# Was there a "Celtic genocide" in England? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 19, 2014, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171 "2014-06-19T21:16:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/41 "2014-06-22T14:55:43Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > York comes from the Viking Yorvik. Ultimately, it comes from what attested in Ptolemy as Eboracum, which is based on the Celtic word for the yew tree. > [@Quartz](#): > > Actually, -c(h)ester denotes a Roman origin as it comes from _castrum_, which means camp. You misunderstood; my fault for not being clear. The place-name compound including derivatives of the Roman -_castrum_ are often have a Celtic first element, e.g. Brancaster, Cirencester, Dorchester, Gloucester, Ilchester, Leicester, Manchester, etc. (Edit: as a further argument against place-names as genocide evidence, as the “-chester” forms have passed through Old English.) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/42 "2014-06-22T15:45:44Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > York comes from the Viking Yorvik. Before that it was Anglo-Saxon Eoforwic. And before that it was Romano-British Eboracum. ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2014, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/43 "2014-06-23T00:52:23Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > No it is not (or: cite?). There are millions of people who speak an Indo-European language because they have immigrated (or been brought as slaves) to an Indo-European-speaking country like America. They are no less Indo-European for their non-Indo-European ancestry. There are even more millions who have learned English as a second language for economic reasons. Why should ancient people be any different, especially if you remember that people can be multilingual? > > In the ancient world, we have abundant examples of language shift for political reasons. The genetic connection may be subsequent to the shift, rather than causal. The question is whether Celtic was a result of language shift in an originally non-Indo-European substrate group (no or minimal genetic transmission, Hypothesis A) or a branch of the Indo-European family that physically brought a speech community into Western Europe (Hypothesis B). Almost every New World nation has considerable European admixture. Black Americans are about 20% Euro, Mexicans are about 50% Euro and so on. Most of this admixture is via the Y chromosome. Not genocide as such, but the conquerors/invaders taking the women of the conquered. Turks speak a Central Asian language even though genetically they’re very close to the Greeks and other Mediterranean populations. There is a Central Asian genetic element to the Turkish population, though. The new language and the new genes were established through invasion/conquest. It’s not useful to compare the modern history of migration and language acquisition to what went on in the relatively primitive past. As Jared Diamond explains in _The World Until Yesterday_, interactions between different human groups were much more violent before the rise of states as organizing institutions for human societies. The Indo European expansion pretty much necessitated some form of invasion/conquest. We’d have to find a reason for a rapidly growing population, with well documented warlike inclinations NOT to overrun their neighbors and kidnap their women. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2018, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/44 "2018-08-13T13:34:01Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Ireland’s population lost 25% in the 1650’s as a result of Cromwell’s invasion. > > Compare this to Poland, the nation with the largest percentage loss of WWII: 18%. Ireland: the figure quoted (might even be on the low side, but there was no accurate census in those days) covers around 15 years of warfare from 1639. And it was not just Cromwell; the Civil war in Ireland was mostly a three-sided affair with players such as Ormonde changing sides every now and again. Confused? So were the locals. While Poland lost heavily in WW2, Serbia lost around 25% of its population in WW1. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2018, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/45 "2018-08-15T13:30:51Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > York comes from the Viking Yorvik. Which comes from the Roman name for the city, Eboracum. Eboracum is a Latinization of the Celtic Eburakon. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/46 "2018-08-16T09:52:00Z")
Well, Jorvik simply means “earth bay” so it sounds like the kind of name you’d give a location from the geography. Northern England is full of names that are just a descrition of what you see in Norse. Anyway, this thread was started in 2014, and beginning in 2015 there has been an absolutly fantastic amount of information incoming from advances in the genetic analysis of ol remains. So for those who are interested: After the Ice Age, the area that would become the British Isles was populated by the people called the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG). These people lived in all of Western Europe, and at the time the British Isles were not islands. These people were hunter gatherers as the name implies, and seem to have had a very low population density. Agriculture arrived in Britain about 4000 BC, a 1000 years later than on the mainland. It arrived with a people known as the Anatolian farmers, as they were a population group that seems to have expanded from an Anatolian origin for about 2000 years previously. The particular ones arriving in Britain seems to share genetic affinities with the population then in Iberia. (caution: many areas lack samples from this period). Also some much smaller affinities with the Danubian farmers. There are hints that