A jumble of classifications of Celtic

[Fisherking]

We can talk about 19th century bias and much of it could use revision. The idea that the Celts could have come from the west was an idea I had long, long ago as a kid looking at maps. But then I studied them. I am not one to overlook controversial theories, but with this one it would take something quite extraordinary to convince me of its validity.

Relying on Herodotus for information is problematic. Some call him the father of history, other have called him the father of lies. He had some pretty wild notions.


The Romans called the Celts Gallia and the Greeks Keltoi. This is presumably what they called themselves. In Irish the word for folk (ethnically like peoples) is Gael. The Brythonic languages have changed so much that it is difficult to say. These are also Insular Celtic languages. There are no surviving Continental Celtic languages. Gaul is what the Romans called the areas of Celtic dominance but Latin had undergone shifts in pronunciation from the time they first met those peoples. Greek had also shifted. Gael and Kell are not that far apart.

It is not a good practice to pick a few words and try to tie them to another Indo-European language. Also tribal names are usually what others call a people and not what they call themselves. Trying to attribute proto-Germanic roots to Celtic names could prove an upside down process as Germanic derived later than Celtic and the peoples were in direct contact with each other.

We have no complete vocabularies for those Celtic languages but extrapolate from known Insular words.

Now, very importantly, the Tartessian language is recently classified as Celtic (2011) but doing so overlooks some serious problems. As I said before, a portion of there lands were occupied by Celts and part not. Just like calling Pictish Celtic it is a stretch IMO to call Tartessian Celtic because some elements may be similar. Pictish was once linked to Basque, who are the modern descendants of the Aquitani and covered most of the area leading to Iberia. Modern DNA testing is also linking the Irish most closely to these people. There are several ways to view this. My take would be the old Celtic veneer, where the base population was ruled by a Celtic elite. Further, there was also an important Paleolithic culture in the area of the Basques which may well have been seafarers, as are their Basques were in historic times.

The Veneti of Gaul were a Celtic people but the Veneti of Italy were not. Many people assume they were the same. It is a common error.

Hallstatt culture is linked with the Celts but so are the Beaker culture and the Urnfeld culture though others seem to be offshoots of those cultures, particularly the Beaker culture which took in an even larger area than Hallstatt or La Téne.

I will agree that placing Iberian and Irish Celts is problematic but they are Indo-European speakers, though not the earliest, meaning they likely arrived in the late bronze age. We also have anecdotal evidence that at the time of the Celtic-Roman meeting the two languages were mutually intelligible. This would mean they were separated only by a few hundred years from divergence, in all likelihood.

By the way, Hallstatt means salt town. There is a German root for hall that means something very different than the Celtic one for salt. The statt is Germanic. There are a lot of Celtic root words used in town names in Austria and Germany. Some have been Germanized others not. The Germans didn’t make those names up and they serve no nationalistic purpose. If the Celts were never there then who made up the names?

Much in the attempts to tie Celtic names to Germanic roots is not beneficial. It could be looked upon as obfuscation. Many languages have word of similar sounds that mean something totally different. With German and Celtic being both Indo-European a few may even mean the same.

German is a younger language than Celtic. I am tempted to say that much of the authors theory is based on his own obfuscations, intended or unintended. Trying to turn Celts of the Danube into Germans is way over the top. Danube its self is Celtic and relates to the goddess Danu which you also find in the western fringe of Europe.

I am not from here but I happen to be living in Bavaria (said to mean land of the Boii) in a town with a Germanized Celtic root by a river with a Celtic name with Hallstatt remains all around and there is nothing exceptional about this place. There are hundreds more as well as a few with Roman names. There is evidence of Celtic speakers from France, across Germany, Czechoslovakia, into the Balkans to the Black Sea, to what is today Turkey and beyond. We have as much evidence of Celtic speakers in Bulgaria as we have in Spain. The coinage left behind is not in German, it is Celtic. I am afraid those arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The argument is starting to sound like a : We never went to the moon, prove that we did. Well along with the material artifacts the Celts had a great propensity for minting coins. So unless the Germans used Celtic for all the coinage they made then it would mean they must have been speaking Celtic languages and using Celtic names. Does anyone have proof that the Germans were even making coins at that time?

It makes perfect sense that the Celtic languages that survived did so because they were in the far west just as it makes sense that Basque survived because it was isolated and insulated from the Romantic languages. Linguistically the argument just does not wash.

All that said, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the material and forming my own conclusions but that could take a while.


edit: Also as to your link, iron making doesn’t mean iron age. Iron was long known but not as useful as bronze until the processes of hardening it were discovered. The Hallstatt culture also made steel on a frequent basis. That in and of its self makes it easy to identify its smithing.