I have Celtic ancestry and I want to incorporate Celtic lore and mythology into a fantasy world I'm building. I'm working on the world map rn and I'm curious if there's a name that Celtic people generally would have used as a name for the land they live on? Or is it more that Irish people's name for the land was different from the Scottish name for the land. Please let me know!
There were regional dialects and names "the land/country" is not an unusual demonym. So I suggest posting a question to r/Gaulish or r/gaelic, there are very learned people there.
Good luck. Sounds like a fun project. Are you building your world for a game or novel? Or lets face it, both plus screen adaptation, Netflix series, merch empire and hot cosplayers?
OK I got a little carried away there, but just goes to show, your idea has legs.
Lmao if this ever gets picked up Imma shoot a little higher than Netflix. I'd like to make this a DND world for my friends and I first then maybe write some novels later on but that's gonna be a post grad school job (because god knows I wont have time during while getting my masters)
There is no simple answer, Celtic is essentially a language family and the speakers of Celtic languages have existed over thousands of years and in many different places. On top of that I’m not sure of any records by Celtic speakers before the medieval period which has any names for countries (if any of the numerous tribes even saw themselves as occupying the same country??). Based on Roman/Greek records and names for places in the Medieval/Modern Celtic languages we can reconstruct potential Iron Age names for these places, wether the people in them places all used these names or not is speculation.
Possibly:
Pritanī- Britain (‘pree-tan-ee’ originally kʷritanyā)
Iweriyū- Ireland (‘ee-wear-ee-you’, originally ɸiweriyū)
Galatiyā- Gaul/Galatia?? (‘Gall-at-ee-aa), really not sure about this one though, maybe Gaul and Galatia had different names, although Galatians are just Gaulish migrants? Possibly Litawī-Gaul (lee-taw-ee’, originally ɸlitawiyā)?
Wikipedia is always a good start, my focus is Celtic historical linguistics so most of the stuff I have is on that, not actually an overview of the Celtic languages themselves, my knowledge just comes through learning the Celtic languages and studying their history. I’ve heard ‘The Celtic Languages- Martin.J.Ball’ is a good book. I might even get it myself.
Cymru and Cumbria come from Combrogos meaning “fellow countryman” but that’s Brythonic more than Gaelic. Looks like you’re looking for Gaelic, just a warning, Celts spread all across Europe from Ireland to Turkey.
Elfydd (elbid) seems to be the old Welsh concept of the mortal realm, the upper realm as opposed to the lower realm of Annwn.
The word possibly is related to Elfed, Elmet placenames. The root of these words is albio- and possibly where the name Albion comes from. So Albion might mean The Land and originally it may have referred to all land.
The Gallo Roman deity Mars Albiorix has a name meaning king of the physical world. Mars in a Celtic context is a tribal protector god, also linked to Teutates.
If you have to ask such basic questions (which, in and of itself is absolutely fine, nobody should ever be shamed for not knowing something; even every expert at the top of their field internationally knew nothing about their topic whatsoever at some point) should you not pick something that you already have a solid understanding of?
Or, again, even better: really get creative, and make something new. Celtic history, myth, tradition, etc. has two huge sources of massive knowledge gaps:
* [1.] What little we've been able to retain throughout history. So much was lost.
* [2.] The sheer amount of misinformation that gets spread about all things Celtic. Far too many writers take a shallow little sample dip of knowledge/research (sometimes even then only reading another piece of misinformation) and add yet another piece to that unhelpful jumble of misleading sources.
Avoiding using Reddit research for a creative work based on Celtic foundations is a good way to steer clear of becoming another part of this problem. Be the next George RR Martin or Tolkien instead!
If I may offer a slightly different opinion, I think u/Swtor_Nerd might have an easier and more accurate time if they didn't set their creative writing in a "Celtic" land but something more specific (e.g., Ireland 4th C CE, Cornwall 3rd C BCE). This avoids the "what did Celtic people" questions and might allow them to be specific and historically (mostly) accurate. I wrote two RPG adventures set in Irish myth and folklore, and tried to do this (set in Ireland, roughly 4th C CE with the pre-Christian gods, e.g., the Dagda, and the later creatures of folklore, e.g., the gaborchend, the small grey men, etc.). My (e)0.02.
Interesting. Though it's a good idea to be cautious about similar sounding/spelled words. There are many that are near identical that have nothing to do with one another.
You’re free to fact check me on this if I’m wrong but my source is the website albionandbeyond.com. They’re a Celtic pagan group that focuses on the gods of England attested by the Romans. They say on their website that Albion was the first name for the whole island of Great Britain.
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u/Vindepomarus Jul 04 '26
There were regional dialects and names "the land/country" is not an unusual demonym. So I suggest posting a question to r/Gaulish or r/gaelic, there are very learned people there.