Talk:Gaul

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' Seem ' = Contested -[edit]

Many cultural traits of the early Celts seem to have been carried northwest up the Danube Valley, although this issue is contested. It seems as if they derived many of their skills (like metal-working), as well as certain facets of their culture, from Balkan peoples.

What cultural traits - where - who says? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.66.0.31 (talk • contribs) 04.02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Again - wher is the fact?[edit]

Quote:

There also have been attempts to trace Keltoi and Galatai to a single origin. It is most likely that the terms originated as names of minor tribes *Kel-to and/or Gal(a)-to- which were the earliest to come into contact with the Roman world, but which have disappeared without leaving a historical record.[2]

Attempts do not mean fact. Where is the proof?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.66.0.31 (talk • contribs) 04.07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

see the inline reference 50.111.44.54 (talk) 09:43, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of map[edit]

Removal of map

Map of Gaul circa 58 BC.

Wher in history does map show ANY part of Europe / Britain / Russia / Japan or anywhere called Celticia?

Pure Bull. Proof please? Show origins of this map with the word Celticia on it.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.66.0.31 (talk • contribs) 04.10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Removal of other map:

A map of Gaul in the 1st century BC, showing the relative positions of the Celtic tribes.

Again - show proof of any map anywhere showu=ing Celticia on it. Please.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.66.0.31 (talk • contribs) 04.13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

These maps need to be removed - they have no - I say again no historical fact.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.66.0.31 (talk • contribs) 04.40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Religion[edit]

The Religion section here is just awful - it's filled with factual errors and is written in a very immature style (it reads like a middle school book report). We need to work on this one, folks! Cagwinn (talk) 00:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Along with "Celtic polytheism," whatever that is, and the stubbish Gallo-Roman religion. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! I know facts are scarce about classical Celtic Paganism, but it's worse for it to just be brushed aside as "basically the same as the Roman gods..." As though we of Neopagan communities don't have enough issues with reclamation and reconstruction. I can't count the number of times that we've had some yokel try and use a very poorly written Wikipedia article against us.99.179.127.63 (talk) 06:48, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The "Celts" topics are very garbled, not just due to editorial incompetence, but because they are really very difficult to cover. "Celtic polytheism" should make clear it is about ancient Continental Celtic religion. Insular evidence could be used to assist in the reconstruction of early Celtic religion, but trying to cover Insular history at the same time as ancient Gaul, things will always go wrong. Perhaps even rename the thing to "Gallic reliigon" or something, just to make its scope managable. Whatever can be reconstructed for Insular Celtic should go into an article about the early Insular Celts. "late prehistoric" (Dark Ages) Irish and Welsh, finally, should again go into separate articles. This will lead to some fragmentation, yes, but everything is better than the current hodge-podge.

The problem is aggravated, of course, by the constant trickle of edits by people who do not have the first clue about the topic (but nevertheless have strong feelings about it). This is a result of the "Celtic revival" and the resulting (a) Celtic nationalism and (b) Celtic esotericism/neopaganism. This gives us such articles as Celtic nature worship , including gems like

"The Celts of the ancient world believed that many spirits and divine beings inhabited the world around them, and that humans could establish a rapport with these beings."

Well, replace "Celts" with any name of any people whatsoever and the sentence will still have the same truth value, but the "Celts" are the ones who get singled out for this type of human cultural universal.

Regarding the name, we have established for years that "Gaul" is not derived from "Gallia", and that "Gaul" is the modern English term for all of Gaul, but some people will always feel compelled to argue that the "Gauls" are the "Galli" and do therefore not include the Belgae. This is depressing. I have tried to fix this once again, but people should really pay better attention to this article. One editor seems to have gone around citing Caesar to establish that "the Gaulish language was only spoken in Gallia Celtica". Never mind that the name Gaulish didn't even exist in Caesar's time, it is also utterly impossible to derive any linguistic conclusion to citing primary sources like that. There is a reason why Wikipedia articles are supposed to be based on expert seconrady literature, not on home-rolled interpretations of ancient primary texts. --dab (𒁳) 15:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is it not fair to say that the language of the Belgae is unknown and that there is no reason to think they shared a language with Gallia Celtica? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.55.119.228 (talk) 20:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The etymology of the name Gaul[edit]

