The Celtic languages are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages.
The Celts or Celtic peoples were a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia, identified by their use of Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. Major Celtic groups included the Gauls; the Celtiberians and Gallaeci of Iberia; the Britons and Gaels of Britain and Ireland; the Boii; and the Galatians. The relation between ethnicity, language and culture in the Celtic world is unclear and debated; for example over the ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and Ireland should be called Celts. In current scholarship, 'Celt' primarily refers to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to a single ethnic group.
Noricum is the Latin name for the kingdom or federation of tribes that included most of modern Austria and part of Slovenia. In the first century AD, it became a province of the Roman Empire. Its borders were the Danube to the north, Raetia and Vindelici to the west, Pannonia to the east and south-east, and Italia to the south. The kingdom was founded around 400 BC, and had its capital at the royal residence at Virunum on the Magdalensberg.
Lugus is a god of the Celtic pantheon. His name is rarely directly attested in inscriptions, but his importance can be inferred from place names and ethnonyms and status as king of the gods. His nature and attributes are deduced from the distinctive iconography of Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Mercury, who is widely believed to have been identified with Lugus, and from the quasi-mythological narratives involving his later cognates, Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes and Irish Lugh Lámhfhada.
Cisalpine Gaul was the name given, especially during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, to a region of land inhabited by Celts (Gauls), corresponding to what is now most of northern Italy.
In the localised Celtic polytheism practised in Great Britain, Sulis was a deity worshiped at the thermal spring of Bath. She was worshiped by the Romano-British as Sulis Minerva, whose votive objects and inscribed lead tablets suggest that she was conceived of both as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries.
The Lusitanians were a people living in the far west of the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding roughly to Central Portugal and some areas of modern-day Extremadura and Castilla y Leon, in Spain. After its conquest by the Roman Republic the land was subsequently incorporated as a Roman province named after them (Lusitania).
Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language, usually classified into the Italic subgroup, that was spoken by the Veneti people in ancient times in northeast Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po Delta and the southern fringe of the Alps, associated with the Este culture.
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and its speakers, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, including their society and Proto-Indo-European mythology. The studies cover where the language originated and how it spread. This article also lists Indo-European scholars, centres, journals and book series.
The Isère is a river in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. Its source, a glacier known as the Sources de l'Isère, lies in the Vanoise National Park in the Graian Alps of Savoie, near the ski resort in Val-d'Isère on the border with Italy. An important left-bank tributary of the Rhône, the Isère merges with it a few kilometers north of Valence.
Celtiberian or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic is an extinct Indo-European language of the Celtic branch spoken by the Celtiberians in an area of the Iberian Peninsula between the headwaters of the Douro, Tagus, Júcar and Turia rivers and the Ebro river. This language is directly attested in nearly 200 inscriptions dated to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, mainly in Celtiberian script, a direct adaptation of the northeastern Iberian script, but also in the Latin alphabet. The longest extant Celtiberian inscriptions are those on three Botorrita plaques, bronze plaques from Botorrita near Zaragoza, dating to the early 1st century BC, labeled Botorrita I, III and IV.
The Botorrita plaques are four bronze plaques discovered in Botorrita, near Zaragoza, Spain, dating to the late 2nd century BC, known as Botorrita I, II, III and IV.
Primitive Irish or Archaic Irish, also called Proto-Goidelic, is the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages, and the ancestor of all languages within this family.
Lusitanian was an Indo-European Paleohispanic language. There has been support for either a connection with the ancient Italic languages or Celtic languages. It is known from only six sizeable inscriptions, dated from c. 1 CE, and numerous names of places (toponyms) and of gods (theonyms). The language was spoken in the territory inhabited by Lusitanian tribes, from the Douro to the Tagus rivers, territory that today falls in central Portugal and western Spain.
Châteaubleau is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne département in the Île-de-France région in north-central France.
Common Brittonic, also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany.
Gaulish is an extinct Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul. In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.
The Chamalières tablet is a lead tablet, six by four centimeters, that was discovered in 1971 in Chamalières, France, at the Source des Roches excavation. The tablet is dated somewhere between 50 BC and 50 AD. The text is written in the Gaulish language, with cursive Latin letters. With 396 letters grouped in 47 words, it is the third-longest extant text in Gaulish, giving it great importance in the study of this language.
The Larzac tablet is a lead curse tablet found in 1983 in the commune of L'Hospitalet-du-Larzac, Aveyron, southern France. It is now kept in the museum of Millau. It bears one of the most important inscriptions in the Gaulish language.
