The Cornovii is a name for a tribe presumed to have been part of the

Dumnonii The Dumnonii or Dumnones were a Britons (historical), British List of ancient Celtic peoples and tribes, tribe who inhabited Dumnonia, the area now known as Cornwall and Devon (and some areas of present-day Dorset and Somerset) in the further pa ...

, a

Celtic tribe This is a list of ancient Celtic peoples and tribes. Continental Celts Continental Celts were the Celtic peoples that inhabited mainland Europe and Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor). In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, Celts inhabited a large ...

inhabiting the south-west peninsula of Great Britain, during some part of the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

and post-Roman periods. The Cornovii are supposed to have lived at the western end of the peninsula, in the area now known as

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, and if the tribal name were correct it would be the ultimate source of the name of that present-day county. Morris, John (1973) ''The Age of Arthur'' The existence of this sub-tribe, clan or

sept A sept () is a division of a family, especially of a Scottish or Irish family. The term is used both in Scotland and in Ireland, where it may be translated as Irish , meaning "progeny" or "seed", and may indicate the descendants of a person ...

, is not mentioned in

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

's 2nd-century ''

Geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

'', as are many of the other

Iron Age tribes in Britain The names of the Celtic Iron Age tribes in Britain were recorded by Roman and Greek historians and geographers, especially Ptolemy. Information from the distribution of Celtic coins has also shed light on the extents of the territories of the v ...

. It has been inferred on the basis of a place-name listed in the ''

Ravenna Cosmography The ''Ravenna Cosmography'' (, "The Cosmography of the Unknown Ravennese") is a work describing the Ecumene, known world from India to Ireland, compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna around 700 AD. It consists of five books describing ...

'' of c. 700 CE as ''purocoronavis'', which is considered to be a scribal error for ''durocornavis'' (or ''durocornovium''Todd (1987), p. 203.), interpreted as meaning "the fortress of the Cornovii".Webster, Graham (1991). ''The Cornovii''; rev. ed. (Peoples of Roman Britain.) Alan Sutton. pp. 19, 21. . The British tribal name Cornovii is also implied by its reflexes in Welsh ''Cernyw'', Breton ''Kernev'', and Cornish ''Kernow'', (all meaning 'Cornwall') which Peter Schrijver argues probably derive from Common Brittonic *''kornou̯(i̯)ī''.

Etymology

According to Ptolemy, there were two other tribes known as the

Cornovii The Cornovii is the name by which two, or three, Iron Age tribes in Britain, tribes were known in Roman Britain. One tribe was in the area centred on present-day Shropshire, one was in Caithness in northernmost Scotland, and there was probably on ...

, one in the Midlands and another in the far north.Rivet & Smith (1979). pp. 324–5 It is on this basis that the name of this putative ancestor-tribe of Cornwall is inferred. Although the Brittonic name is clearly derived from the word ''*cornu-'', which means "horn", opinions diverge 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 south-western Cornovii. For instance, Graham Webster in ''The Cornovii'' (1991), which is primarily about the Midlands tribe, states that the horn derivation could apply as long as the geography was apparent, as it might have been to Roman surveyors in the first century, and

Victor Watts Victor Watts, (18 April 1938 – 21 December 2002) was a British toponymist, medievalist, translator, and academic, specialising in English place-names. He served as Master of Grey College, Durham from 1989 until his sudden death in 2002. He ...

in the ''Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-names'' (2010) interprets the name ''*Cornowii'', a different spelling for Latinised Cornovii, as "the people of the horn".

Malcolm Todd Malcolm Todd (27 November 19396 June 2013) was an English archaeologist. Born in Durham, England, the son of a miner, Todd was educated in classics and classical archaeology at St David's College, Lampeter and Brasenose College, Oxford. He s ...

, in ''The South West to AD 1000'' (1987), discusses other etymologies that have been put forward, such as the name being a reference to dwellers in

promontory fort A promontory fort is a fortification, defensive structure located above a steep cliff, often only connected to the mainland by a small neck of land, thus using the topography to reduce the Rampart (fortification), ramparts needed. The oldest kno ...

s, and an explanation hypothesised by Ann Ross in 1967 that the tribal names may be totemic cult-names referring to a "

horned god The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism. The term ''Horned God'' itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretism, syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorp ...

" cult followed by the tribes, which Todd says may be

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

with the Gaulish

Cernunnos Cernunnos is a Celtic god whose name is only clearly attested once, on the 1st-century CE Pillar of the Boatmen from Paris, where it is associated with an image of an aged, antlered figure with torcs around his horns. Through the Pillar of the ...

or the unnamed horned god of the

Brigantes The Brigantes were Ancient Britons who in pre-Roman times controlled the largest section of what would become Northern England. Their territory, often referred to as Brigantia, was centred in what was later known as Yorkshire. The Greek geog ...

