Infographics mapping out the various origins and etymologies of the names of seven British and Irish nations in the seven main languages of those nations.
Before we get into the etymology, you may want to make sure you’re familiar with what all these words actually refer to. Here’s my post about how to use these names.
And if you want to know more about these languages, how they’re related, and how they spread across these islands, I have a post about that too: A Brief History of British and Irish Languages.
The Etymology of Britain
The names of Britain all stem from a Common Brittonic word reconstructed as *Pritani, which was the name of the island originally used by the Brittonic Celts. This seems to have come from a verb meaning “to do”, and may come from a word the earliest Celtic speakers of the island used for themselves, perhaps meaning something like “Those who act”. If you wanted to get poetic about it, you could interpret this as “Britain” Britain being a stage, with the earliest Celtic speakers here being the actors on that stage.
Notes:
– Old English used “Breten”/”Bryten”, also from Latin Brittania.
– The names of Brittany and the Breton language in France also come from Latin “Brittānia” (via French), referencing their British origin.
– Manx always specifies “Bretyn Vooar” (Great Britain) because “Bretyn” on its own means “Wales”.
– Irish does the opposite: Bhreatain means “Britain”, while an Bhreatain Bheag (literally “the small Britain”) refers to Wales.
– Related words include English “Pict” and Welsh “Prydyn”, and Irish “Cruithne”, all of which refer to the Celtic people who once occupied northern Scotland. Irish Cruithne is also used to refer to a Medieval people of northern Ireland, whose relationship to the Picts is unclear. These may appear in a future series of images I have planned about Celtic demonyms.
The Etymology of Ireland
All the names of Ireland stem from a single Proto-Celtic word meaning something like “rich land” or “land of abundance, and stemming from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “fat”. It’s not unusual for words for prosperity to be related to words for fat or milk, showing the great importance of high calorie foods to our distant ancestors.
Notes:
-Latin calls the island “Hibernia”, which is from Ancient Greek Ἰέρνη (Iérnē), which is the first written name of Ireland we see in history. It was probably influneced by the latin adjective “hibernus”, meaning winter.
-Ancient Greek Iérnē probably comes from the Archaic Irish word shown here, *Iweriu, or perhaps the Proto-Celtic word *Φīweryū.
The Etymologies of England
England was formed by 2 major groups from what is now northern Germany: the Angles, from the Anglia Peninsula; and the Saxons, from Saxony. The Angles may take their name from the fishing hooks they used, or from a percieved hook-shape of the Anglia Peninsula
English and Scots name the country for the Angles, while the Celtic languages use a name based on the Latin word for the Saxons.
Wales is the exception: “English” in Welsh is “Saesneg”, but the country is called “Lloegr”.
The origin of Lloegr is unknown, although it may ultimately come from Proto-Celtic *laikor, meaning “warriors”
The Etymologies of Wales
Names for Wales come from three sources: the Old English word for Wales, the Old Irish word for Britain, or the name the Brittonic people used for themselves, meaning “fellow countrymen”.
Notes:
– In Irish, the word for Wales, “Bhreatain Bheag”, is literally just “Small Britain”.
– In Manx, the word for Wales is “Bretyn”, while “Britain” is always “Bretyn Vooar”, literally meaning “Great Britain”.
– Scottish Gaelic uses a’Chuimrigh (borrowed from Welsh Cymru), while “Bhreatainn Bheag” (Small Britain) is used to refer to Brittany, in France.
– In the Breton language of Brittany (a cousin of Welsh and Cornish), Wales is “Kembre”.
– My home county of Cumbria in England, and is predecessor the historic county of Cumberland, are from the same source as Welsh “Cymru”. Cumbria spoke the Cumbric language, a variant of Common Brittonic, until around the 11th century.
The Etymologies of Scotland
Scotland comes from the Latin “Scoti”, a word used in Roman times to refer to the Gaelic speaking people of Ireland, and later Scotland too.
The origin of this term is uncertain, although there are several suggestions:
It could be from Proto-Celtic *skutā, meaning “cut off”, or from/related to *skātos, meaning “shadow”.
In the Celtic languages, Scotland’s name comes from Old Irish Albu, from Proto-Celtic *albiyū, which meant “upper world”, “luminous world”, or “surface of the world”. This could be a reference to how mountainous the highlands of Scotland are.
This also gave us Albion, a Latin name for Britain.
In Old Welsh *albiyū became “elbid”, meaning “world”.
This word is also possible origin of the name of the Alps, and the nation of Albania.
Etymology of Cornwall
“Cornwall” comes from Old English “Cornwealas”, with “wealas” being identical to the Old English word for Wales, and more generally meaning “not Germanic”. The “corn” part is from the Proto-Celtic name of the region, *Körnɨw, which is likely derived from a Celtic tribe in the area. This Celtic tribe are probably named from the Proto-Celtic word “*karnos”, meaning “horn” or “headland”, referencing the shape of the Cornish peninsula.
The Gaelic languages clearly use a related term, although it’s unclear if they borrowed it from English, of from another Celtic language.
In the Breton language, Cornwall is Kernev-Veur, or “Great Cornwall”.
The “great” is added because Brittany itself has a region called Cornouaille in French, and Kernev in Breton, with identical etymologies to Cornwall and Kernow respectively.
Etymology of the isle of Man
The etymology of the Isle of Man seems pretty straight forward, as it seems to just come from the Celtic word for mountain. The island of Anglesey in Wales has a related name, being called “Ynys Môn”.
The Irish god Manannán mac Lir and the Welsh god Manawydan fab Llŷr are connected and seemingly named after the island.
The Channel Islands
Finally, there are the channel islands, which are British nations in their own right, ruled under but governed separately from the UK. They each have their own dialect of Norman French (Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Sercquiais, and the extinct Auregnais), which I have not included in the above images as they are unconnected to the Celtic and Germanic languages here, being linguistically much closer to the languages of France. The origins of the names of these islands is also uncertain.
The Bailiwick of Guernsey is a crown dependency name for its largest island, Guernsey. The name is presumably Norse, as -ey is an ending for an island, but the rest of the name is uncertain. It may come from Grani, a horse in Norse mythology, which was also a man’s name. Alderney and Sark are within this Bailwick, and are also of unknown origin.
The Balawick of Jersey is similarly obscure, and may come from the Old Norse name Geirs, from a man’s name.
The last nation not shown here is Northern Ireland, which is a British country on the island of Ireland, where people have either an Irish or British identity, and so it’s definitely tangled up on all this. Northern Irish people generally speak English, with some also speaking Irish or (Ulster) Scots. However, they lack a unique national language of their own, and the name of their nation is just Northern + Ireland, so there was no appropriate way to show Northern Ireland here.
If you enjoyed this post and are interested in how the languages of these islands are connected and have changed throughout history, you have to read A Brief History of British and Irish Languages, where I map out all these languages throughout history.