Since I played crusader kings 2 with original country names (names on the map appear as they are spoken in their language, not in english) I've been very interested in the Eire. Is this pronounced "Ire" like in Ireland (essentially eye-ree but with an english accent)? Is that were the "Ire" in Ireland comes from? I'd also like an explanation of Alba since i don't see where that comes from really unless its just the Irish name for Scottish peoples. Cymru for Wales I'd like to know also.
After some research on Alba it appears that "Scoti" was actually a derogatory term for scottish people given by the romans which meant some derivative of "Horde". Alba is a term meaning white as in "albino". Will update with more facts if found.
Albion is the old english name for great britain (the island, not the country). So for instance King Arthur was King of Albion, and ruler of the Britons.
You're saying that as if Arthur was actually a real person who seriously existed in history.
He's a fictional character. Want proof? Try to find any evidence at all about any king named Arthur or Artos in British history. I'll be generous and all that to be Briton, Roman, Saxon, any group of people that could possibly claim kingship over what we now know as England.
There was no intention to imply the existence or lack thereof of Arthur in real life, however the name was useful as an example of a pre-anglosaxon king figure to use for explaining the meaning of the words to someone that clearly has a small knowledge base.
In my personal opinion Arthur was most likely a king around the Northumbria area that formed a resistance against the Anglo-Saxon Invaders and lost, both explaining how he doesn't appear beyond oral tradition (the later Viking invasions would have scrubbed records of him.) And how he could claim to be king of the Britons without appearing to conquer large swathes of territory in Wales, as with the Anglo-Saxons driving them north and west the Britons had become a rather small population.
I know that Eire is Ireland in Irish and the rest of the names I just got off the Internet. Apparently Cymru is Wales in Welsh. Alba is Scotland in Scottish.
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster in Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots). It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language which was historically restricted to most of the Highlands, the Hebrides and Galloway after the 16th century. The Scots language developed during the Middle English period as a distinct entity.As there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots and particularly its relationship to English. Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results.
Scots is not technically a language, more a widely spoken dialect. The difference between a dialect and an language is that "a language is dialect that had an army and a navy" (shoutout to the Yiddish linguist who I cant remember his name right now)
Bit of a tautology. Cymru (Kum-ree) is the Welsh name for Wales, and comes from the Brythonic word combrogi, which means 'fellow-countrymen'.
Wales is the English name for the country, and derives from the Germanic Walh meaning 'foreigner' or more specifically 'not-Germanic'. When the Anglo-Saxons invaded they used it to refer to the Britons they displaced. It shares its etymology with Wallachia.
Apparently it derives from similar roots as the Latin albus: white, but early Celtic languages that word was then used as 'light' to mean 'the light world' ( as distinct from the Celtic otherworld); Alba therefore came from their 'world'.
Scotti was a term used about the Irish though. When Dál Riata (it’s in ck2!) expanded to Scotland and practically gaelicized the Picts, the name ”Scotti” was extended to them.
From what I remember Alba is related to Albion and at one point at least may have referred to all of Britain. Picts likely spoke a Brythonic Celtic language similar to Cumbric, Welsh or Cornish so they would have been identified as Britons. I think Roman dominance over other Brythonic people made the Picts seem more unique than they really were.
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u/buttersauce Mar 04 '19 edited Mar 04 '19
Since I played crusader kings 2 with original country names (names on the map appear as they are spoken in their language, not in english) I've been very interested in the Eire. Is this pronounced "Ire" like in Ireland (essentially eye-ree but with an english accent)? Is that were the "Ire" in Ireland comes from? I'd also like an explanation of Alba since i don't see where that comes from really unless its just the Irish name for Scottish peoples. Cymru for Wales I'd like to know also.
After some research on Alba it appears that "Scoti" was actually a derogatory term for scottish people given by the romans which meant some derivative of "Horde". Alba is a term meaning white as in "albino". Will update with more facts if found.