The Names Πρετανικαι Νησοι, Britanni and Britannia

Πρεττανοί, which (written with a single τ) is supposed to represent the Brythonic or the Gaulish equivalent of a Goidelic word Qrtanoi—the assumed progenitor of the Irish Cruthni—is found in certain manuscripts of Strabo instead of the more usual Βρεττανοί: Diodorus Siculus (who derived part of his information about the British Isles indirectly from Pytheas) Strabo, Ptolemy, and Marcian, appear to have described them as Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι, for perhaps they were not responsible for the ττ which appears in manuscripts; and Stephanus of Byzantium speaks of Πρετανίας and Πρετανίδες. According to Professor Rhys and M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, the form Βρεττανικαὶ (νῆσοι), which occurs in most of the manuscripts, is to be accounted for by the fact that Brittani, the Goidelic name of the Brythonic invaders of Britain, which had no connexion with Πρετανοί, was eventually confounded with it: ‘the confusion,’ says Professor Rhys, ‘is to be detected in the ττ of Πρεττανική;’ and he attributes it to scribes. The questions connected with all these names are very difficult. The first puzzle is this:—if, as the professor says, Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι, ‘under the influence of the name of the Brythons, Βρεττανοί, became at last Βρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι, that is to say “Brythonic isles”,’ why did Diodorus Siculus, Ptolemy, and Marcian persist in calling them Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι? Again, the professor’s views about the Brittani, who, he tells us, called themselves Brittones, have lately undergone a sweeping change. In 1902 he regarded ‘the first of the Belgic peoples to cross over to this country’ as an offshoot of ‘the Brittani or Brittones whom Pliny seems to have found so called in the valley of the Somme’ (and whom, by the way, Pliny, whatever he may have found them called, called neither Brittani nor Brittones, but Britanni); and he considered that their name, ‘from being exclusively that of the first settlers, came to be extended to the successive hordes, so that at the last it actually denoted all the settlers here of Belgic descent.’ But the Britanni who are mentioned by Pliny were a Belgic tribe of such small importance that Caesar either ignored or had never heard of them; and, granting that some of them invaded Britain, of which there is no evidence, it is to the last degree improbable that they rather than the Belgae, of whom they would only have formed an item, should have imposed their name upon the people of the whole island. In 1902 Professor Rhys maintained that the Brythonic invaders of Britain were all Belgae. In 1904 he distinguished the Belgae from the other Brythons, maintained that they were the second group of Brythonic invaders, and gave the name Brittones not only to them but also to their predecessors. Whether or not he still holds that these two groups of Brittones derived their name from Pliny’s Britanni, I cannot say. If so, it is somewhat puzzling that one tribe of the so-called Brittones were the Belgae, who presumably called themselves after the Gallic group of tribes which, as a whole, was designated by that name: the professor’s theory would lead to the startling conclusion that while a single horde of the second group of Brythonic invaders were called Belgae after the entire nation of which they were an offshoot, the two Brythonic groups of invaders, Belgic and non-Belgic alike, were conjointly called after the most obscure tribe of the second group! He explains the name Brittones as connected with the Welsh breithyn, cloth, and concludes that ‘the word Brython and its congeners meant a clothed or cloth-clad people’, and that ‘the race with which the Brythons contrasted themselves to their own satisfaction, when they began to give themselves that name, was probably some of the aboriginal tribes whose home they invaded on the Continent’. But if so, it seems wellnigh inexplicable that none of the Continental Belgae, none of the other Gauls, were called either Brittones or Brittani, and that only one petty Belgic tribe, which was unknown to or unnoticed by Caesar, was even called Britanni. As Windisch says, Professor Rhys’s etymology has to contend with serious difficulties; and it must, I think, be admitted that if the Brythons were called either Brittani or Brittones, the mention by Pliny of the Belgic Britanni throws no light upon the origin of the name. It is perhaps conceivable that, as Dr. Macbain has suggested, ‘the tribe on the Somme were some returned emigrants from Britain.’

Britain, says Professor Rhys, is traceable to Britannia, and Britannia to Britanni,—‘the Latin name of the people’. He observes that the Greek form of Britanni was Βρεττανοί, and he adds that ‘the practical identity between the Latin and Greek forms makes it probable that it was from or through the Greeks of Marseilles that the Romans first heard of these islands. This,’ he continues, ‘is not all, for the Latin Brittanni, and especially the Greek Βρεττανοί, have their exact counterpart in the Medieval Irish plurals Bretain, genitive Bretan, which had at times to function as the name both of the Brythons and of the island. It is to be noticed that neither Βρεττανοί or Britanni, nor the Irish Bretain has anything corresponding to it in the dialects of the Brythons themselves. From whom, then, did the Greeks hear the word which served as the basis of their names for Britain and its people? It cannot have been from the Brythonic peoples of the south-east of the island, or any, perhaps, of the Gauls of the Continent: it was probably from the natives of the south-west who brought their tin to market, and in whose country the only Celtic speech in use was as yet Goidelic. When, however, the Romans came to Britain they learnt the name which the Brythons gave themselves in the south-east of the island, and this was not Britanni, or Brettani, but Brĭttŏnes.’ On the other hand, Dr. Macbain suggests that the ‘Greek form Prettania [or rather Pretania, the form which is assumed to have been derived from Priten or its older equivalent, and indirectly from Qrtanoi] gave rise to the name Britain,—a bad Latin pronunciation’. Mr. Nicholson objects that ‘in neither Greek nor Latin is p known to pass into b’. Is it possible that the Latin pronunciation, if it was bad, may have been traceable to a bad Greek pronunciation, which gave rise to Polybius’s Βρεττανικαί (νῆσοι), and which was itself due to a defect not in pronunciation but in hearing?