What is the etymological history of the the term “pre-Celtic” and why is there seemingly no such thing as “pre-Gaulish”?

L

Levia Van Kales

Clone of banned member
English - Britain
The team “pre-Celtic” seems historically rather well attested (and brooked). Notwithstanding spotting something online about a professor in ‘pre-Celtic whatever’, I cannot find an etymological history fromwhence the said “pre-Celtic” term arose. Even an wiki leaf called “pre-Celtic” lacks any background anent the etymology history of the term “pre-Celtic” itself.

It is somewhat markworthy that there (seemingly rightly) is even a fellow wiki leaf hight: “pre-Germanic”. Anent the aforesaid “pre-Celtic” and “pre-Germanic”, I have definitely come across an online writeup about cognate (pre-Indo-European) river names in England and Germany no less. I sadly cannot find the aforesaid paper anymore.

Why is it that SOMEHOW ONE NEVER COMES ACROSS THE TERM ‘PRE-GAULISH’? (not in the Englishspeaking world anyway). Does something like ‘pre-Gaulish’ even exist in the Frenchspeaking world/academia? Anent the aforesaid, it is rather creepy that many English wiki pages (anent rivers in nowadays France) neither dare use the (well-attested Britishwise) term “pre-Celtic” nor ever (somehow) something like ‘pre-Gaulish’. Indeed, I have soulmuderingly come across the misleading ’proto-Gaulish’ seemingly as a -stand in- cover for NOT ADMITTING that said river/rivers are PRE-GAULISH/NON-GAULISH. Another (trick?) is to passover that the river’s etymology is pre-Gaulish and to always claim X Gaulish tribe lived by X river’s banks.

Hope folk can understand what I am getting at and why the lack of etymological background for “pre-Celtic” is irksome. And and the lack of “pre-Celtic” or something like ‘pre-Gaulish’ anent rivers running in nowadays France is also (haps even moreso) odd and irksome.
 
Last edited:
    • Gauls are just the Celtic tribes that lived on today's France territory.
    Pre-Celtic tribes that lived on some parts of today's France territory are not called "pre-Gauls", but their own tribe name, for example Aquitani or Ligurians.
     
    Last edited:
    Given that Gaulish is a subdivision of Celtic, what would pre-Gaulish mean? Celtic but prior to the emergence of Gaulish as a distinct subdivision, or essentially the same as pre-Celtic? What would be the application of the term pre-Gaulish?

    All that aside, the etymology of pre-Celtic is pretty obvious, surely ?
     
    The term Gauls is a political invention of Julius Caesar, hence speaking of pre-Gauls does not make much sense.
    On the opposite, Celtic peoples are culturally and linguistically coherent throughout Europe, and can be linked to a pre-Celtic original culture (Hallstatt).
     
    Glasguensis said:
    Given that Gaulish is a subdivision of Celtic, what would pre-Gaulish mean? Celtic but prior to the emergence of Gaulish as a distinct subdivision, or essentially the same as pre-Celtic? What would be the application of the term pre-Gaulish?

    All that aside, the etymology of pre-Celtic is pretty obvious, surely ?
    Click to expand...
    Nowadays Francewise, what should rivernames, toponyms and etymologies that derive from before the Gauls/or not Gaulish be called or termed?

    *Bytheway, I guess even your good self are unaware of the etymological history of the term “pre-Celtic”? (*whom first coined it and in what year/s and so forth?).
     
    Last edited:
    Levia Van Kales said:
    Nowadays Francewise, what should rivernames, toponyms and etymologies that derive from before the Gauls/or not Gaulish be called or termed?
    Click to expand...
    Probably nothing. It doesn't make much sense to have a term for it.
    Levia Van Kales said:
    I guess even your good self are unaware of the etymological history of the term “pre-Celtic”?
    Click to expand...
    Would you please elaborate what you mean by "etymological history"?
     
    According to Ngram Viewer the word "pre-celtic" first appear in a book in 1854, in the book "Types of Mankind: Or Ethnological Researches ..." From Types of Mankind: Or, Ethnological Researches, Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races .... By George Gliddon and Josiah Nott — Anna Arabindan-Kesson , George Giddons and Josiah Nott were followers of Samuel George Morton. Samuel George Morton - Wikipedia
    Google Books Ngram Viewer

    Yes, the book is about what you think it is.
     
    Levia Van Kales said:
    Why is it that SOMEHOW ONE NEVER COMES ACROSS THE TERM ‘PRE-GAULISH’?
    Click to expand...
    Because there is no such term as proto-Gaulish. The term pre-XXX describes a hypothesised language state explored by a method called internal reconstruction as an earlier development stage of a reconstructed language called proto-XXX. A proto language of a group of languages is the youngest development stage of a group of languages dependent from a common ancestor immediately before this group split up. Any development stage of this common ancestor language of the group older than the proto-language of the group but younger than the proto language of the next larger group is called a pre (or pre-proto) language of this group.

    Gaulish is not thought of as a group of languages that descended from a single proto language but as a group of independent Continental Celtic languages that amalgamated into a dialect continuum, much like German, which is considered having evolved from at least four (probably more) different West-Germanc language fused into a dialect continuum out of which several standard languages developed with modern stand German as its latest version.
     
    berndf said:
    The term pre-XXX describes
    Click to expand...
    Here, Pre-Gaulish or -Celtic means the language(s) of people before the arrival of Gauls or Celts in a geography. The problem here is that that Celtic people had been present in France hundreds of years before the ethnonym Gaul entered history, and so pre-Gaulish is still Celtic. However, pre-Celtic is not Celtic and probably not even IE. Therefore, a distinction is theoretically possible between Celtic and pre-Celtic toponyms via historical linguistic methods.