they started out in South Wales. Population replacement of the WHG in Wales was total. No trace of the WHG genetics can be detected in individuals from Wales. The rest of Britain picks up some little WHG ancestry but remain 90% or more farmer genes. The percentage of WHG genes did not change over time after this, the initial small amount of mixing was all there was. Source: _Population Replacement in Early Neolithic Britain_ (preprint) Personal note: Since farming was a millennium late in getting to Britain, it would have been a more mature technology and better adapted to the climate when it came. About 4 500 years ago, another people arrived in Britain from continental Europe. DNA shows greatest affinity with people living in and around the Nederlands at the time. They were called the Bell Beakers. A bit of a misnomer since Bell Beaker in other places were a culture that spread across many different people. But when it arrived in Britain, it was carried by one people, with ancestry mostly from the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caspian. Indo-Europeans. Their replacement of the Anatolian farmers was even heavier than the previous population turnover. Estimates are a _ **minimum** _ replacement of 93 %. Source: \*The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe, \*2017. There were some fluctuations in ancestry for a while, indicating that some local populations held out for some time. Particularly in areas such as southeastern England, with very fertile land. There is a theory that this migration consisted of people speaking a very early version of Celtic. If so, there was absolutely a genocide and it was nearly total. However, I think most researchers favor a later entry for Celtic. This would not seem to be associated with such massive population turnovers at least. For visualization purposes, the Western Hunter-Gatherers in Britain had dark black skin, black hair and blue or green eyes. The Anatolian farmers have a surviving group with a very high degree of genetic continuity, the people of Sardinia. They probably looked nearly identical except less tanned. These were the megalith builders, who built Stonehenge. Otzi the Iceman belonged to this group. Strangely, they carried on some of the building traditions among other in the form of barrow graves. The people who replaced them probably looked similar to todays western and central Europeans. Sort of Danish with a bit of Polish. That is not to say that they were Danes and Poles but that this gives some idea what they looked like. ---
**Author:** ![Sloe\_Moe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sloe\_Moe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sloe_Moe)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/47 "2018-08-16T10:04:19Z")
Possibly but they definitely were not exterminated, as shown by DNA of present day Englanders. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/48 "2018-08-16T12:51:01Z")
It is much harder to genetically differentiate peoples like Normans, Norse, Saxons and Angles. Pretty much the same lot, genetically. And the Romans were an exceptionally multi-ethnic empire for its time, so genes from pretty much anywhere in Europe, North Africa and the middle east could have come with the Romans. What follows is therefore **extremely speculative** , and should not be considered any kind of hard scientific facts. Bearing that in mind: Based on the appearance of west Asian ancestry in Britain during the Roman period, and comparing the fractions of different kinds to those we find in Italy, it has been roughly estimated that Roman genetics replaced very roughly 30 % of the at the time indigenous genes. Ireland excepted, where such traces seem mostly confined to people with English ancestry. Today, the fraction of probably-Roman DNA is much lower, less than half that. Interestingly, of Mediterranean haplogroups that appear in Britain during the Roman period, Scotland shows 2,5 %, Ireland 3 %, England 3,5 % and Wales, traditionally considered to have been a refugee for the Celto-Romans show a whopping 7,5 %. It is speculated that the drop in Celto-Roman heritage can be related to the number of natives that were killed by the invading Saxons, Angles and Jutes, followed by Danish and Norwegian Norse, followed by Normans. As well as the effects of constant raiding by Scoti and Irish. It is not necessary to assume that it was totally due to warfare. Established invaders could be expected to have better land than the displaced natives and thus be able to have more children survive, said children would be more attractive marriage partners due to being richer etc. Recent genetic analysis (2015) show that the current-day population range from 38 % Germanic (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Norwegian, Norman, Danish) in eastern England down to 30 % in Wales. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/49 "2018-08-16T13:13:28Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > Well, Jorvik simply means “earth bay” “Horse bay”. But it’s pretty clear that’s folk etymology, just like the Anglo-Saxon one before it. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/50 "2018-08-16T13:34:55Z")
I don’t really see where you get the relation to “horse” ? What am I missing ? English -horse Current Norwegian -hest Old Norse -hestur, hestr English -earth Current Norwegian -jord Old Norse - jörðin Incidentally, there are a lot of places called “Hestvik” All tiny:) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/51 "2018-08-16T18:05:19Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > I don’t really see where you get the relation to “horse” ? What am I missing ? That a language can have more than one word for [horse](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/j%C3%B3r)? Old Norse had at least 3, probably 4 going by Icelandic. \*Jór \*is a poetic form. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/52 "2018-08-16T18:20:02Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > English -horse > Current Norwegian -hest > Old Norse -hestur, hestr ETA - the way you’ve listed these, makes it seem you think these words are all cognates, but the Old Norse cognate of the English “horse” was _hross_, not _hestr_. The English cognate of _hestr_ was _hengest_, which only survives in “henchman”. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/53 "2018-08-16T18:53:35Z")
