The Manapii are an ancient tribe from southeastern

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

mentioned by Greek geographer

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of import ...

in the 2nd century AD. They were later attested as '' (Fir) Manach'' (var. ''Manaig'', ''Monaig'') in the Early Christian period, a tribe dwelling further north in

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to th ...

and near

Lough Erne Lough Erne ( , ) is the name of two connected lakes in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It is the second-biggest lake system in Northern Ireland and Ulster, and the fourth biggest in Ireland. The lakes are widened sections of the River Erne, ...

which gave its name to the modern

County Fermanagh County Fermanagh ( ; ) is one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the six counties of Northern Ireland. The county covers an area of 1,691 km2 (653 sq mi) and has a population of 61,805 a ...

. Early Irish genealogists mentioned that the Manaig had emigrated from the south of

Leinster Leinster ( ; ga, Laighin or ) is one of the provinces of Ireland, situated in the southeast and east of Ireland. The province comprises the ancient Kingdoms of Meath, Leinster and Osraige. Following the 12th-century Norman invasion of Ir ...

Name

The ethnonym ''Manapii'' has been phonetically compared with the

Gaulish Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerl ...

Menapii The Menapii were a Belgic tribe dwelling near the North Sea, around present-day Cassel, during the Iron Age and the Roman period. Name Attestations They are mentioned as ''Menapii'' by Caesar (mid-1st c. BC) and Orosius (early 5th c. AD), ...

'', a tribe from northern Gaul first recorded in the 1st century BC. Those names may ultimately derive from a

Proto-Celtic Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celt ...

form reconstructed as *''Menak^wī'' or *''Manak^wī''., s.v. ''Menapii''. The etymology is uncertain. It could mean the 'mountain people' or the 'high-living people', from the root *''mon''- ('mountain', cf. MWelsh ''mynydd'', OBret. ''monid''), or else derive from the root *''men''- ('think, remember'; cf. OIr. ''muinithir'' 'think', Welsh ''mynnu'' 'wish').Isaac, Graham, "Place-Names in Ptolemy's Geography : An Electronic Data Base with Etymological Analysis of Celtic Name Elements". CD-ROM. 2004, CMCS Publications, Aberystwyth. According to scholar Patrick Sims-Williams, the name ''Manapii'' may have been imported by settlers from Britain, for it shows a

P-Celtic The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a subdivision of the Celtic languages of Ancient Gaul (both '' celtica'' and ''belgica'') and Celtic Britain, which share certain features. Besides common linguistic inn ...

form that possibly came to be assimilated in the local Irish dialect as *''Manak^wī'' > ''Manaig''.

References

Bibliography

* * * Prehistoric Ireland Tribes of ancient Ireland {{Ireland-hist-stub