonal name in their homeland across the Alps) was already established in the neighbourhood.

This typical inscription reads:

TANOTALIKNOI Dannotalos-son

KUITOS Quintos

LEKATOS the legate

ANOKOPOKIOS Andocombogios

SETUPOKIOS Setubogios

ESANEKOTI (sons) of Essandecotos

ANAREUIZEOS Andareuiseos