AHQ: Gaulic/Celtic and Iberic names in Europe 6th and 5th century BCE

[John7755 يوحنا]

Greetings to the board,

As many of you may know, I have an unfolding timeline on the Assyrian empire, which has reached the year 580 BCE, from its inception at 628-627 BCE. The world is rapidly expanding in the timeline and I intend seriously to include, enflesh and expand upon the peoples of Western Europe. However, my knowledge of some matters is greater and lesser than others.

One such realm, is the situation of naming and especially the naming of kings in the Celtic cultures of Europe. What would be some names that one could use for emerging states and realms in the region of Gaul. Likewise, perhaps some useful words for which to use as roots for names. As to how to render them in script, I plan have them written with a Celtic styling and gloss rather than one of Latin or Anglo style, if they are interpreted and or transformed into a more non-Celtic format, spelling and or pronunciation, it will be in a Punic, Akkadian or Greek format.

Related to the prior, but more difficult, is the Iberic peoples. I am not exactly sure how to render their names whence I arrive at them. Does anyone have any opinion or knowledge regarding names of Iberic peoples along the coasts of Iberia or even some info gleaned from Basque or Aquitaine? If nothing comes up, I will simply render their names through a heavy Punic/Akkadian/Aramaic lens and such give them titles that are used in place of names.

Likewise, what is the opinion on the board regarding the extent of human sacrifice in the Celtic society? As I understand, human sacrifice was practiced in the mode of failed kings and prisoners of war. If this was a common system, I would be glad to represent it in the world of the timeline, especially considering the possible influences Assyria and the Carthaginians could impose upon such a custom, intensifying it and the warlike cultural ways of the Celts. In a world, without a Roman Republic ascendant, it may be the case that such customs, such as headhunting, human sacrifice and so forth could remain in vogue.

 

[Brita]

Hello,

I have a few links that might be of interest:
Name Construcions in Gaulish

If you speak French, there's L'Arbre celtique, a website I've used a little:
List of links and sources for Gaulish words etc.
Gaulish words and etymons
Celtiberian words and etymons (though not quite what you're looking for since it's not pure Iberian)
Celtic tribes
About cannibalism
There are place and people names, roots, alphabets (including Celtiberian alphabet) etc.

If I find other sources, I'll let you know

 

[Gloss]

About cannibalism

I don't believe this or human sacrifice were particularly prominent, were they?

 

[Brita]

I dont' really know. I've read somewhere (long ago and I don't remember where) that its importance may have been exagerated by the Romans to put the emphasis on the Celts' worst barbaric traits.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

I don't believe this or human sacrifice were particularly prominent, were they?

I do not know of cannibalism, but multiple ancient sources do attest to at least human sacrifice of war prisoners. The earliest accounts of Celtic peoples came from peoples who had no interest of goals in dehumanizing or conquering the Celts, as Julius Caesar did or any of his Roman contemporaries. Essentially, early Iron Age age Greek recountings of the Celts make mention of human sacrifice and head hunting. The first of which was at least sometimes occurring in archaeological records, while the other is a certain. However, the practice of human sacrifice may have been somewhat rare, it did occur at least in some cases. Head Hunting on the other hand was possibly enormously popular, similar to many cultures of the Americas or Southeast Asia.

There was a discovery for instance that I recall from Ireland from 375 BCE, wherein a king or noble was sacrificed, his large body (200 cm!) possessed signs of ritual cutting and then his body was cut into two, alongside his nipples being cut off. For what ever reason, he was ritually murdered.

Though, this reminds us of the ritual killing of the king of the Gambulu during the reign of Assurbanipal. Wherein he was supposedly, cut into pieces before the public as if as a ritual offering to the Great God Nurgle. Though, I am not sure that such killings qualify as human sacrifice.

 

[Talus I of Dixie]

Hey, i can help you with Iberian! Firstly, the wikipedia page has a good list on possible formations of iberian names (since iberian names were made of two distinct words written together, it's hard to put on a "root" for names, the fact that the meaning of iberian names are mostly unknown also helps little), quoting:

Thanks to the Latin Inscription of the plaque of Ascoli, which includes a list of Iberian cavalry soldiers in the Roman army (the Turma Salluitana attested in the Bronze of Ascoli), the forms of Iberian proper names have been unraveled. Iberian names are formed mainly by two interchangeable elements, each usually formed of two syllables, which are written together (Untermann 1998). For example, the element "iltiŕ" can be found in the following names: iltiŕaŕker, iltiŕbaś, iltiŕtikeŕ, tursiltiŕ, baiseiltiŕ or bekoniltiŕ. This discovery was a giant step: from this moment it was possible to identify with some kind of confidence the names of persons in the texts. Nevertheless, the list of components of Iberian names varies between researchers. The basic list comes from Untermann (1990) and was recently updated by Rodríguez Ramos (2002b); complementary data and criteria can be found in the Faria papers (the last two: 2007a and 2007b).

