Timeline for Was England called England in the days of King Arthur?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
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| May 27, 2017 at 20:36 | comment | added | sempaiscuba | @Octopus That spelling could be used too. The ninth-century translation of Bede that I referred to used "Englaland", but variations in spelling weren't uncommon (even in the same document). | |
| May 27, 2017 at 20:14 | comment | added | Octopus | I thought it was actually Angle-Londe. | |
| May 27, 2017 at 6:05 | comment | added | Rick Ryker | The greeks named the islands after the language of its occupants. The brythonic islands. | |
| May 27, 2017 at 2:34 | comment | added | Luís Henrique | What about "Albion"? | |
| May 25, 2017 at 21:23 | comment | added | called2voyage | @SteveJessop In brief, to the extent that "England" is understood to mean "the land of the English" it is an anachronism. To the extent that is understood to refer to the territory, it is a good loose translation. | |
| May 25, 2017 at 15:22 | comment | added | sempaiscuba | @SlowDog Britannia was what the Romans called southern Britain. The northern part was Caledonia, and Ireland was Hibernia. (We don't actually know where the border between Britannia was before the invasion. The border for the Roman province of Britannia would eventually be along the line of Hadrian's Wall, then - briefly - along the line of the Antonine Wall, and then back to Hadrian's wall). | |
| May 25, 2017 at 14:25 | comment | added | Slow Dog | @SteveJessop The Romans called the island Brittania even before they invaded. So it doesn't (just) mean "the Roman-occupied part of Britain". | |
| May 25, 2017 at 13:57 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @SlowDog: sure, there's a difference between the island(s) and the political entity. I'm just saying that to the Romans, the political entity they'd have called Britannia was closer in extent to modern (or Malory's) England than to modern Britain. Of course the Welsh might want a word about how good a translation "England" is. | |
| May 25, 2017 at 13:50 | comment | added | Slow Dog | @SteveJessop It was (some version) of Britain before the Romans got there. It's first recorded by Pytheas, a Greek sailor/explorer, and a representation of what the (Celtic British) natives called it. See "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…" | |
| May 25, 2017 at 10:25 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @Keshav: indeed. Even better, the Latin "Britannia" (I think) generally refers to the Roman-occupied part of Britain. Possibly only on the grounds that anything outside the Empire was irrelevant, but still. So in English, "England" possibly is a closer translation of Latin "Britannia" than "Britain" would be. At least until indyref2. That said, I have no idea what happened to the Latin language in Britain post-empire. | |
| May 25, 2017 at 10:19 | comment | added | Keshav Srinivasan | @SteveJessop Well, if the sword in the stone ever did happen, I assume it would have been in Latin and Brittania, the Latin name for Britain, would have been used. | |
| May 25, 2017 at 9:58 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | Anarchonism, or merely a loose translation of whatever name would "really" have been used in the language used on the stone, which clearly couldn't have been English? | |
| May 24, 2017 at 15:07 | vote | accept | Keshav Srinivasan | ||
| May 24, 2017 at 15:04 | history | answered | sempaiscuba | CC BY-SA 3.0 |