Linguistic Evidence for ‘Romanization’: Continuity and Change in Romano-British Onomastics: A Study of the Epigraphic Record with Particular Reference to Bath

Abstract

Based on a new online database of Celtic personal names, this research demonstrates how the study of Romano-British onomastics can shed light on the complexities of linguistic and cultural contacts, complementing archaeological material and literary sources. After an introductory section on methodology, Part One analyses naming formulae and expressions of filiation as evidence for both continuity and change dependent on social and geographical factors. Confusion and contamination between the Latin and Celtic systems proved much less common than on the Continent, where earlier contact with Roman culture and the written tradition for Continental Celtic occasionally facilitated an unusual form of syncretism. Part Two examines the naming formulae attested at Roman Bath and the mechanisms by which Celts adopted Latin names. The case-study of Bath relates continuity and change in both naming formulae and nomenclature to an acceptance of, or resistance to, ‘Romanization’ in Britain.

Languages of early Britain: Introduction

“…His contribution begins with a judicious survey of past research on the use of Latin in Britain and follows with an authoritative evaluation of what the place-name evidence can and cannot reveal about the Romano-British linguistic scene. His study of place-names, which incidentally merits comparison with a recent survey of personal-names in Roman Britain (see Mullen 2007, Mullen & Russell 2009), probes among other things the evidence for Latin place-names in both Roman and Post-Roman sources, the productive use of Latin elements in Old English place-names, and the phonological form of both Latin and Brittonic elements. The number of Latin place-names is shown to be modest, when compared to the situation in Gaul, but mere numbers of place-names, as Parsons points out, are not a reliable gauge for calibrating the degree of Romanisation, linguistic or otherwise, since it is unlikely that bilingualism or language shift would lead to a spate of renaming activity -only for new buildings and settlements would such be expected.…”

Sociolinguistics

“…4 Nevertheless, setting the names in their context (Raybould 1999;Mullen 2007a), and in the context of other evidence for bilingualism and linguistic varieties, may aid us in our quest.…”

Votive Objects and Ritual Practice at the King’s Spring at Bath

“…The practice of inscribing a lead (or lead alloy) tablet with a request for divine manipulation of an interpersonal problem seems to have begun in the Greek-speaking world, with the earliest examples appearing in Attica and Sicily in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., nearly a millennium before the Bath tablets (Gager 1992: 5). The tablets from Bath have been understood primarily through analyses of their written texts, and through analogies with comparable material from the continent (Tomlin 1988b;Adams 1992;Mullen 2007a;Mullen 2007b;Kropp 2008). This work, starting with Roger Tomlin's initial publication of the Bath tablets, has been justifiably cautious about the term 'curse tablet', with its connotations of dark magic (Tomlin 1988b: 49).…”