"Celt" Conjecture

[Alanus]

Personal names attested (in some cases multiple times) in inscriptions: Celtillus, Celtilla, Celta, Celtus, Celt?, Celtea, Celtiatis, Celtiatus, Celtinus, Celtitanus, Celtis, Celtilia, Celtius, Celticus, Cetligun, Conceltus (meaning "Your Fellow Celt"), Arceltus (meaning "Great Celt"). The vast majority of these are from Gaul and Iberia (where these names were particularly popular).

What names I can trace from this list they show up in inscriptions dated after the Roman conquest (with recognizable Latin morphology and even derivation, e.g. Celticus), therefore this onomastic sample may be entirely irrelevant to pre-Roman identities.

Names such as these did appear prior to the Roman conquest. We find a long list of personal names in the Thesaurus Linguae Gallicae, compiled by Pierre-Henri Billy, Olms-Weidman, 1993, in which many derive from older Greek sources.

It's my understanding that the major brunt of this thread revolves around the assumption that Caesar lied in claiming the Gauls called themeselves "Celts," either individually with personal names or collectively. At the time the BG was published Caesar had a slew of enemies in Rome itself, and certainly he would have been called to task on this point and many others, simply as an attempt to discredit his up-and-coming rise to power. What we get for critical rebuttal is silence.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not Will Durant, a Caesar-admirer. What Caesar did in Gaul was deplorable; and in the substrata of his glories we discover that his command was responsible for the deaths of 330, 000 German men, women, and children in a single day. The entire nobility of the Veneti had their throat cut. The defenders of Uxellodumun had their right hands chopped off. And everything living, from babies to dogs, was killed in the massacre of the Bituriges. The war and its aftermath accounted for some 2 million Gallic lives, including the terrible death of a starved Vercingetorix at the base of the Fora. Caesar was a deplorable human being, BUT he was not a blatant liar.

Today, people in varying countries consider themselves Celts-- the Irish, the Scottish, the Welsh, the Bretons, and maybe even some Spaniards-- and it seems ludicrous that they are a deluded and post-Caesarian product of a less than authentic tradition. To me, there is no "Celtic Conjecture." And obviously, I stand not alone. :roll: