"Celt" Conjecture

[Robert Vermaat]

OK, so now we have the possiblity that Romans COULD have had names for other groups that were not used by these groups themselves.

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).

This goes both ways, because it's nigh impossible to prove that Celt-names were first introduced to Gaul by the Romans either. It's the problem of sources again - the historical period in these parts often only starts with Caesar.

So even for Celt-names as a Roman introduction, they could predate Caesar because of the long Roman contacts with southern Gaul.
Equally, a theory could be made (as done earlier in this discussion) for the Greeks learning the name Celt from Gallic tribes, in turn passing the name on to the Romans.
Can we ever prove either case conclusively?

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.
[..]
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.

Same as above, we have some but the dearth of pre-Roman sources also ensures that we cab't prove either case conclusively. So, 'Celt-names' do not seem to occur among pre-Roman names so far (agreed Chris?), but on the other hand we can't claim to know enough of pre-Roman names to say that this absence indeed proves that they did NOT occur.

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.

Good point! Never knew there were so many.