The following list includes some of the elements proposed as components of Iberian names: abaŕ, aibe, aile, ain, aitu, aiun, aker, albe, aloŕ, an, anaŕ, aŕbi, aŕki, aŕs, asai, aster, ata, atin, atun, aunin, auŕ, austin, baiser, balaŕ, balke, bartaś, baś, bastok, bekon, belauŕ, beleś, bels, bene, beŕ, beri, beŕon, betan, betin, bikir, bilos, bin, bir, bitu, biuŕ, bolai, boŕ, boś, boton, ekes, ekaŕ, eler, ena, esto, eten, eter, iar, iaun, ibeś, ibeis, ike, ikoŕ, iltiŕ, iltur, inte, iskeŕ, istan, iunstir, iur, kaisur, kakeŕ, kaltuŕ, kani, kaŕes, kaŕko, katu, keŕe, kibaś, kine, kitaŕ, kon, koŕo, koŕś, kuleś, kurtar, lako, lauŕ, leis, lor, lusban, nalbe, neitin, neŕse, nes, niś, nios, oŕtin, sakaŕ, sakin, saltu, śani, śar, seken, selki, sike, sili, sine, sir, situ, soket, sor, sosin, suise, taker, talsku, tan, tanek, taneś, taŕ, tarban, taŕtin, taś, tautin, teita, tekeŕ, tibaś, tikeŕ, tikirs, tikis, tileis, tolor, tuitui, tumar, tuŕś, turkir, tortin, ulti, unin, uŕke, ustain, ḿbaŕ, nḿkei.

In some cases linguists have encountered simple names, with only one element for a suffix: BELES, AGER-DO and BIVR-NO are in the plaque of Ascoli, neitin in Ullastret and lauŕ-to, bartas-ko or śani-ko in other Iberian texts. More rarely there have been indications of an infix, which can be -i-, -ke- or -ta- (Untermann used oto-iltiŕ in front of oto-ke-iltiŕ or with AEN-I-BELES). In rare cases Untermann also encountered an element is- or o- prefacing a proper name (is-betartiker; o-tikiŕtekeŕ; O-ASAI).

In the elements that formed Iberian names it is common to encounter patterns of variation, as in eter/eten/ete with the same variations as in iltur/iltun/iltu; kere/keres as lako/lakos; or alos/alor/alo and bikis/bikir/biki)

You can work with those proto-roots, also, we have the preffix ili- standing for placenames, probably meaning "fort" or "city", it's proeminent in old iberian placenames and can help you with toponymy if necessary. I also have this pdf and this other one on the iberian language, the first shows useful details on personal names, and maybe can be more helpful than the wikipedia quote by an extent, while the second is more an general technical overview. Although beyond this i must give you some advices because of the weird orthography of the iberian language.

Although it is uncertain and there are many theories, i stand with <r> as a trill ([r]) and <ŕ> as a alveolar flap ([ɾ]), meaning that the name Tikeŕibeis stands for [tike:ɾibejs], another thingy is the <s/ś> difference, by comparison and the fact that the spanish hyper-proeminent [tʃ] has to come from somewhere, i stand with ś being /s/ (changed the [] to // because it was bugging the message) and s being [tʃ], while for <m/ḿ> i think that <m> stands for an allophone of [n] and <ḿ> being a nasalized vowel (most probably imo a nasalized [a] or ).

If you have any questions about the language in general you can ask that i see what i can do about it, but there's a chronic problem with iberian, our lack of concrete information on it beyond what we can guess from writings, so exists the chance of any doubt about the language being unanswerable because of lack in information. I expect to have helped anyway

Edit: Message was bugged huh

 

[Gloss]

I do not know of cannibalism, but multiple ancient sources do attest to at least human sacrifice of war prisoners. The earliest accounts of Celtic peoples came from peoples who had no interest of goals in dehumanizing or conquering the Celts, as Julius Caesar did or any of his Roman contemporaries. Essentially, early Iron Age age Greek recountings of the Celts make mention of human sacrifice and head hunting. The first of which was at least sometimes occurring in archaeological records, while the other is a certain. However, the practice of human sacrifice may have been somewhat rare, it did occur at least in some cases. Head Hunting on the other hand was possibly enormously popular, similar to many cultures of the Americas or Southeast Asia.

