Britain (place name)

The name Britain is derived from the Latin name Britannia (earlier Brittannia), via Old French Bretaigne (whence also Modern French Bretagne) and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The French form replaced Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten (also Breoton-lond, Breten-lond).

Brittannia or Brittānia was the name used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together. Following the Roman conquest of AD 43, it came to be used for the Roman province, which happened to be restricted to the island of Great Britain (the portion south of Hadrian's wall). Because of this, Brittannia was increasingly used for Great Britain in particular, which had formerly been known as Albion. The form with single -t-, Britannia, is secondary, but can be traced to the Roman period.^[1]

Latin Britannia is derived from the travel writings of the ancient Greek Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far North as Thule (probably Iceland). Pytheas described Thule as the northernmost part of Πρεττανικη (Prettanike) or Βρεττανίαι (Brettaniai), his term for the entire group of islands in the far north-west.^[2]^[3]^[4] Diodorus in the 1st century BC introduced the form Πρεττανια Prettania, and Strabo (1.4.2) has Βρεττανία Brettania. Marcian of Heraclea in his Periplus maris exteri describes αἱ Πρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι "the Britannic Isles". Stephanus of Byzantium glosses Ἀλβίων Albion as νῆσος Πρεττανική, Μαρκιανὸς ἐν περίπλῳ αὐτῆς. τὸ ἐθνικὸν Ἀλβιώνιος ("the Britannic island, according to Marcian in his periplus; the Albionian people" Ethnica 69.16).

The peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Πρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani.^[3] These names derived from a Celtic name which is likely to have reached Pytheas from the Gauls, who may have used it as their term for the inhabitants of the islands.^[4]^[5] Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, Britain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic speaking inhabitants of Ireland and the north of Scotland.^[4] The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans.

Brittia appears as a name for Great Britain in Procopius, reportedly used by the 6th century population of the Netherlands.

The Latin term (Bede has Brittania) is loaned into Old English by Alfred the Great as bryttania. The 9th century Historia Brittonum presents an aitiology for the name by introducing the character of Brutus of Troy.

See also