"Celt" Conjecture

[Rumo]

:roll: I can't believe I am having this argument. "Greeks" in English is a loanword from Latin Graeci, which is itself derived from Greek ??????? (Graikoi), the name of the Greek colonists from Graia who settled in Italy. Thus, just as "Celt"/Celtus/Keltos is ultimately derived from an ethnic/tribal name native to Gaul and Spain, "Greek"/Graecus/Graikos is derived from an ethnic/tribal name native to western Greece.

You miss the point. In English "it is/sounds Greek to me" refers to something else. As such, the word "Greek" can be used in English with no relation whatsoever with real Greek language or ethnicity.
Besides what I've already said, as you point out, this word is not even borrowed directly from Greek.

So Caesar (and any other Latin speaker) could use the word "Celt" (and derivatives) without learning it from Celts, without even referring to real Celts.

You keep saying this, but you offer zero evidence to support it.

I don't have to. Let's draw a chronology. This word shows up
- first at some Greek authors
- then at some Latin authors
- and at last in some Roman inscriptions, sometimes referring to people speaking what we call today a Celtic language

The attestations suggest the Romans learned it from the Greeks. If you prefer extreme skepticism, then fine, we don't know where the Romans learned this name. Maybe they heard it from Carthaginians.
I thought that if I'm demolishing a theory it would be nice to put something in place. You don't want it, I don't really mind.

Well in a way, yes, since the author here translates keltis as "stele" by way of "raised up thing", from the Proto-Indo-European root *kel- "to tower/raise up" (which gives us English "hill"); it has been proposed that as an ethnic name. *Keltoi meant something like "Lofty (Ones)" (compare Germanic Burgundi).

Sorry, for me this is outdated scholarship. PIE is a reconstruction. It cannot be really used as a solid argument for anything. And *kel- is a monosyllabic root which can be used to support any kind of speculation.

I already gave you another one. There is also the"Celtica" graffito from Roanne (where other short Gaulish inscriptions have been found) listed in Recueil des Inscriptions Gauloises II.2, L-81a.

It's up to you to present inscriptions if they really support the case. It's hard for me to track something which is just "inscribed on a stone" even if you add Peñalba. You may refer to this. Or maybe to some short inscriptions from Clunia (Peñalba de Castro) - see my previous links for that.

According to RIG, L-81a is dated vers 40-30 avant J.-C. (after the Roman conquest). As for the text, mais la lecture est extrêmement douteuse. If even the editors of L-81a find that reading extremely doubtful, I rest my case.

And yet "slav" is a Slavic root word common to all the Slavic languages and commonly found in Slavic personal and tribal names - JUST LIKE "CELT". What is the problem here, people?

I'm glad you notice that, because mutatis mutandis what I'll be saying of the Slavs goes for the Celts.
Slavs are first attested in Roman sources in 6th century CE, under names like Sclaveni and Sclavi. Their leaders have names with un-Slavic sonority: Musokius, Peiragastus, Ardagastus, Dauritas, etc. Of one of them, Samo (7th century), we are even told he was a Frankish merchant.
Centuries pass, Slavs become Christians, they learn to read and write in Latin and Greek, and guess what? The -slav names start to pop up (maybe I'm missing some earlier mentions, but for now I can think of the Croatian duke Tomislav and the Rus prince Sviatoslav - both in the 10th century). It is only in the Russian Primary Chronicle (12th century) when we get the first unequivocal testimony of Slavs calling themselves Slavs when addressing a Slavic audience.

So if we leave aside the preconception that before everything there was a Slavic "proto-nation", isn't it likely that Slav comes from Sclav/Sclavene and not vice-versa? That it was the Roman label, a Roman construct, which only after a while and a substantial interaction between the two worlds, it became part of the medieval and then modern ethnic identity of those "Slavic nations?