There was a discovery for instance that I recall from Ireland from 375 BCE, wherein a king or noble was sacrificed, his large body (200 cm!) possessed signs of ritual cutting and then his body was cut into two, alongside his nipples being cut off. For what ever reason, he was ritually murdered.

Though, this reminds us of the ritual killing of the king of the Gambulu during the reign of Assurbanipal. Wherein he was supposedly, cut into pieces before the public as if as a ritual offering to the Great God Nurgle. Though, I am not sure that such killings qualify as human sacrifice.

Yeah sometimes we lack the context to explain whether certain things were sacrifice or not, for example couldn't someone interpret the Romans letting lions and other animals eat people alive in front of thousands of spectators as some sort of sacrifice if we didn't know the full context? Or the killings during triumphs.

Headhunting at least is a more general actvity that doesn't require religious significance behind it to be called so.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

Yeah sometimes we lack the context to explain whether certain things were sacrifice or not, for example couldn't someone interpret the Romans letting lions and other animals eat people alive in front of thousands of spectators as some sort of sacrifice if we didn't know the full context? Or the killings during triumphs.

Headhunting at least is a more general actvity that doesn't require religious significance behind it to be called so.

Certainly. This is a major issue that I have come across too. We often are unable to truly make a difference between what Liverani refers to as spectacle murders and human sacrifice. In the case of Assyria, the punishments meted out unto rebels, enemy kings and so forth, were framed as religious duties. Hence, why the cutting of the skin was not only an act of secular legal matter, but a religious duty unto those who rejected the ordering of Duranki. In Assyrian triumphs, many men would be murdered in spectacle killings, often subjected to being flayed alive, their skin burned or they would be subjected to other gruesome practices such as being mauled while chained to a post. Such spectacle killings had a religious tone, as did Roman triumphs, if I am aware enough. So, yes, to the Romans what the Gauls were doing may have seemed to be human sacrifice, but otherwise, was simply the due devotion to their gods of killing captives, many other cultures practiced this.

Headhunting is related to some religious understanding though. The ancient historians that enumerated the practice of headhunting among the Celts, said that they did so because they believed in reincarnation. Hence, the taking of one's head was to signify a capture of someone's soul, at least this is how I interpreted what the ancient recounts were saying. That due to their belief in the reincarnation, they believed in headhunting and the presenting of heads as trophies. To the Romans and Greeks, this was a display of their pompous and flamboyant culture, one of display and of excess in terms of battle and dueling.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

Hey, i can help you with Iberian! Firstly, the wikipedia page has a good list on possible formations of iberian names (since iberian names were made of two distinct words written together, it's hard to put on a "root" for names, the fact that the meaning of iberian names are mostly unknown also helps little), quoting:

You can work with those proto-roots, also, we have the preffix ili- standing for placenames, probably meaning "fort" or "city", it's proeminent in old iberian placenames and can help you with toponymy if necessary. I also have this pdf and this other one on the iberian language, the first shows useful details on personal names, and maybe can be more helpful than the wikipedia quote by an extent, while the second is more an general technical overview. Although beyond this i must give you some advices because of the weird orthography of the iberian language.

Although it is uncertain and there are many theories, i stand with <r> as a trill ([r]) and <ŕ> as a alveolar flap ([ɾ]), meaning that the name Tikeŕibeis stands for [tike:ɾibejs], another thingy is the <s/ś> difference, by comparison and the fact that the spanish hyper-proeminent [tʃ] has to come from somewhere, i stand with ś being /s/ (changed the [] to // because it was bugging the message) and s being [tʃ], while for <m/ḿ> i think that <m> stands for an allophone of [n] and <ḿ> being a nasalized vowel (most probably imo a nasalized [a] or ).

If you have any questions about the language in general you can ask that i see what i can do about it, but there's a chronic problem with iberian, our lack of concrete information on it beyond what we can guess from writings, so exists the chance of any doubt about the language being unanswerable because of lack in information. I expect to have helped anyway

Edit: Message was bugged huh

Is there any connection with how these names may have related to placenames or deities? Do we have any idea of what these terms you mentioned have in meaning?

For instance, in the timeline and otl, Akkadian formal names are as such:

Marduk-Makhir-Nisie = Marduk is the presenter of men!

