"Celt" Conjecture

[Rumo]

Why? You challenged the claim by others that names with -celt- in them could be used as proof for 'Celt' being a correct name for the group - well, what's being discussed here. You say that the names provided are not admissable because the come from the Roman period.
First of all, I do not see why any name from the Roman period must be a name that arrived only after the Roman occupation. Hundreds of names that we find in Gaul and other occupied territories are clearly not Roman, so i fail to see your argument that these must be Roman and cannot be pre-Roman.

But for that claim to hold, it must be shown the Celt- names pre-date Caesar's account.

I agree we find hundreds of non Roman names in Gaul, but for most of them there's no clear evidence they are pre-Roman. We perhaps can identify names which are not Latin, but we wouldn't know if those names came recently into fashion. We only know the "ancestral" names which were earlier attested in Gaul (see below on pre-Roman names).

Secondly, I think that we do know precious little pre-Roman names, since history only begins with the Romans. Hence my question - if you dismiss names from the Roman period as inadmissable, I ask you if you even know sources that provide names from the pre-Roman period.

Well, we have some names.

On one hand we have those early Gaulish inscriptions in Greek and Etruscan script. A short overview here.

On the other hand we have several inscriptions in Spain. Three of the Botorrita plaques (I, III and IV) are in an indigenous (Celtiberian) language and in an Iberian, non-Latin script. The fourth plaque (Botorrita II) is in Latin and can be dated in early 1st century BCE.
The side B of Botorrita I and Botoritta III contain long lists of names. Some of them look indigenous, some of them expectedly seem to have other origins (Greek, Latin).

No -kelt- sequence, as far as I could check. The rich "Celt-"Iberian onomastics which was presented earlier in the thread, has no echo in these lists.

To resume an earlier point on Celtillus, there are few names ending in -los, which may be used as argument for an indigenous form adapted in Latin as -illus.

However we have no reason to believe that only Celtic speakers had "Celtic" names.

Are you arguing that this is a case like the personal name 'Dutch', which is not being used by a Dutchman, and also does not originate with a group calling themselves 'Dutch', but are referred to as such by others only?

Yes, indeed.

I'm very familiar with Vlach and Romanian anthroponomastics, so here are some examples.

There is an entire class of Romanian surnames derived from ethnonyms: Rusu (the Russian), T?taru (the Tatar), Ungureanu (the Hungarian), Grecu (the Greek), Neam?u (the German), Turcu (the Turk), Sârbu (the Serbian). In some cases it might reflect a remote ancestry, in some cases not. The Romanians from Hungarian kindgom / Austro-Hungary were known as "ungureni". In Romanian language both "unguri" and "ungureni" mean "Hungarians", the former is just a plural and usually refers to ethnic Hungarians, while the latter is also suffixed and refers to people coming from Hungarian lands. This brings me to another point that those lines coming of more humble origin (freedmen) got their names from the lands they worked on, from their last master (maybe one of his nick-names, not his real name), etc.

Some names are created by folk etymology. One famous example is a Hungarian medieval hero Pál Kinizsi which is known in Romanian as Pavel Chinezu (literally Paul the Chinese, even though he was no Chinese and arguably had no Chinese ancestry!)

Also we should not forget about nicknames. They reflect physical appearance, attitudes, etc and one class of Romanian nicknames is about ethnic stereotypes. Usually you get nicknames as a kid, so here's an informal list of such nicknames and possible explanations.
Neam?u (the German) - a blonde kid
Brazilianu (the Brazilian) - someone good at playing soccer
Africanu (the African) or ?iganu (the Gypsy) - someone with darker complexion
Chinezu (the Chinese) - someone with slightly Mongoloid eyes
Americanu (the American) - a cool kid

So you see, it is quite possible for someone to bear an ethnic/nation-derived name, with no relation whatsoever with his own language, ancestry, citizenship, and so on.