Etymology of London

Last updated

A tablet from c. 65 AD, reading "Londinio Mogontio"- "In London, to Mogontius" Londinio Mogontio.jpg
A tablet from c. 65 AD, reading "Londinio Mogontio"- "In London, to Mogontius"

The name of London is derived from a word first attested, in Latinised form, as Londinium . By the first century CE, this was a commercial centre in Roman Britain.

Contents

The etymology of the name is uncertain. There is a long history of mythicising etymologies, such as the twelfth-century Historia Regum Britanniae asserting that the city's name is derived from the name of King Lund who once controlled the city. However, in recent times a series of alternative theories have also been proposed. As of 2017, the trend in scholarly publications supports derivation from a Brittonic form *Londonjon. [1] [2]

Attested forms

Richard Coates, in the 1998 article where he published his own theory of the etymology, lists all the known occurrences of the name up to around the year 900, in Greek, Latin, British and Anglo-Saxon. [3] Most of the older sources begin with Londin- (Λονδίνιον, Londino, Londinium etc.), though there are some in Lundin-. Later examples are mostly Lundon- or London-, and all the Anglo-Saxon examples have Lunden- with various terminations. He observes that the modern spelling with <o> derives from a medieval writing habit of avoiding <u> between letters composed of minims.

The earliest written mention of London occurs in a letter discovered in London in 2016. Dated AD 65–80, it reads Londinio Mogontio which translates to "In London, to Mogontius". [4] [5] [6] [7] Mogontio, Mogontiacum is also the Celtic name of the German city Mainz.

Phonology

Coates (1998) asserts that "It is quite clear that these vowel letters in the earliest forms [viz., Londinium, Lundinium], both <o> and <u>, represent phonemically long vowel sounds". He observes that the ending in Latin sources before 600 is always -inium, which points to a British double termination -in-jo-n.

However, it has long been observed that the proposed Common Brittonic name *Londinjon cannot give either the known Anglo-Saxon form Lunden, or the Welsh form Llundein. Following regular sound changes in the two languages, the Welsh name would have been *Lunnen or similar, and Old English would be *Lynden via i-mutation. [8]

Coates (1998) tentatively accepts the argument by Jackson (1938) [9] that the British form was -on-jo-n, with the change to -inium unexplained. Coates speculates further that the first -i- could have arisen by metathesis of the -i- in the last syllable of his own suggested etymon (see below).

Peter Schrijver (2013) by way of explaining the medieval forms Lunden and Llundein considers two possibilities:

Schrijver therefore concludes that the name of Londinium underwent phonological changes in a local dialect (either British Celtic or British Latin) and that the recorded medieval forms in Welsh and Anglo-Saxon would have been derived from that dialectal pronunciation.

Proposed etymologies

Celtic

Coates says (p. 211) that "The earliest non-mythic speculation ... centred on the possibility of deriving London from Welsh Llyn din, supposedly 'lake fort'. But llyn derives from British *lind-, which is incompatible with all the early attestations. [3] Another suggestion, published in The Geographical Journal in 1899, is that the area of London was previously settled by Belgae who named their outposts after townships in Gallia Belgica. Some of these Belgic toponyms have been attributed to the namesake of London including Limé , Douvrend , and Londinières . [10]

H. D'Arbois de Jubainville suggested in 1899 that the name meant Londino's fortress. [11] But Coates argues that there is no such personal name recorded, and that D'Arbois' suggested etymology for it (from Celtic *londo-, 'fierce') would have a short vowel. Coates notes that this theory was repeated by linguists up to the 1960s, and more recently still in less specialist works. It was revived in 2013 by Peter Schrijver, who suggested that the sense of the proto-Indo-European root *lendh- ('sink, cause to sink'), which gave rise to the Celtic noun *londos ('a subduing'), survived in Celtic. Combined with the Celtic suffix *-injo- (used to form singular nouns from collective ones), this could explain a Celtic form *londinjon 'place that floods (periodically, tidally)'. This, in Schrijver's reading, would more readily explain all the Latin, Welsh, and English forms. [1] Similar approaches to Schrijver's have been taken by Theodora Bynon, who in 2016 supported a similar Celtic etymology, while demonstrating that the place-name was borrowed into the West Germanic ancestor-language of Old English, not into Old English itself. [2]

