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08-17-2004, 11:59 PM

If this has already been dealt with, feel free to tap it over to 'off-topic'. 
 
I'm sure you are familiar with the fact that Latin pronunciation is guesswork. We just don't know how the language was spoken back in Caesar's day. 
 
In the same way, I suspect there is no record of the pronunciation of Boudicca/Boadicea. I assume an original written record of the name survives because one version is clearly the phonetic pronunciation of the other. 
 
Boud - i - cc - a = Boad- i-cea. 
 
This sort of thing bothers me only because Boudicca (Boodicka) is now trumpeted as the only way to pronounce the name. I wouldn't mind if there was some evidence - hence this post. Does anyone know if there is proof of some kind? My personal feeling is that the Victorian pronunciation Boadicea, with four syllables, is a pleasant sounding name that rolls off the tongue, whereas the other one sounds like a dog vomiting. Just an opinion though, obviously. 
 
Conn

***Praefectusclassis*** · 08-18-2004, 05:36 AM

Guesswork? No, not really. There are quite a number of indications of pronunciation, for instance spelling errors (words spelled as they are pronounced) in inscriptions and translitteration of Latin words in Greek texts. Greets 
 
Jasper

08-18-2004, 06:43 AM

I thought Boudicea was a miss-transcribing by a Monk ? 
 
Conal

08-18-2004, 10:55 AM

I didn't mean to have Latin the focus of the post, but I know there are 'clues' and so on. The problem is how pronunciation changes over time - think Chaucer compared to modern english. Latin pronunciation must have changed over its long period of use, like every other human language. We can infer certain things from the texts and have arrived at a sort of mutually agreed pronunciation alphabet. Rhyming poetry is obviously a good source for this. However, we don't know for certain. Stresses and cadence are likely to have changed enormously, as well as vowel sounds. It's quite possible that a soldier in Caesar's day could be completely unintelligible to Latin scholars of today. 
 
However, Boudicca/Boadicea comes from a completely different root language. I used the problem with Latin to indicate the potential problem there. Does anyone know the rationale behind the pronunciation of this name? 
 
Conn

08-18-2004, 03:23 PM

Her name was Celtic so Boudicca is it likely to be a latinised form in any case ? 
 
Conal

Crispvs · 08-18-2004, 08:10 PM

For quite some time now I have suspected that the name may have been pronounced 'Bo-oo-dick-ah'. I base this on the fact that we are always led to believe that the vowels 'o' and 'u' had distict and different sounds. If this is indeed the case then it follows that the name 'Boudica', as transcribed by the Romans (at a time separated by only about forty years from that in which Tacitus was writing) was believed to contain both of these distinct vowel sounds in what is now generally thought of as the first syllable, which I therefore suggest should actually be two syllables. I feel thus that the name should be a four syllable rather than three syllable one: Bo-u-dic©-a. 
 
Crispvs

mcbishop · 08-18-2004, 08:29 PM

I feel thus that the name should be a four syllable rather than three syllable one: Bo-u-dic©-a. 
 
That doesn't allow for dipthongs, however, which certainly existed in Latin. There is a school of thought that sees Moesia (for example) pronounced not as 'Meesia' or 'Mo-eesia' but 'Moysia'. 
 
You pays your money... 
 
Mike Bishop

Tasciavanous · 08-19-2004, 08:55 PM

I think if you want a better idea of pronunciation the best source we have available is the descendant languages i.e Scots Gallic, Irish Gaelic, Welsh and Brithonic. So to this end I asked my Grandfather ( a Gallic speaker raised in Moray) How he would pronounce Boudica the answer Bo-Dyke-har and then for Boadicea? the answer Booa-dis-ear. Anyone out there have relatives or friends that speak any other other surviving pre-roman native peoples tongues? I would have thought the experiment would work best on those who learned the language as a primary language.

Nathan Ross · 08-21-2004, 10:22 PM

Surely the difference lies mainly in the pronunciation of the C? 'Church latin', I believe, uses the 'soft' c, and for a long time this is how latin was pronounced in England. It's recently been accepted that Roman latin used a hard c - so Caesar is pronounced Kaesar (from which, of course, comes the German Kaiser), and Cicero would have been Kikero (which is one I find especially hard to get used to!) - this, I think, is not merely a fad but is established by sufficient evidence - what that evidence is, however, I'm not qualified to say! (A good reason might be Roman versions of Greek names, where the hard k - Thukydides, for instance - is always written as a c. Presumably the Romans didn't call Greeks by different names, they just wrote them differently) 
 
So, when we have a name written by a Roman latin-speaker as Boudicea, we know that the sound he was aiming at was 'Boudika' with the hard c. Of course, all these people are long dead and can't complain, and Roman names are pronounced differently all over the place (in Italy, for instance, Caesar is Cesare (CheSArey) and Maxentius is Massenzio). Who's right? Perhaps nobody - I persist in calling Caesar Seezar, but I surrender to Boudikka.

08-22-2004, 04:42 AM

I can handle calling Caesar Kaiser but pronouncing his name Keezer is something up with which I will not put. A man has his limits. 
 
Rich K.

Nathan Ross · 08-22-2004, 01:35 PM

The name also turns up on a Romano-British tombstone - one Lollia Bodicca, the wife of an auxiliary - not much doubt as to the pronunciation there, and we could presume that the famous 'Boudicca' was essentially the same. The name means 'victory', apparently. 
 
For more British names, this site is very interesting: 
 
[url=http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/british1000/" target="top]Ancient British Names[/url] 
 
A shame it doesn't go into the meaning of the names - Cartimandua seems to mean something like 'fast horse' (often romantically glossed as sleek pony!), Cunobelinus is Hound of Belinus, but as for the rest... 
I don't know how the components of the names break down either - perhaps variants could be constructed (Manduabracca? Dumnovellaunus?) - Anyone know more about this?

08-23-2004, 05:07 PM

Very informative! If I've understood correctly, then, the tombstone should have read Lollia Bodica, if the 'c' was to be pronounced as a hard 'k'. The fact that there are two must surely mean it's pronounced Bod-i-see-ya. Or possibly, Bod-i-ke-ka, just to confuse things further. 
 
I do remember that Caecilius is pronounced 
Ki-killious, by the way, so I don't have a problem with Caesar being said as Kaiser. Probably doesn't sound as ugly if you speak German... 
 
Kikero/Cicero is a new one on me, too. Funny how you can look at a name so many times and not make the connection. 
 
Conn

Nathan Ross · 08-23-2004, 05:30 PM

Not sure about two k's being pronounced as a 'see'... The inscription definitely reads Bodicca though, so... maybe it's a sort of boDIK-har sort of thing. I do rather like Tasciovanous' version above: Bo-Dyke-har, which sounds rather bellicose and not too much like a 'dog vomiting'. 
 
I'd reasoned that Caecilius was pronounced 'Kay-Kill-ius - is the Cae actually a Ki then? (This could run and run...)

08-23-2004, 07:10 PM

According to my Latin dictionary, dipthongs, like the 'ae' in Caesar would actually have both vowels pronounced. Bearing in mind that this is a sort of accepted compromise, you'll be pleased to hear that Caesar should be pronounced as Ka-aser. The first 'a' as in father, the 'e' like the a in 'fate'. Much better sounding than Kaiser, though for all I know, Germans pronounce Kaiser with three syllables anyway. 
 
Conn

08-23-2004, 10:26 PM

Nope, Germans pronounce it "Kyzer" just like we do. 
 
"Kah-ay-zer". Not bad. 
 
Rich K.

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