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Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary, for there must
have been little intermixture between the Germanic settlers and the Celts in Britain.
Though in some parts of the island the Celtic population was not exterminated during
the West Germanic invasion, linguistic evidence of the Celtic influence is scarce.
Obviously there was little that the newcomers could learn from the subjugated Celts.
Abundant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The names
Kent, York, Downs (Celtic
dūn meant „hill‟),
Aberdeen, Dundee, Dover ,
Wye, Brynmawr (
bryn meaning “hill” and
mawr meaning “great”)
and even
London have
been traced to the Celtic sources. Many English names of rivers and mountains are
also of the Celtic origin:
Avon, Thames, etc.
In the Scottish dialects there have been preserved the Celtic word
loch „lake‟,
which became an element of many lake-names in Scotland.
Some elements often occurring in Celtic place-names can help to identify them:
-comb „deep valley‟ in
Batcombe, Duncombe; -torr „high rock‟ in
Torcross , etc.
22
Outside of place-names, Celtic borrowings in OE were few: no more than a
score. Among such loan-words we may mention
broc (badger),
binn (basket),
cradol (MnE
cradle ),
bratt (cloak),
dūn (MnE
down -
a word used to denote a
hill in some
poetic texts).
On the whole, the percentage of loan-words in OE was very insignificant, as
compared with later periods.