Very, easy, names of the formal kind, are always praises of some kind to the Great Gods. Is there any indication that there is a relation to deities in the Iberic tongues? Or are they names related to where one is born or whom his parents are?

 

[Kerney]

I don't believe this or human sacrifice were particularly prominent, were they?

The archeologically suggests that it was an occasional thing, i.e. couple times a year type thing. However, as the Roman threat became dire (and probably other moments of threat) at least in Britian it increased sharply.

 

[Gloss]

The archeologically suggests that it was an occasional thing, i.e. couple times a year type thing. However, as the Roman threat became dire (and probably other moments of threat) at least in Britian it increased sharply.

Maybe it's because of increased internal warfare?

 

[Kerney]

Maybe it's because of increased internal warfare?

My take is the increase had to do with using magic to stop the Romans. For example, Anglesy had an uptick just before it was attacked., Same with Devon and Cornwall.

 

[Gloss]

My take is the increase had to do with using magic to stop the Romans. For example, Anglesy had an uptick just before it was attacked., Same with Devon and Cornwall.

How can we know with such precision?

 

[Kerney]

How can we know with such precision?

Dates through physical anthropology can narrow it down compared with Roman records. I am not a expert.

But gee lots of human sacrifice narrowed down mid first century, it matches when the Romans marched in, it then stops. There are some interesting names in Welsh in a couple places that are evocutive (field of long battle, the red place) with sign of battle that matches the time.

They then have records of other cultures acting similarly in more recent times when faced with colonialism.

All of these aren't conclusive. But added together it looks pretty likely.

And yeah, there are always some academic or another disputing it, but eventually they become the outlier, the same way there are a few paleontologists still claiming birds aren't dinosaurs.

This is me speaking broadly, having seen simular arguments, but not claiming to be an expert.

 

[Talus I of Dixie]

Is there any connection with how these names may have related to placenames or deities? Do we have any idea of what these terms you mentioned have in meaning?

For instance, in the timeline and otl, Akkadian formal names are as such:

Marduk-Makhir-Nisie = Marduk is the presenter of men!

Very, easy, names of the formal kind, are always praises of some kind to the Great Gods. Is there any indication that there is a relation to deities in the Iberic tongues? Or are they names related to where one is born or whom his parents are?

In Iberian, although names are still pretty obscure when it comes to their meaning, it can be seen that they weren't really fond of naming with places (since the -en and -ar possessive suffixes are pretty rare at given names) and the lack of information on iberian religious names makes comparison ineffective, the only one that i know doesn't have any given name counterpart so probably religiosity wasn't really used for naming people. Actually, the way that iberian names work (word + word/word + suffix = name) gives tendency to given names being simple characteristics, somewhat like if i named my daughter Goodflower, we also have many cases where the name of the son have at least one part of the name equal to the father's, supporting that there was some sort of traditional continuous selection of names (an english example would be, like, the father is named Someone, and his son is name Goodone).

And this "simple" system is exactly what makes iberian names complex, they are two words together, but we don't have any idea of the majority of these words mean (although Iltiŕ and Iltur probably stands for a specific place, since they were common placenames, with the other part of the name complementing with some role or something), and as such, we don't have any idea of what these words mean. The comforting part of these names (at least in your case) is that the majority of them are from upper-class iberians, meaning that regardless of what these names actually mean, they were used by who was in power at the iberian tribes, i also managed to "translate" two iberian names on the accounts of post-roman conquest iberian revolts: Budares = Bitu-iar and Baesadines = Baiser-atin, nothing too special but it can be useful if you'll stick to complete names with the name-parts i wrote earlier.

 

[Deleted member 145893]

With regards to the question of 'head hunting' I'm no expert but that did not seem to be common practice in Brythonic or Goidelic speaking cultures. As for human sacrifice that depends on what source of evidence you rely on to make your conclusions. The presence of remarkably well preserved bodies of Celts seems to suggest evidence of ritual killings for example Lindow Man said to have lived c. 1st century AD (after your time period) in the county of Cheshire showed signs of being struck on the head, strangled, throat slit and then drowned. The contents of his stomach seems to show that he swallowed tiny amounts of Mistletoe pollen. At the time of his death he was apparently naked, but strangely well groomed. The contemporary accounts of Druidic activity in Britain and Gaul come from Roman and Greek sources who seem to know very little about these people and their cultural practices and they tend to get their information third or fourth hand. That and there is a plausible explanation for the condition of Lindow Man that would point to the fact that he was not sacrificed.

