thrashaholic
06-03-2006, 18:36
Hi, I've been playing a campaign as the Gauls recently and have noticed several of my own and rebel characters with Gallic ethnicity have the prefix "moc", obviously meaning 'son of', in their surnames.
Now, as far as I was aware, the Gaulish language was like Brythonic in the respect that it replaced old Indo-European 'q' sounds for 'p' sounds making their word for 'son' was "mapos" or "mapon", similar to the Welsh "mab", compared to the Old Irish "macc". The Gallic and British god "Maponos" (divine son) shows this, and other examples like the Gallic "epos" (horse) compared to the Irish "ech" demonstrate how 'p's and 'q's varied for place to place acroos the Celtic world.
Of course the way names work in RTW may make it unavoidable that some Gauls end up with clearly Goidilic surnames, I don't know the mechanics of the game, and you may have a perfectly good reason for using Irish prefixes (you may have better information for example), however, I've yet to come across a "map", a "mab", or an "ap" in Gaul despite these being the words that I'd have thought they'd have used.
Come to think of it, there seems to me to be a bit of a Goidilic feel, or bias, or whatever in a lot of the Celtic names for people, units and buildings... I'd be interested to hear why some things are clled what they are.
Now, as far as I was aware, the Gaulish language was like Brythonic in the respect that it replaced old Indo-European 'q' sounds for 'p' sounds making their word for 'son' was "mapos" or "mapon", similar to the Welsh "mab", compared to the Old Irish "macc". The Gallic and British god "Maponos" (divine son) shows this, and other examples like the Gallic "epos" (horse) compared to the Irish "ech" demonstrate how 'p's and 'q's varied for place to place acroos the Celtic world.
Of course the way names work in RTW may make it unavoidable that some Gauls end up with clearly Goidilic surnames, I don't know the mechanics of the game, and you may have a perfectly good reason for using Irish prefixes (you may have better information for example), however, I've yet to come across a "map", a "mab", or an "ap" in Gaul despite these being the words that I'd have thought they'd have used.
Come to think of it, there seems to me to be a bit of a Goidilic feel, or bias, or whatever in a lot of the Celtic names for people, units and buildings... I'd be interested to hear why some things are clled what they are.