Re: CHAT: Galatians and Celts

At 5:47 pm -0400 6/4/00, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>> Keltoi - is used by Herodotos, Xenophon and Polybios.
>> In Strabo we find it joining the 1st decl., i.e. Keltai - I guess under the
>> influence of Galatai.
>> The usual adjective is Keltikos, but Keltos is also found as an adjective
>> in verse.
>
>I'm curious: since the stem kelt- is no longer used in any of the modern
>Celtic languages (except as a borrowing), what is the evidence connecting
>the ancient Keltoi with the modern Celts?
But then the stem galat(a)- is no longer used; and the resemblance between
gall- (as in Galli) and Gael is coincidental, since the latter is derived
from Gaidheal  <-- Old Irish Gòidel.

AFAIK there is _no_ native Celtic word denoting the Celts as a whole; there
are just individual words denoting particular groupings or 'tribes' of
Celts.   Presumably 'Keltoi' was once just such a word but, like Alemanni
among the Romance & Brittonic languages, it came to denote all peoples
speaking a kindred language and sharing a similar culture.

That Keltoi rather than Galatai would become the generic term is
understandable since Galatai came to be associated particularly with the
Celts who had settled in Anatolia.

That Keltoi meant Celts is inferred by the fact that the peoples Polybios
refers to as Keltoi, others referred to as Galatai (before the latter term
became more specific) and that the peoples so denoted happen to coincide
generally with cultures that archaeologists consider Celtic etc.

The terms Keltiberes, Keltoligyes etc are also IMO revealing.  We know that
the Celtic langauge(s) and culture were acquired by (or imposed upon)
peoples of different origins.  The early descriptions of Celts from Greek &
Roman writers talk of red-haired giants - and such types may still be
encountered in Scottish Highlands e.g.  The Iberians were generally
described as short, swarthy dark-haired types.  Read Tacitus' description
of the Silures and then visit south Wales - they are still very much in
evidence and similar types are familiar in southern Ireland.  The
Keltiberes were not so much, I think, mixed Celtic & Iberians as Iberians
who had been celticized.

Indeed, it is meaningless to speak of a Celtic race; the peoples who speak
the modern Celtic languages are very mixed and I have no doubt that this
was so ever since the original speakers of ProtoCeltic (whatever they
called themselves - and we'll probably never know that) spread their
language and culture from the upper Danube area across most of western &
central Europe (before halted by the Germanic peoples in the north and the
growing Roman Empire in the south).

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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