What Remained
Britain Before English
Course 1 · Chapter 10 · What Remained
The last chapter asks what is still here. The main traces of the people before English are in the map: river and town names, and three living languages, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. It ends with a recap of the whole course.
Names on the map
Wikipedia's Celtic toponymy article lists these survivals. The article carries a "needs more citations" banner, so treat the details as provisional.
| Name | Proposed origin (per the article) |
|---|---|
| Avon | Brythonic abona, "river" (Welsh afon); several English rivers bear it |
| Axe, Exe | Celtic iska, "water" |
| Thames, Tamar, Tame, Teme | Possibly from tames-, "dark" (given only as a possibility) |
| Dover | Latin Dubris, from dubr-, "water" |
| Lincoln | Latin Lindum, from lindo-, "pool" |
| York | Latin Eboracum, from eburo-, "yew" |
| Gloucester | Latin Glevum, possibly "bright place" |
| Penn, Pendleton | penn-, "hill, top, head" (Welsh pen) |
| Aberdeen | aber, "river mouth" |
| Edinburgh | From Din Ediyn, "fort of Ediyn" |
| Glasgow | Compared to Welsh glascau, "blue hollow" |
| Lanark | Compared to Welsh llanerch, "glade" |
The pattern is that rivers and a few major towns keep their older names while most villages carry English names. The same article says Welsh and Cornish place-names are mostly Welsh or Cornish, or anglicised forms of them. I did not read its later sections or its last citations.
Words in English
Wikipedia's List of English words of Brittonic origin says few English words are definitely Brittonic: academia accepts "fewer than ten" beyond reasonable doubt among words that are neither historic nor obsolete. The most widely accepted are bin, brock (badger), carr (rock), coomb (valley), crag and tor (hill). Others, such as gull, dun, hog and peat, are disputed. Place names show more: coomb in the south-west, tor in names such as Glastonbury Tor, and funta ("spring") in Bedfont, Chalfont and Fontwell.
The living languages
The Brittonic languages article says Brittonic is one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other being Goidelic. It is also called P-Celtic, because it has /p/ where Goidelic has /k/. Common Brittonic was spoken across Great Britain in the Iron Age and Roman period and borrowed many Latin words during Roman rule; about 800 survive in the three modern languages. By the post-Roman period there were at least two groups, Southwestern and Western. Western developed into Cumbric and Welsh, and Southwestern into Cornish and Breton.
| Language | Where | Position (per the articles) |
|---|---|---|
| Welsh | Wales | Spoken continuously. The 2021 census counted 538,300 people aged three and over (17.8%) able to speak it; other surveys give higher figures. Official status confirmed by the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011. Old Welsh dated to the 9th century onward; William Morgan's 1588 Bible standardised the language |
| Cornish | Cornwall | Died out as a community language in the 18th or 19th century (the last-speaker claims are contested). A revival began around Henry Jenner's 1904 handbook. UNESCO changed its label from "extinct" to critically endangered in 2010. The 2021 census gives 563 people |
| Breton | Brittany, France | Brought from Britain to Brittany in the Early Middle Ages and closest to Cornish. The article quotes a fall "from more than one million speakers around 1950 to 107,000 in 2024"; UNESCO classes it severely endangered. French is the sole official language of France |
| Cumbric | Northern England, southern Scotland | Extinct, replaced by Goidelic and Anglic speech |
| Pictish | Northern Scotland | Marked uncertain; often placed in a separate Pritenic branch (see Chapter 8) |
The article says Brittonic was displaced from the 5th century by Gaelic and Germanic speakers, and notes that western Herefordshire spoke Welsh until the late 19th century. The speaker figures come from different surveys with different questions, so I give them with their sources and do not compare them directly.
The course in ten steps
| Chapter | Title | One-line recap |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | First People | Humans in Britain long before farming; Doggerland, Happisburgh, Cheddar Man |
| 2 | Farmers and Monuments | Neolithic farming, Skara Brae, long barrows and Stonehenge |
| 3 | Beakers and Bronze | The Beaker culture, the Amesbury Archer and the Bronze Age |
| 4 | The Iron Age | Hillforts such as Maiden Castle, Pytheas, and Caesar's invasions |
| 5 | Were They Celts? | The term "Celt", the Celtic languages and the debate about it |
| 6 | Rome Arrives | The conquest, Boudica, Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall |
| 7 | Life in Roman Britain | Towns, roads, Vindolanda tablets and Christianity |
| 8 | The North | Caledonians, Picts and Dál Riata |
| 9 | After Rome | The end of Roman rule, sub-Roman Britain, Gildas and Arthur |
| 10 | What Remained | Names and the surviving Brittonic languages |
Where the story goes next
This course stops at about 450. The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the beginning of English and the first English texts are told in The Story of Old English. Its Chapters 1 and 2 cover the same years from the Anglo-Saxon side. A further planned course, The History of the English Language, would carry the story on; it is not written yet.
Words to know
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Brittonic | The branch of Celtic that includes Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and the extinct Cumbric |
| Goidelic | The other Insular Celtic branch (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx) |
| Toponymy | The study of place names |
| Loanword | A word borrowed from another language |
| Revival | Bringing a language back into use after it stopped being a community language |
| Substrate | A language that leaves traces, such as names, in the language that replaces it (my gloss) |
✏️ Try It Yourself
Think of the answer first, then click to check.
1. Name the three surviving Brittonic languages.
Show answer
Welsh, Cornish and Breton.
2. Which Brittonic languages are extinct, or uncertain?
Show answer
Cumbric is extinct. Pictish is marked uncertain: often placed in a separate Pritenic branch.
3. Why is Brittonic called "P-Celtic"?
Show answer
Its reflex of Proto-Indo-European kw is /p/, while Goidelic has /k/.
4. Give two river names that may come from Brittonic and their meanings.
Show answer
For example Avon (abona, "river"), Axe and Exe (iska, "water"), Dover (dubr-, "water"). Thames and Tamar are given only as a possibility ("dark").
5. Name two English words widely accepted as Brittonic.
Show answer
Any two of bin, brock, carr, coomb, crag, tor.
6. What happened to Cornish, and what changed in 2010?
Show answer
It died out as a community language in the 18th or 19th century, was revived from the early 20th, and in 2010 UNESCO reclassified it from "extinct" to critically endangered.
7. How did Breton come to be spoken in France?
Show answer
Britons brought it from Great Britain to Brittany in the Early Middle Ages; it is closest to Cornish.
8. Why should you be careful with place-name meanings?
Show answer
Many are hedged ("possibly", "probably"), Scottish ones rest on reconstructions that are not uniformly accepted, and some names record Britons through Old English wealh without being Celtic words.