Names on the map

[Bacchus]

I am far from historian or even amateur in that area but since I am putting together a map with factions of EB and their "movement in time"...I started to investigate and here's my question:

Where does the EB-team gets the names of the settlements and so on.
Bagacos, as an example, does not show up anywhere on the internet...
Are some made up?
Or is it all from books of which nothing is on the internet , yet.

Please some clarity required here ;-)

[Ludens]

In old map preview it is mentioned that the EB map is based on the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman world. However, I imagine that there is little data on cities outside the Greek and Romans sphere. In fact, some areas of the map would have few if any cities. Also, EB strives to give each city the local name, as opposed to the name the Romans/Greeks gave to it. This means they sometimes have to reconstruct a name. I also know several names are placeholders.

On a related note, isn't Palmyra (in Tadmor) a Roman name? IIRC the town was called Tadmor as well.

[Bacchus]

On Palmyra: it is. The Romans called it Palmyra because of the palmtrees in the area. It was an oasis.
City of Palmtrees
Tadmor in arabic but probably with the same meaning. My arabic is a bit rusty... ;-)

Interesting note for my "map-making": the Arche Seleukeia ignored this city so it should be untouched in EB by them if played historically correct.
Romans took hold of it twice. First between 68 and 54 bc annexed by Nero. Later the city was found deserted by Antonius in 41 bc.

If someone has other information on this, please feel free to share.

[Elmetiacos]

"Bagacos"... missed that one in the MC thread. It looks like a mistake: as it's on the Waal (Latin Vaculus) river it's presumably meant to be Caesar's "Island of the Batavi", but it's mistakenly been made the capital of the Belgic Nervii tribe. *Bagacos is simply Gaulish for "warlike" but it wasn't ever a placename. I wonder if, with Attuaca having been put up in Scotland instead of Belgium where it should be, Bagacos has been swapped with it and was meant to be the capital of Caledonia - which nobody knows the name of?

[Mediolanicus]

I noticed that Attuaca thing too.
Although some say (Ugo JANSSENS, De Oude Belgen) that it is most likely just Celtic for fortress or fortified position.

[Elmetiacos]

It's possible... *at-tû-ak- could mean something like "renewed defences".

[Tellos Athenaios]

Wouldn't count on the Isle of the Batavi for Bagacos; mainly because the Batavi weren't around at that time...

And incidentally it's actually not located near the Waal (which used to run even further north than it does today) as you may have noticed too?

[Elmetiacos]

Beats me... looking at the antique map on the EB website, it's quite hard to figure out which river is which. Wherever the Waal flowed and whenever the Batavi arrived, there was never a Bagacos, but there was an Attuaca nearby.

[Tellos Athenaios]

IIRC, the Batavi arrived in the region now called the Betuwe at about 50 BC?

In any case they occupied some of the 'natural dikes' which arised along the river banks. Incidentally these river banks make a (sharp) turn north just about 4 km from I live, which is where the river Linge splits off the Waal.

Yet; actually it's the other way around: the Linge is the ancient 'main' stream and what is now the Waal splits off from the ancient Linge further south. Still that 'route' of the Waal runs further north than the present day one does; its 'natural dike' 'through' Passewaaij; and further west -- it's in fact the Passewaaijse Hoogeweg; the western stretches being the Bommelerweg.

Now one might wonder about the importance of these 'dikes'; but the thing is that in Netherlands the oldest settlements - apart from those in Limburg or the Rijk van Nijmegen and similarly elevated stretches or the sand dunes / 'terpen' - *always* occur on such 'natural dikes'. The reason is that these stretches are the very few pieces of land high enough to be secure from flooding; as well as stable enough to actually support heavier structures. And not very useful for farmland either. (Consisting of mostly sand and gravel.)

... And incidentally one of the old Batavi villages is right on (or rather burried below) that Passewaaijse Hoogeweg; ending just about 200m's from my doorstep.