Coates (1998) proposes a Common Brittonic form of either *Lōondonjon or *Lōnidonjon, which would have become *Lūndonjon and hence Lūndein or Lūndyn. An advantage of the form *Lōnidonjon is that it could account for Latin Londinium by metathesis to *Lōnodinjon. The etymology of this *Lōondonjon would however lie in pre-Celtic Old European hydronymy, from a hydronym *Plowonida, which would have been applied to the Thames where it becomes too wide to ford, in the vicinity of London. The settlement on its banks would then be named from the hydronym with the suffix -on-jon, giving *Plowonidonjon and Insular Celtic *Lowonidonjon. According to this approach, the name of the river itself would be derived from the Indo-European roots *plew- "to flow, swim; boat" and *nejd- "to flow", found in various river names around Europe. Coates does admit that compound names are comparatively rare for rivers in the Indo-European area, but they are not entirely unknown. [3] Lacey Wallace describes the derivation as "somewhat tenuous". [12]

Non-Celtic

Among the first scientific explanations was one by Giovanni Alessio in 1951. [3] [13] He proposed a Ligurian rather than a Celtic origin, with a root *lond-/lont- meaning 'mud' or 'marsh'. Coates' major criticisms are that this does not have the required long vowel (an alternative form Alessio proposes, *lōna, has the long vowel, but lacks the required consonant), and that there is no evidence of Ligurian in Britain.

Jean-Gabriel Gigot in a 1974 article discusses the toponym of Saint-Martin-de-Londres, a commune in the French Hérault département. Gigot derives this Londres from a Germanic root *lohna, and argues that the British toponym may also be from that source. [14] But a Germanic etymology is rejected by most specialists. [15]

The earliest account of the toponym's derivation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Historia Regum Britanniae , the name is described as originating from King Lud, who seized the city Trinovantum and ordered it to be renamed in his honour as Kaerlud. This eventually developed into Karelundein and then London. However, Geoffrey's work contains many fanciful suppositions about place-name derivation and the suggestion has no basis in linguistics. [16]

Other fanciful theories over the years have been:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brittonic languages</span> Celtic subfamily including Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Cumbric

The Brittoniclanguages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodoric</span> Name list

Theodoric is a Germanic given name. First attested as a Gothic name in the 5th century, it became widespread in the Germanic-speaking world, not least due to its most famous bearer, Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.

The toponymy of England derives from a variety of linguistic origins. Many English toponyms have been corrupted and broken down over the years, due to language changes which have caused the original meanings to be lost. In some cases, words used in these place-names are derived from languages that are extinct, and of which there are no known definitions. Place-names may also be compounds composed of elements derived from two or more languages from different periods. The majority of the toponyms predate the radical changes in the English language triggered by the Norman Conquest, and some Celtic names even predate the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the first millennium AD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Londinium</span> Settlement established on the current site of the City of London around 43–50 AD

Londinium, also known as Roman London, was the capital of Roman Britain during most of the period of Roman rule. Most twenty-first century historians think that it was originally a settlement established shortly after the Claudian invasion of Britain, on the current site of the City of London around 47–50 AD, but some defend an older view that the city originated in a defensive enclosure constructed during the Claudian invasion in 43 AD. Its earliest securely-dated structure is a timber drain of 47 AD. It sat at a key ford at the River Thames which turned the city into a road nexus and major port, serving as a major commercial centre in Roman Britain until its abandonment during the 5th century.

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as a group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English.

The Gewisse were a tribe or clan of Anglo-Saxon England, historically assumed to have been based in the upper Thames region around Dorchester on Thames. The Gewisse are one of the direct precursors of modern-day England, being the origin of its predecessor states according to Saxon legend.

<i>*Walhaz</i> Proto-Germanic word for Roman or Romanized peoples

*Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word meaning 'foreigner', or more specifically 'Roman', 'Romance-speaker' or '(romanized) Celt', and survives in the English words of 'Wales/Welsh' and 'Cornwall.' The term was used by the ancient Germanic peoples to describe inhabitants of the former Roman Empire, who were largely romanised and spoke Latin languages. The adjectival form is attested in Old Norse valskr, meaning 'French'; Old High German walhisk, meaning 'Romance'; New High German welsch, used in Switzerland and South Tyrol for Romance speakers; Dutch Waals 'Walloon'; Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning 'Brythonic'. The forms of these words imply that they are descended from a Proto-Germanic form *walhiska-.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Celtic language</span> Ancestor of the Celtic languages

Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celtic is generally thought to have been spoken between 1300 and 800 BC, after which it began to split into different languages. Proto-Celtic is often associated with the Urnfield culture and particularly with the Hallstatt culture. Celtic languages share common features with Italic languages that are not found in other branches of Indo-European, suggesting the possibility of an earlier Italo-Celtic linguistic unity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celtic Britons</span> Ancient Celtic people of Great Britain

The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.

"English and Welsh" is J. R. R. Tolkien's inaugural O'Donnell Memorial Lecture of 21 October 1955. The lecture sheds light on Tolkien's conceptions of the connections of race, ethnicity, and language.

Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.