As for naming practices. Goidelic speaking peoples (Ireland and Scotland for example) tend to used - descriptive names so a noun or adjective and compound names and example of this could be my mother's maiden name Duncan in Gàidhlig it is Donnachaidh which is I am lead to believe a compound name Donn/ meaning Brown and /chaidh meaning warrior or chieftain or noble. It is pronounced as three syllables so Do-nna-chaidh. The /ch/ in this case is pronounced by placing the tongue up towards the roof of your mouth and forcing air over it as opposed to /ch/ in Loch with is a guttural sound. The -dh can be pronounced in the same way as /ch/ or as in this case like the English /y/ which would make it almost silent.

Another example is the famous Irish hero, a demi God nonetheless, called Cú Chulainn (apparently son of the God Lugh) think Achilles and you would be far of imagining what this man looked like. His birth name was Sétanta, but he was hence known Cú Chulainn because he killed the dog belonging to Culainn and a recompense he offered to take the dog's place (the dog was a guard dog) until a new guard dog could be found i.e. he would protect Culainn. Cú is Gaelic for hound and Culainn's name shows the common practice of lenition (adding the h) and I believe that denotes the word the so a direct translation would be The Hound of Culainn.

The use of the word Mac and Nic in Goidelic and Ap and Ab in Brythonic denotes familial relationships they all mean either son of or daughter of,

In Gaulish the use of suffixes seems to be the order of the day for example the famous Vercingetorix with the suffix -rix denoting a king or chieftain or a man of elevated status amongst his people and the suffix -marus or -maris meaning great.

If you are going to write these names then it is best for Gaulish names to use the Latin alphabet (see the Breton dialect which is probably the closest relation) and for names in the British Isles Brythonic or Welsh alphabet for names in Wales, England and southern Scotland and the Goidelic alphabet for names in northern and western Scotland (north of the central belt).

 

[Brita]

I’ve been looking for more information about human sacrifices, head hunting etc. in a book about the Indo-Europeans by Bernard Sergent.

Concerning human sacrifice, Sergent mentions three types of sacrifices attested among the Celts:
- sacrifices in honour of warrior gods – I think the victims were probably prisoners of war in this case
- sacrifices in honour of chthonian gods
- expiatory sacrifices to avoid or put an end to a disaster (natural disaster, epidemics etc.)

He cites the following methods as used by the Celts:
- burying the victims alive (maybe in sacrifices to chthonian gods IMO)
- dismembering,
- impaling
- throat-slitting
- sometimes drowning and hanging but it seems to have been a Germanic practice – maybe the Celtic tribes who were closer to Germanic tribes? Though I read here that sacrifices to Teutates were performed by drowning the victims
- there’s of course the case of giant dummies made of wood and straw that were filled with victims and then set on fire – it seems this type of sacrifice was dedicated to the thunder-god Taranis and was widely used in 19th-century descriptions of the Celts

I also read of sacrifices to Esus where victims were tied to a tree and then flogged to death.


Concerning cannibalism, Sergent notes that both endocannibalism (eating your own dead to honour them) and heterocannibalism (eating foreigners/enemies to “absorb” their strength) were practiced by the Celts.
According to him, endocannibalism is attested mostly among Eastern peoples (India, Iran, Mongolia) but also in Ancient Ireland (mentioned by Strabo). It seems the Celts were the only ones in Western Europe who practiced it.
Heterocannibalism is attested mostly among the Scythians and the Celts, although other peoples practiced it.

Concerning head hunting, Sergent cites many Indo-European peoples who practiced it. It seems to have been part of the warrior’s initiation – to be accepted in the warriors’ “cast”, young men had to kill an enemy and bring his head back. Like cannibalism, it must have been a way to take the enemy’s strength, courage etc.
Given there have been women warriors among the Celts, I don’t know if head hunting also applied to them or not.
But apart from head hunting, Sergent also notes that Ancient Irish used to scalp the vanquished and archaeological evidence indicates that the Celts also practices skin-flaying – he mentions the case of people who had a strip of skin torn out from their torso.

King’s murder must have been linked to the fact that the king symbolises fertility and strength, so he needs to be in his prime. Once the king grows older, he’s sacrificed, unless he himself sacrifices a younger man to take his youth/vitality/strength.

Sergent also mentions cases of Celtic widows killing themselves or being killed after their husband’s death – a practice similar to Indian sati.

Apart from all that, I found the following links:
About Teutates
Threefold death
Did the ancient Celts practice human sacrifice?
Did the Celts or Druids Perform Human Sacrifice?