I know that several "linguists" will not agree with my comment here, but the term Celt (Kelt, not "Tselt") & Gaul are related (from my own studies). The ancient common "Indo European" word ( was Gal or Gul or Gala which meant "Throat", "Language" - coming out of a throat and singing, speaking like seaGuls (Guls), Galus (a rooster in Italian), or Glagolica or Golos, in Slavic ("voice") or Galeb (seaGul); Gala in Sanskrit, etc. The correct meaning of Kelts (Gauls) was "Speakers" or "those who speak". Language of "birds".

Yeah, why trust "linguists" with all their stupid degrees and scientific methods?? Blah, better to just make up your own etymologies for everything - untrained people always know better than specialists, am I right?? Cagwinn (talk) 18:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Goropius Becanus will always give birth to descendants, because imagination is individual and innate, when science demands a bit of common sense.Nortmannus (talk) 18:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

:::Cagwinn you may be right Angelica-Dominus-Sabre (talk) 05:10, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I hope my sarcasm was obvious. Cagwinn (talk) 17:53, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Don't mind the blocked sock of User:Blade-of-the-South. I expect he was just trying to add some contribs on a topic he knows or cares very little about in order to circumvent the semiprotection of Ghouta chemical attack. Alas, "intel boys" have foiled him again... -Kudzu1 (talk) 04:44, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bizarre section opening to "The Gauls"[edit]

I clicked on the TOC and was greeted with "The Druids were not the only political force in Gaul, however..." which is an awful opening for a section. Especially when scrolling up a bit to the end of the previous section yields no insight as to this alleged Druidic force. Huw Powell (talk) 02:56, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I looked into the article's history and this is a remnant from several years back, when the Religion section preceded the Social Structures and Tribes section. So typical for Wikipedia - people make edits and move sections around without any regard to the narrative flow of the article as a whole.Cagwinn (talk) 05:18, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology of "Gaul"[edit]

The article currently claims "The English Gaul is from French Gaule and is unrelated to Latin Gallia, despite superficial similarity (Latin Gallia would have regularly been turned to *Jaille in French)."; however, the normally reliable and cautious etymonline opines: Gaul (n.) 1560s, "an inhabitant of ancient Gaul," from French Gaule, from Latin Gallia, from Gallus "a Gaul." (Cf. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Gaul&allowed_in_frame=0 . Note that etymonline refers to the inhabitant, not the area. This is unlikely to be the cause of the inconsistency, however.)

Depending on who is right, the Wikipedia claim should either be altered or given a strong reference, particularly since the claim is contrary to expectation.

(If etymonline has it wrong, the site provider would almost certainly welcome a pointer to his error.) 80.226.24.5 (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This Wikipedia entry is right and etymonline.com (which is not even a reliable source, by the way) is wrong. Cagwinn (talk) 23:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's interesting that the W was still in use in northern France at least until the 11th C so people there wouldn't likely use Gaulia. Also the Gallo language in northern France, I have read, was named by the Bretons from the Brythonic (and Irish) term for foreigner Gall rather than being related to Walhaz, Welsh or whatever German term. The G obviously didn't spread all over as over 1/2 of Belgium is Wallonia not Guallonia. Also the claim that it meant Celt as well as Roman during the migration period falls apart as neither Irish (Scotti) nor Picts (Prydyn in Brythonic) were called such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.20.195.39 (talk) 00:05, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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The etymology of "Gaule" and "Gaul"[edit]

The text below comes from the French version of this page:

