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Roman Place-Names of Britain

K.J. Matthews

This list of place-names relating to the British Isles (excluding the Irish mainland) during the Roman period originated as part of an undergraduate dissertation submitted to the University of Lancaster in1980 and has been extended by subsequent research into the nature and origins of the Ravenna Cosmography. The work on which it is based is original, and in many instances the identifications proposed differ substantially from those of A L F Rivet and C Smith in their definitive The Place Names of Roman Britain (Batsford, 1979).

The format of the list is designed to give the ancient place-name in its best-attested form, a suggested identification and an indication of the source(s) from which the name is derived. No attempt has been made to give each name a Latin nominative form where there is no evidence that such a form existed: in most of the sources, names are given in what appears to be a fossilised locative form, which has been used here. The names have also been standardised to the most usual Latin spelling of the British sounds (for instance the name usually rendered Textoverdi is spelt here tectouerdi: the original has Greek -c- rather than -x-; the distinction between -v- and -u- is modern).

Names which are recorded only in corrupt forms are restored wherever possible: the restored form is indicated with *. Where no restoration can be suggested the names are enclosed <thus>.

The list necessarily includes names for which no certain identification can be suggested, and these are indicated with a ? together with an approximate location. Where an identification is given but followed by a ?, this indicates that the identification is possible, even likely, but unproven. Some names cannot even be assigned to an approximate location and are indicated solely by a ?.

The sources tabulated are:

PG The Geography of Claudius Ptolemaeus, an Alexandrian scholar working in the mid-second century AD, but using earlier materials for Britain, including the lost work of a geographer named Marinus of Tyre.

AI The Antonine Itinerary, a list of stopping places on roads throughout the Empire probably compiled during the third century AD, but using some out-of-date information. It details routes together with mileages between posts and totals.

IM The Maritime Itinerary, an appendix to AI, which deals with coastal journeys (periplus). It concludes with a list of islands "in the Ocean which flows between Gaul and the Britains".

RC The Ravenna Cosmography, a compilation by an anonymous cleric of Ravenna AD c 700 but using much earlier materials. Full of corruptions and difficulties of interpretation, it nevertheless contains more information about Britain than any other single source.

PT The Tabula Peutingeriana, a pictorial road atlas of probably third-century date, closely-related to AI but not derived from it. It survives in a copy of Carolingian date, which has lost most of its depiction of Britain.

ND The Notitia Dignitatum tam ciuilis quam militaris, an early fifth-century list of official appointments (civilian as well as military) throughout both halves of the Empire, together with the locations of their offices.

RIB The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, an ongoing series of publications cataloguing all epigraphic material from Roman Britain. Volume I, Inscriptions on Stone, was published in 1965; other fascicules dealing with instrumenta domestica have appeared in the 1990s.

CIL The Corpus Inscriptionarum Latinarum, an international corpus of Latin inscriptions, which contains continental examples as well as inscriptions on stone found since 1954.

EE Ephemeris Epigraphica, a periodical publication of inscriptions containing examples which have not yet found their way into either RIB or CIL.

JRS The Journal of Roman Studies, a periodical publication which included an appendix of recent epigraphic discoveries in Britain until 1969.

Britannia A journal dealing with Roman Britain which has included an appendix of recent epigraphic discoveries since its inception in 1970.

Vind The Vindolanda writing tablets.

Other sources indexed include: Ammianus Marcellinus Res Gestae; Bede HE (Historia Ecclesiatica Gentis Anglorum); Caesar BG (de Bello Gallico); Diodoros Sikoulos Historia; Gildas dECB (de Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae); HB (Historia Brittonum); Jordanes Getica; Paulus Orosius Historiae aduersum Paganos; Panegyrici Latini; Patricius Confessio; C Plinius Secundus Historia Naturalis; C Iulius Solinus Collectanea Rerum Memorabilia; C Suetonius Tranquillus de XII Caesaribus; P Cornelius Tacitus Agr (Agricola) and Ann (Annales); Xiphilinos Epitome Dionis Nikaiensis.