The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins. The names Κελτοί (Keltoí) and Celtae are used in Greek and Latin, respectively, to denote a people of the La Tène horizon in the region of the upper Rhine and Danube during the 6th to 1st centuries BC in Graeco-Roman ethnography. The etymology of this name and that of the Gauls Γαλάται Galátai / Galli is uncertain. The linguistic sense of Celts, a grouping of all speakers of Celtic languages, is modern. There is scant record of the term "Celt" being used prior to the 17th century in connection with the inhabitants of Ireland and Great Britain during the Iron Age. However, Parthenius writes that Celtus descended through Heracles from Bretannos, which may have been a partial (because the myth's roots are older) post–Gallic War epithet of Druids who traveled to the islands for formal study, and was the posited seat of the order's origins.
Celts, Celtae The first recorded use of the name of Celts – as Κελτοί (Keltoí) – to refer to an ethnic group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC when writing about a people living near Massilia (modern Marseille). In the 5th century BC, Herodotus referred to Keltoi living around the head of the Danube and also in the far west of Europe. The etymology of the term Keltoi is unclear. Possible origins include the Indo-European roots *ḱel, 'to cover or hide' (cf. Old Irish celid), *ḱel-, 'to heat', or *kel- 'to impel'. Several authors have supposed the term to be Celtic in origin, while others view it as a name coined by Greeks. Linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel falls in the latter group; she suggests that it means "the tall ones". The Romans preferred the name Gauls (Latin: Galli) for those Celts whom they first encountered in northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul). In the 1st century BC, Caesar referred to the Gauls as calling themselves "Celts" in their own tongue. According to the 1st-century poet Parthenius of Nicaea, Celtus (Κελτός, Keltos) was the son of Heracles and Celtine (Κελτίνη, Keltine), the daughter of Bretannus (Βρεττανός, Brettanos); this literary genealogy exists nowhere else and was not connected with any known cult. Celtus became the eponymous ancestor of Celts. In Latin, Celta came in turn from Herodotus's word for the Gauls, Keltoi. The Romans used Celtae to refer to continental Gauls, but apparently not to Insular Celts. The latter are divided linguistically into Goidels and Brythons. The name Celtiberi is used by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC, of a people whom he considered a mixture of Celtae and Iberi.
Celtici
Aside from the Celtiberians — Lusones, Titii, Arevaci, and Pellendones, among others – who inhabited large regions of central Spain, Greek and Roman geographers also spoke of a people or group of peoples called Celtici or Κελτικοί living in the south of modern-day Portugal, in the Alentejo region, between the Tagus and Guadiana rivers. They are first mentioned by Strabo, who wrote that they were the most numerous people inhabiting that region. Later, Ptolemy referred to the Celtici inhabiting a more reduced territory, comprising the regions from Évora to Setúbal, i.e. the coastal and southern areas occupied by the Turdetani. Pliny mentioned a second group of Celtici living in the region of Baeturia (northwestern Andalusia); he considered that they were "of the Celtiberians from the Lusitania, because of their religion, language, and because of the names of their cities". In Galicia in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, another group of Celtici dwelt along the coasts. They comprised several populi, including the Celtici proper: the Praestamarici south of the Tambre river (Tamaris), the Supertamarici north of it, and the Nerii by the Celtic promontory (Promunturium Celticum). Pomponius Mela affirmed that all inhabitants of Iberia's coastal regions, from the bays of southern Galicia to the Astures, were also Celtici: "All (this coast) is inhabited by the Celtici, except from the Douro river to the bays, where the Grovi dwelt (…) In the north coast first there are the Artabri, still of the Celtic people (Celticae gentis), and after them the Astures." He also wrote that the fabulous isles of tin, the Cassiterides, were situated among these Celtici. The Celtici Supertarmarci have also left a number of inscriptions, as the Celtici Flavienses did. Several villages and rural parishes still bear the name Céltigos (from Latin Celticos) in Galicia. This is also the name of an archpriesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, a division of the archbishopric of Santiago de Compostela, encompassing part of the lands attributed to the Celtici Supertamarici by ancient authors.
Introduction in Early Modern literature The name Celtae was revived in the literature of the Early Modern period. The French celtique and German celtisch first appear in the 16th century; the English word Celts is first attested in 1607. The adjective Celtic, formed after French celtique, appears a little later, in the mid-17th century. An early attestation is found in Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), in reference to the Insular Celts of antiquity: [the Ionian gods ... who] o'er the Celtic [fields] roamed the utmost Isles. (I.520, here in the 1674 spelling). Use of Celtic in the linguistic sense arises in the 18th century, in the work of Edward Lhuyd. In the 18th century, the interest in "primitivism", which led to the idea of the "noble savage", brought a wave of enthusiasm for all things "Celtic." The antiquarian William Stukeley pictured a race of "ancient Britons" constructing the "temples of the Ancient Celts" such as Stonehenge (actually a pre-Celtic structure). In his 1733 book History of the Temples of the Ancient Celts, he recast the "Celts" "Druids". James Macpherson's Ossian fables, which he claimed were ancient Scottish Gaelic poems that he had "translated," added to this romantic enthusiasm. The "Irish revival" came after the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829 as a conscious attempt to promote an Irish national identity, which, with its counterparts in other countries, subsequently became known as the "Celtic Revival".
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