"If the French words Gaule and gaulois are the usual translations of the Latin words Gallia, Gallus and Gallicus, there are two theses for their etymology. Indeed, the seemingly obvious passage from Gallia to Gaule presents two difficulties: the initial G- in the group /ga/ should have undergone a palatalization according to the rules of evolution from Latin to langue d'oïl (cf. Latin gallus » Old French jal « rooster », regular form). This means that Ga- should have given way to Ja- (except in Norman and Picard). Then, the palatalization in [ʎ] of the lateral [l] (or [ll]) followed by yod should have occurred (see the general context of the consonants followed by a yod), then [ʎ] should have been transformed into [j] from the seventeenth century (see ALLIU > ail [aj] (garlic)), hence * Jail- (see springing above), phenomenon also attested in the French toponymy for these specific examples, so found Jaille-Yvon ( [Yvo de] Gallia in 1052 - 1068) and the toponymic type Jailly (Nièvre, Côte-d'Or) of *GAL [L] IACU or Jallais (Maine-et-Loire, Galiscus around 1130).

A first explanation is based on the term by which Germanic peoples designated non-Germanic peoples to the west or further south, ie Celts or speakers of Latin, namely *Walha "the Celts" or "the Romans" (see Walh and *walhisk > Waals "Walloon" in Dutch and Welsch in the German dialects of the south and meaning "Romanesque (speaker), French, Italian" and the English names for the Celtic territories Wales and Cornwall) This is how the Germanic *Walha is at the origin of wallon/Walloon and Galles/Wales, Welsh. But this does not explain well the old diphthong [au], which is a regular development of [al] before a consonant (see 'cheval' ~ 'chevaux' and Latin 'alter' > 'autre' ), because the Germanic consonant h tends to disappear quickly in French, as shown in "wallon" and "Galles", as well as in the surname Wallois present in Pas-de-Calais, on the border of Flanders and the Romanesque area, and also from the Frankish *Walha. However, *Walha had to go to the *Wahla stage by metathesis, the velar 'h' is voiced in 'u', as in the parallel example of the word saule from *salha. It is possible that the place name Plaine des Vaulois in Saint-Ouen-le-Mauger (Seine-Maritime) has this origin because the initial w ([w]) is regularly passed to v ([v]) in the 12th century in northern Normandy.

In this hypothesis, Gaule would not be the evolution of a new name *Walha which would come from the Franks and of which one has no certificate, but would result simply from a Francization of Gallia, on the example of Wace in the Roman de Rou. This Frenchization nevertheless took the form Galle and not Gallie (see Cambria > Cambrie, Germania > Germanie , etc.), which is perhaps the result of an influence of the Germanic *Walha.

There are other examples of non-palatalisation concerning neighbouring words, but the reasons are different. On the other hand, the evolution of the Latin nux gallica, the nut (called Gauloise), which gave the old French nois gauge; but it is probably a word of Picardian origin influenced phonetically by the Germanic walh- (see Dutch walnoot "nuts", literally "Gaul"), since we also find gauge forms and derivative gauguier , waukier "walnut". On the other hand, the word gaillard , attested as early as the twelfth century as an adjective in the sense of vigorous, full of life offers a good example of maintaining the [g], as well as some toponyms like Guilly (Indre) or Guilly (Loiret, Galliacum in 900). It would come from the same Gallic *galia radical "strength, bravery" as the Latin word Gallia (see above). According to the TLFI, however, "the maintenance of g- [for gaillard] can be explained by dissimilar suppression of palatalisation at the gyalya stage; an infl. Supp. gai is not to be dismissed from the semantic point of view."


So, according to the French Wikipedia, the French "Gaule" (and thus the English Gaul) is probably a Frenchization of the latin Gallia with influence of the Germanic *Walha. Patriotadoseculo (talk) 21:28, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Land area[edit]

The 1800s source for the land area of Gaul is off by at least a hundred thousand kilometers (and I'm not mistaking miles to km). Metropolitan France by itself is larger than all of Gaul by this measure. The source includes the provinces Germania Prima and Secunda in its estimate by the way. SpartaN (talk)13:22, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"BC"[edit]

Might be better to use BCE instead of BC to equip secular language? MellowFig (talk) 16:04, 13 September 2022 (UTC) 16:05, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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