[Here’s a group of maps](https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/UK-maps.png) showing the distribution of Y-haplogroups in the British Isles. R1b-L21 is by far the largest haplogroup, dominant throughout the Isles everywhere except England’s East: Cambridge, London, Kent, etc. I think this clade is the clan of [the Amesbury Archer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amesbury_Archer), the skeleton found near Stonehenge. That Archer was probably of high prestige (he was buried with gold ornaments) and born on the Continent (based on isotope analysis of his tooth enamel). His arrival circa 2300 BC corresponded with the arrival of the “Beaker” people in England. They’re not considered “Celtic” but as you can infer their Y-chromosome dominated Celtic Britain. Their language is unknown but I think it was probably related to pre-Celtic. Since invading warriors have incentive to retain indigenous women, males are the main target of genocide, but the retention of the R1b-L21 haplogroup in Britain shows that, whatever pressures were applied, there was not any _thorough_ extermination of these Celtic people. However there _is_ clear evidence of a “genocide” in those charts! Britain was inhabited long before the Beaker arrival circa 2300 BC. _ **Where are those earlier Y-chromosomes?** _ ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/54 "2018-08-16T19:20:59Z")
Note that some Britons took the third option: moving out to places like (drum roll) [Brittany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Brittany#Middle_Ages). ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2018, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/55 "2018-08-17T10:44:52Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > However there _is_ clear evidence of a “genocide” in those charts! Britain was inhabited long before the Beaker arrival circa 2300 BC. _ **Where are those earlier Y-chromosomes?** _ As I wrote in post #46, the latest publication estimates a minimum replacement of 93 % of the pre-Beaker DNA. That is overall. If the replacement was similar to other such events, it is probable that Y-chromosomes were disproportionately heavily hit. Displacement reaches 100 % in Wales, at which point the proportionality no longer matters. > [@MrDibble](#): > > That a language can have more than one word for [horse](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/j%C3%B3r)? Old Norse had at least 3, probably 4 going by Icelandic. \*Jór \*is a poetic form. Well, learn something new every day. I’d never heard that before. My Old Norse is long in the past, of course. > [@MrDibble](#): > > ETA - the way you’ve listed these, makes it seem you think these words are all cognates, but the Old Norse cognate of the English “horse” was _hross_, not _hestr_. The English cognate of _hestr_ was _hengest_, which only survives in “henchman”. Your own link has them as cognates. Hestr can be both a general word for horse or a more specific word for stallion. Incidentally, the cognate of hengst,\* hingst\* is still in use as a word for stallion in Scandinavia. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2018, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/56 "2018-08-17T14:38:26Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > Your own link has them as cognates. No it doesn’t. You do know the difference between cognate and synonym, yes? ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2018, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/57 "2018-08-17T19:04:16Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > No it doesn’t. You do know the difference between cognate and synonym, yes? A cognate is a word which sounds very similar to identical between languages and has the same meaning. Such as over and under betwen English and Norwegian. And like Hest, hestr, horse. Words which sound similar but have different meanings are known as false cognates. (Strictly speaking, \*hengst \*is not a cognate of _hestr_. _Hestr_ means horse, while \*Hengst \*means stallion. _Hengst_ is cognate to _hingst_. But I knew what you meant.) BTW, whats with the confrontational attitude? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2018, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/58 "2018-08-17T19:49:15Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > A cognate is a word which sounds very similar to identical between languages and has the same meaning. No, that’s wrong. It’s a word having the same _derivation_ (i.e. come from the same ancestor word - which \*[hross](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/hruss%C4%85)\*and \*[hestr](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/hangistaz)\*do not). I’m sorry if correcting you comes across as confrontational. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2018, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171/59 "2018-08-17T19:59:33Z")
ETA: You’re also wrong about [false cognates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate) - they are words that sound similar, _have the same meaning_, but _different_ etymologies. What you’re describing (sound similar but have different meanings ) are [false _friends_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend) (which, confusingly, can be real cognates). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-celtic-genocide-in-england/691171.md?page=2)