X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Celtic languages


Alto Malcantone

The village name is Celtic in origin, though the exact meaning is unknown.

Mücke

Despite what may seem obvious – Mücke is German for "gnat" – the community's name is of Celtic origin.

Peover

Peover is mentioned in the Domesday Book as "Pevre", from a Celtic word meaning "the bright one" referring to the Peover Eye.


Brandivy

Both festivals celebrate the ancient Celtic cultural, musical, linguistic and other ancient links between Cornwall and Brittany.

Brent

The place name can be from Celtic words meaning "holy one" (if it refers to the River Brent), or "high place," literally, "from a steep hill" (if it refers to the villages in Somerset and Devon, England) (Mills 1991).

Ceol an Ghrá

The performance was also the first of only two occasions so far on which a Celtic language has been heard at the Contest, with France entering the Eurovision Song Contest 1996 with the Breton language song "Diwanit Bugale".

Common Brittonic

Common Brittonic (also called Common Brythonic, British, Old Brythonic, or Old Brittonic) was an ancient P-Celtic language spoken in Britain.

Continental Celtic languages

The Continental Celtic languages are the Celtic languages, now extinct, that were spoken on the continent of Europe, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles and Brittany.

Distinction of blue and green in various languages

In traditional Welsh (and related Celtic languages), glas could refer to blue but also to certain shades of green and grey, and llwyd could refer to various shades of grey and brown; however, modern Welsh is tending toward the 11-color Western scheme, restricting glas to blue and using gwyrdd for green, llwyd for grey and brown for brown.

Edward Anwyl

Sir Edward Anwyl (5 August 1866 – 8 August 1914) was a Welsh academic, specializing in the Celtic languages.

Isca Dumnoniorum

Isca is derived from a Brythonic Celtic word for flowing water, which was given to the Exe as well as to the River Usk (Welsh: Afon Wysg) in South Wales, on which Caerleon (known to the Romans as Isca Augusta) stands.

James Cowles Prichard

He stated that the Celtic languages are allied by language with the Slavonian, German and Pelasgian (Greek and Latin), thus forming a fourth European branch of Indo-European languages.

Jesse Sheidlower

Sheidlower received an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Chicago and did graduate work at Cambridge University in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic.

Lyonesse

In Stephen R. Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, Lyonesse is where refugees from Atlantis (the "Fair Folk") settle, the word Lyonesse being derived from the Celtic corruption of the word Atlantis.

Osborn Bergin

He was born in Cork and was educated at Queen's College Cork (now University College Cork), then went to Germany for advanced studies in Celtic languages, working with Heinrich Zimmer at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (now the Humboldt University of Berlin) and later with Rudolf Thurneysen at the University of Freiburg, where he wrote his dissertation on palatalization in 1906.

Tardebigge

The name Tærdebicga (whose dative case is Tærdebicgan) does not appear to have any likely meaning in Anglo-Saxon or Celtic or any other likely known language, and may be a stray survival from whatever aboriginal (perhaps Pre-Indo-European) language was spoken in England before the Celts came.

Tongoenabiagus

Tongoenabiagus was the god of the Fonte do Ídolo (Portuguese for Fountain of the Idol), a 1st-century shrine in Braga (the Roman Bracara Augusta) with inscriptions in a Celtic language, a fountain shrine dedicated both to Tongoenabiagus and the goddess Nabia.

Vila Nova de Gaia

The origin of the name Cale (or Gale, since in Classical Latin there was not always a clear distinction between the letters "g" and "c") is likely Celtic, from the root "Gall-" with which Celts referred to themselves, similarly to Galicia, Gaul or Galway.

William Whittingham Lyman Jr

Upon completion of his Master's degree, Gayley arranged for him to receive a university fellowship to travel to the University of Oxford to study Celtic languages with Sir John Rhys.


see also

Brittonic

Brittonic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages descended from Common Brittonic

Goidelic substrate hypothesis

Ranko Matasović points out that there are words of possibly or probably non-Indo-European origin in other Celtic languages as well; therefore, the substrate may not have been in contact with Primitive Irish but rather with Proto-Celtic.