    This distinction is very difficult to make for Gaulish and pre-Gaulish even if we could reconstruct a "proto-Gaulish". This is because proto-Gaulish and pre-Gaulish (Celtic) were not enough dissimilar to give us the evidence for such a distinction. A toponym (or any word for that matter) would have been first Gaulicised and then Latinised, Vulgarised and Francicised, destroying the nuanced difference that the Gaulish and pre-Gaulish Celtic words could have had.
     
    Platytude said:
    Here, Pre-Gaulish or -Celtic means the language(s) of people before the arrival of Gauls or Celts in a geography. The problem here is that that Celtic people had been present in France hundreds of years before the ethnonym Gaul entered history, and so pre-Gaulish is still Celtic. However, pre-Celtic is not Celtic and probably not even IE. Therefore, a distinction is theoretically possible between Celtic and pre-Celtic toponyms via historical linguistic methods.

    This distinction is very difficult to make for Gaulish and pre-Gaulish even if we could reconstruct a "proto-Gaulish". This is because proto-Gaulish and pre-Gaulish (Celtic) were not enough dissimilar to give us the evidence for such a distinction. A toponym (or any word for that matter) would have been first Gaulicised and then Latinised, Vulgarised and Francicised, destroying the nuanced difference that the Gaulish and pre-Gaulish Celtic words could have had.
    Click to expand...
    This is an entirely different context, where the term pre-Celtic is used but as we are in sn etymology forum I answered the context that pertains to language reconstruction.

    But your context, which does not specifically apply to language but to culture in general, is valid as well and for the same reason, the term pre-Gaulic wouldn't be all too useful. There is not any specific "arrival" of the Gauls but Gaulic culture developed as a sub group of the broader Celtic culture.
     
    berndf said:
    There is not any specific "arrival" of the Gauls
    Click to expand...
    Point taken but we don't really know that. Gaul proper could have been a tribe with very limited territory inside or outside France and subjugated other tribes and the whole of France some time before their encounter with Romans. Linguistically it could have been consequential for the same reason the Persian takeover of Iran, or Hijazi takeover of greater Arabia was. Pre-Islam or pre-Persian are meaningful and useful. The difference is that we know of 1) Persian and Hijazi takeover, and 2) how linguistically and culturally they differed from their ethnic peers. There is no evidence that something similar did (not) happen in France too. If that is the case, the differences between Gaulish and non-Gaulish loanwords and toponyms could have been so little (like that of Quranic Arabic and Safaitic, for example) to pass the test of time.
     
    Platytude said:
    Point taken but we don't really know that.
    Click to expand...
    That wouldn't alter the point I made. The term pre-Gaulic is relative to such a take-over event happened. The term pre-XXX in this (cultural) sense (as distinct from the linguistic sense I explained in #10) would only be useful if we knew (or had sufficient reason to presume) that such an event had happened.
     
    Julius Caesar wrote at thee beginning of De Bello Gallico that Gaul is divided into three parts. The Belgae live in one part, the Aquitani another and in the third part live the people who call themselves Celtae but we (i.e. Romans) Galli. Nobody disputes that Celts lived in regions other than Gaul, but at any rate at that time there was no real difference between Galli and Celtae.
     
    danielstan said:
    the French historiography uses the term "gallo-romain" (not "celto-romain"!) to describe the Romanized population of Gaul.
    Click to expand...
    Yes, once again under the influence of Julius Caesar.
    The Gallo-Roman period (which spawns approx. between the 1st century and the 5th century) is a period of peaceful prosperity and fusion between Gaulish and Roman culture, and led to the birth of Middle Ages France.
     
    Last edited:
    I find remarkable the lack of term "celto-romain" in French, in the context of this debate between "pre-Gaulish" and "pre-Celtic terms.
     
    The people populating what is now France at the time of the Roman conquest have always collectively been called the Gauls. The Celtic culture, of which the Gaulish culture was a part, spread at the point of its largest extend over a much lager area, from Ireland and the Iberian peninsula in West to Anatolia in the East.

    The term Gaul is originally Frankish and has always been used in French. The term happens to be very similar to the Latin term Gallia, to which it is unrelated but which it traditionally translates. The term Celt is derived from a Greek terms for the Celtic people they had encountered. The convention to use this term for the broader culture is a modern one.
     
    Last edited:
    berndf said:
    The people populating what is now France at the time of the Roman conquest have always collectively been called the Gauls. The Celtic culture, of which the Gaulish culture was a part, spread at the point of its largest extend over a much lager area, from Ireland and the Iberian peninsula in West to Anatolia in the East.

    The term Gaul is originally Frankish and has always been used in French. The term happens to be very similar to the Latin term Gallia, to which it is unrelated but which it traditionally translates. The term Celt is derived from a Greek terms for the Celtic people they had encountered. The convention to use this term for the broader culture is a modern one.
    Click to expand...

    But northern Italy was called "Gallia cisalpina", so why should have the term Gallia be restricted to present-day France?
     
    Gaul translates Gallia and sounds similar but it is not the same word. The two words are etymologically completely unrelated.
     
    Last edited:
    Frank78 said:
    But northern Italy was called "Gallia cisalpina", so why should have the term Gallia be restricted to present-day France?
    Click to expand...
    There were "Gallia cisalpina" and "Gallia transalpina", later renamed "Gallia Narbonensis" (today's Provence and Occitania), which had become a Roman province in 121 BC.
    The inhabitants in both Gallia cisalpina and transalpina were Celts, and different from the Romans.
    There were also Gallia Aquitania, Gallia Belgica, and Gallia Celtica, according to Julius Caesar. The inhabitants of Gallia Celtica called themselves Celtae, but the Romans used Galli as a synonym for the inhabitants of Gallia Celtica, an area that covered most of today's France.
    Gallia Celtica - Wikipedia
     
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top