Cornovii - Etymology

Etymology

The etymology of the tribal name is uncertain. Although it is accepted that *corn literally means "horn", there is disagreement over whether or not this refers to the shape of the land. Considering that Cornwall is at the end of a long tapering peninsula, many scholars have adopted this derivation for the Cornish Cornovii: Victor Watts in the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-names (2010), for instance, derives it from a postulated original tribal name *Cornowii, "the people of the horn".

Malcolm Todd, in The South West to AD 1000 (1987), discusses the alternative etymologies that have been put forward. These include the name being a reference to dwellers in promontory forts, and an explanation hypothesised by Ann Ross in 1967 that the tribal names may be totemic cult-names referring to a "horned god" cult followed by the tribes, which Todd says may be cognate with the Gaulish Cernunnos or the unnamed horned god of the Brigantes.

The shape of the land is less likely to be the explanation for the tribe's name in Caithness, and it does not explain that use of the term for the inland Midlands tribe at all. Graham Webster in The Cornovii (1991), about the Midlands tribe, cites Anne Ross's hypothesis and points out that it is interesting that the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance has survived from pagan ritual – Abbot's Bromley being only 55 km away from the tribal centre of Viroconium. Webster also asserts that Professor Charles Thomas made a good case for totemic ethnonyms based on animals and birds in Scotland.