Names of The Celts - Celts - Ancient Uses

Ancient Uses

The first literary reference to the Celtic people, as Κελτοί (Κeltoi), is by the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus in 517 BC; he locates the Keltoi tribe in Rhenania (West/Southwest Germany). The next Greek reference to the Keltoi is by Herodotus in the mid-5th century BC. He says that "the river Ister (Danube) begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe)". This confused passage was generally later interpreted as implying that the homeland of the Celts was at the source of the Danube, not in Spain/France.

According to the 1st-century poet Parthenius of Nicaea, Celtus (Κελτός) was the son of Heracles and Keltine (Κελτίνη), the daughter of Bretannus (Βρεττανός); this literary genealogy exists nowhere else and was not connected with any known cult. Celtus became the eponymous ancestor of Celts. In Latin Celta came in turn from Herodotus' word for the Gauls, Keltoi. The Romans used Celtae to refer to continental Gauls, but apparently not to Insular Celts. The latter were long divided linguistically into Goidels and Brythons, although other research provides a more complex picture (see below under "Classification").

The name Celtiberi is used by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC, of a people which he considered a mixture of Celtae and Iberi.