.Todd (1987). p. 217. In an attempt to explain the same tribal name being used in the Midlands and Cornwall, the historian John Morris put forward a theory in his work ''The Age of Arthur'' (1973) that the Cornovii from the West Midlands migrated to Cornwall about 460 AD. Morris suggested that a contingent was sent to

Dumnonia Dumnonia is the Latinised name for a Brythonic kingdom that existed in Sub-Roman Britain between the late 4th and late 8th centuries CE in the more westerly parts of present-day South West England. It was centred in the area of modern Devon, ...

to rule the land there and keep out the invading Irish, seeing that a similar situation had occurred in

North Wales North Wales ( ) is a Regions of Wales, region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, with Snowdon ...

. Morris's theory is not generally accepted by modern scholarship:

Philip Payton Philip John Payton is a British-Australian historian and emeritus professor of Cornish and Australian studies. Payton is also Vice-President of the British Australian Studies Association at the University of Exeter and formerly director of the ...

, in his book ''Cornwall: a history'' (2004), states "...the Morris thesis is not widely accepted by archaeologists and early historians, and we may safely conclude that the Cornovii located west of the Tamar were an indigenous people quite separate from their namesakes in the Midlands and Caithness." The extreme western peninsula of

came to be known as "Cernyw" in

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, of or about Wales * Welsh language, spoken in Wales * Welsh people, an ethnic group native to Wales Places * Welsh, Arkansas, U.S. * Welsh, Louisiana, U.S. * Welsh, Ohio, U.S. * Welsh Basin, during t ...

, "Kernow" in Cornish and "Kernev (Veur)" in

Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally **Breton people **Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Gale ...

. The modern English name ''Cornwall'' arises from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

word for Brittonic-speakers, ''wealas'', being suffixed onto a borrowed form of the Brittonic place-name. England Celtic tribes - South

History

Since the western Cornovii are only known from one inferred mention in antiquity, nothing is known for certain of their history. They were part of the

, the tribe whose lands, known as

, extended from Cornwall through Devon and included parts of Somerset and Dorset. For details of the people who lived in the area after the withdrawal of the Romans. After the passing of the

Roman period The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

they re-appeared in 430 AD as a sub-dukedom of Dumnonia until early in the 9th century. In 838 the Cornish in alliance with

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

were defeated by the West Saxons at the

Battle of Hingston Down The Battle of Hingston Down took place in 838, probably at Hingston Down in Cornwall between a combined force of Cornish and Vikings on the one side, and West Saxons led by Ecgberht, King of Wessex on the other. The result was a West Sax ...

. This was the last-recorded battle between the Cornish and Wessex, and resulted in the loss of Cornish independence.

Settlements

The Dumnonii had no known tribal centre, and although Ptolemy's ''

'' lists four places as Dumnonian

poleis Polis (: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word ''polis'' had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (polē) is located within a (''khôra''), "country", which is a πατ ...

: Voliba, Tamara, Uxella and

Isca Dumnoniorum Isca Dumnoniorum, also known simply as Isca, was originally a Roman legionary fortress for the Second Augustan Legion (established ) in the Roman province of Britannia at the site of present-day Exeter in Devon. The town grew up around this ...

(present-day Exeter), it is likely that he only listed Roman places, and not purely native settlements. Of these four, there has been speculation that Voliba might be a place in Cornwall, and Tamara is assumed to be on the

River Tamar The Tamar (; ) is a river in south west England that forms most of the border between Devon (to the east) and Cornwall (to the west). A large part of the valley of the Tamar is protected as the Tamar Valley National Landscape (an Area of Outsta ...

, now the border between Cornwall and Devon. In 2008 in the parish of

Calstock Calstock () is a civil parishes in England, civil parish and a large village in south east Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, on the border with Devon. The village is situated on the River Tamar south west of Tavistock, Devon, Tavistock and no ...

the remains of a Roman fort was excavated, which is currently thought to be the most plausible location for Tamara. Ptolemy's list is supplemented by the problematical ''

'', which lists sixteen names before Isca Dumnoniorum (which is listed as ''scadum namorum'', showing some of the problems of this source) and which have therefore been assumed to be west of Exeter. Several have been identified as most likely in Devon, leaving ''purocoronavis'' (the source of the name ''Cornovii'' (Kournaovioi), as discussed above), and a few others that are so corrupt as to defy identification, such as ''Giano'', ''Pilais'' and ''Vernalis'',Rivet & Smith. (1979) pp. 494–5. which may possibly refer to places within the lands occupied by the Cornovii.

Language

The pre-Roman inhabitants were speakers of a

Celtic language The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves ...

that would later develop into the Brythonic language Cornish.

References

Sources

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