Alan is a masculine given name in the English and Breton languages. Its surname form is Aland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lloegyr</span>

Lloegyr is the medieval Welsh name for a region of Britain (Prydain). The exact borders are unknown, but some modern scholars hypothesize it ran south and east of a line extending from the Humber Estuary to the Severn Estuary, exclusive of Cornwall and Devon. The people of Lloegyr were called Lloegyrwys without distinction of ethnicity, the term applying to both Britons and Anglo-Saxons.

The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.

Peter Schrijver is a Dutch linguist. He is a professor of Celtic languages at Utrecht University and a researcher of ancient Indo-European linguistics. He worked previously at Leiden University and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

The Goidelic substrate hypothesis refers to the hypothesized language or languages spoken in Ireland before the arrival of the Goidelic languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insular Celts</span> Speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany

The Insular Celts were speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany. The term is mostly used for the Celtic peoples of the isles up until the early Middle Ages, covering the British–Irish Iron Age, Roman Britain and Sub-Roman Britain. They included the Celtic Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.

<i>Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages</i> 2014 book by Peter Schrijver

Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages is a 2014 scholarly book by the Dutch linguist Peter Schrijver, published by Routledge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celtic language decline in England</span> Linguistic change in the first millennium CE

Prior to the 5th century AD, most people in Great Britain spoke the Brythonic languages, but these numbers declined sharply throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, when Brythonic languages were displaced by the West Germanic dialects that are now known collectively as Old English.

References

  1. 1 2 Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages , Routledge Studies in Linguistics, 13 (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 57.
  2. 1 2 Theodora Bynon, 'London's Name', Transactions of the Philological Society, 114:3 (2016), 281–97, doi: 10.1111/1467-968X.12064.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Coates, Richard (1998). "A new explanation of the name of London". Transactions of the Philological Society. 96 (2): 203–229. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.00027.
  4. ↑ "Earliest written reference to London found" Archived 10 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine , on Current Archaeology, 1 June 2016. Retrieved on 26 January 2018.
  5. ↑ "UK's oldest hand-written document 'at Roman London dig'" Archived 13 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine , on BBC News, 1 June 2016. Retrieved on 26 January 2018.
  6. ↑ "Oldest handwritten documents in UK unearthed in London dig" Archived 31 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine , in The Guardian, 1 June 2016. Retrieved on 26 January 2018.
  7. ↑ "Oldest reference to Roman London found in new tube station entrance" Archived 27 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine , on IanVisits, 1 June 2016. Retrieved on 2022-11-27.
  8. ↑ Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages (2013), p. 57.
  9. ↑ Jackson, Kenneth H. (1938). "Nennius and the 28 cities of Britain". Antiquity. 12: 44–55. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00013405. S2CID   163506021.
  10. ↑ "The Geographical Journal". The Geographical Journal. 1899.
  11. ↑ D'Arbois de Jubainville, H (1899). La Civilisation des Celtes et celle de l'épopée homérique (in French). Paris: Albert Fontemoing.
  12. ↑ Wallace, Lacey (2015). The Origin of Roman London. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN   9781107047570.
  13. ↑ Alessio, Giovanni (1951). "L'origine du nom de Londres". Actes et Mémoires du troisième congrès international de toponymie et d'anthroponymie (in French). Louvain: Instituut voor naamkunde. pp. 223–224.
  14. ↑ Gigot, Jean-Gabriel (1974). "Notes sur le toponyme "Londres" (Hérault)". Revue international d'onomastique. 26: 284–292. doi:10.3406/rio.1974.2193. S2CID   249329873.
  15. ↑ Ernest Nègre, Toponymie générale de la France, Librairie Droz, Genève, p. 1494
  16. ↑ "Legends of London's Origins". Archived from the original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved 4 February 2008.
  17. ↑ Prickett, Frederick (1842). "The history and antiquities of Highgate, Middlesex": 4.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  18. ↑ Jackson, John (1792). "Conjecture on the Etymology of London". The Gentleman's Magazine. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
  19. ↑ Gold, David L (1979). "English words of supposed Hebrew origin in George Crabb's "English Synonymes"". American Speech. Duke University Press. 51 (1): 61–64. doi:10.2307/454531. JSTOR   454531.
  20. ↑ "Etymology of 'London'". The Cambro Briton: 42–43. 1821.
  21. ↑ "Notes and Queries". 1852. Archived from the original on 23 June 2022. Retrieved 26 November 2020.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  22. ↑ Jones, Alexander (1855). The Cymry of '76. New York: Sheldon, Lamport. p.  132. etymology of london.
  23. ↑ Baedeker, Karl (1887). London and Its Environs: Handbook for Travellers. K. Baedeker. p.  60.
  24. ↑ Furness, Horace Howard, ed. (1918). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. J B Lippincott & co. ISBN   0-486-21187-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.