CHAT: The etymology of (King) Arthur (was Re: CHAT: reign names)

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 07:43:52 +0100, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> On Sunday, September 19, 2004, at 08:19 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
>> Ray wrote:
>>> But 'George' is one of the Prince of Wales's names! Many people had
>>> been
>>> hoping he would choose one of his other names, 'Arthur' (which BTW,
>>> unlike
>>> either Charles or George, is spelled the same in Welsh as in English).
>>
>> So, if he were to adopt Arthur as his regnal name, would he
>> be called "King Arthur II"?
>
> No. There is no evidence that there was ever a historic 'King Arthur' of
> anywhere. If the Arthur of legend has any basis in reality, then 'Arthur'
> was probably a Romano-British leader (presumably called Arctorius)
> holding
> out against Saxon encroachment after the legions had withdrawn from
> Britain.
I understand that while Arthur is a composite, there was a Romano-Britsh
leader (originally a Cavalry commander), with a bear as his standard.
There was a really good documentary on the History Channel that examined
the historical evidence to reconstruct as much of the Arthurian truth as
they could. The show then spent time on Mallory and Geoffrey of Monmouth
and so on, showing how the vague details of history became the legend we
know today. I wish I could remember more details about him and his
contemporaries (I can't even remember the names of the histories he's
refered to in), but it has been a while since I saw the documentary. The
name "Arth Ur" was posited during that documentary as plausibly combining
the Celtic and Latin words for "bear", in agreement with the bear on the
battle-flag.




Paul

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