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Celtic Inhabitants of Britain
The first inhabitants of the British
Isles were not English speakers at all. They were part of
an ethnic grouping known as the Celts.
However, not many Celtic loan words
survived to become a part of Anglo-Saxon English. The
Old
English word rice--a
noun meaning "kingdom" (cf. Ger. Reich),
is almost certainly Celtic in origin, but this word was
probably
adapted by Germanic tribes on the continent long before the
Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain. A few other Old English
words
such as ambeht ("servant"),
and dun ("hill,
down") might be Celtic loan-words, but scholars are
still uncertain. Algeo (277) suggests about a dozen other
Celtic
words are probably genuine borrowings from the Celtic peoples
during the Anglo-Saxon period, including these mostly
archaic terms:
The Anglo-Saxons borrowed these words
and used them for a few centuries, but these later fell out
of common use. They simply didn't "stick" linguistically.
In general, two types of Celtic loan
words were likely targets of permanent Anglo-Saxon adaptation
before the Norman Conquest:
(1) Toponyms
or place-names. For instance, Cornwall,
Carlisle, Avon,
Devon, Dover,
London, and Usk
are all originally Celtic names. Other places like Lincoln
and Lancaster are
semi-Celtic in origin; i.e., they have a -coln
ending that originally comes from Latin colonia
or a -caster ending
that originally comes from Latin castra
via Celtic ceaster,
which were Latin loan words the Celts borrowed from the
Romans, but which in turn the Anglo-Saxons adopted as loan-words
from Celtic languages. Many Celtic toponyms are hidden
in
the first syllable of other modern names, such as the first
syllable of Lichfield,
Worcester, Gloucester, Exeter, Winchester,
and Salisbury. Other
general geographic features--cumb
(a combe, a valley) and torr
(projecting hill or rock, peak, as in modern Glastonbury
Tor)--attach themselves to a large number of place-names.
(2) Latin words
the Celts borrowed from Rome, which were in turn borrowed
by the Anglo-Saxon invaders--including words like candle
(Latin candelere,
"to shine") and ass
(Latin asinus).
Possibly the word cross
and the verb cursian
(which gives us and the Anglo-Saxons the ability "to
curse") were originally Celtic words--though cross
may have been borrowed from the Old Norse. Less used today,
the word "anchorite"
comes from Celtic ancor
("hermit").
Ironically, the largest number of Celtic
borrowings occurred not during the Anglo-Saxon period, when
the Angles and Saxons first lorded it over the conquered Celts,
but they occurred centuries later during the Middle English
period. Algeo notes these Johnny-come-lately Celtic terms
include Scots Gaelic words--such as clan
and loch. In the 17th
century or thereafter, Scots Gaelic also offered words like
bog, cairn,
plaid, slogan,
and whiskey. Welsh
words like crag also
appeared at about this time. In the 17th century, Irish
Gaelic offered
English words such as banshee,
blarney, colleen,
and shillelagh. More
recently, words like cromlech
and eisteddfod have
entered English from Welsh as well (277), leading up to
perhaps a couple hundred Celtic loan words if we generously
count second- and third- hand borrowings of originally Celtic
words imported
from Romance languages like French, Italian, and Spanish
sources later in the Renaissance.
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