Celtic Britons

The Britons were an ancient Celtic people who lived in Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Roman and Sub-Roman periods. They spoke a language that is now known as Common Brittonic.

The earliest evidence of the existence of the Britons and their language in historical sources dates to the Iron Age. After the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century, a Romano-British culture emerged, and Latin and British Vulgar Latin coexisted with Brittonic. During and after the Roman era, the Britons lived throughout Britain south of the Firth of Forth. Their relationship with the Picts, who lived north of the Firth of Forth, has been the subject of much discussion, though most scholars accept that the Pictish language was related to Common Brittonic.

With the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement in the 5th century, the culture and language of the Britons fragmented and much of their territory was taken over by the Anglo-Saxons. The extent to which this cultural and linguistic change was accompanied by wholesale changes in the population is still a matter of discussion. During this period some Britons migrated to mainland Europe and established significant settlements in Brittany (now part of France) as well as Britonia in modern Galicia, Spain. By the 11th century, remaining Celtic-speaking populations had split into distinct groups: the Welsh in Wales, the Cornish in Cornwall, the Bretons in Brittany, and the people of the Hen Ogledd ("Old North") in southern Scotland and northern England. Common Brittonic developed into the distinct Brittonic languages: Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish and Breton.

British

British may refer to:

Places

Peoples and culture

British people

British people, or Britons, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies; and their descendants.British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, British people refers to the ancient Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain south of the Forth.

Although early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages, the creation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity. The notion of Britishness was forged during the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and the First French Empire, and developed further during the Victorian era. The complex history of the formation of the United Kingdom created a "particular sense of nationhood and belonging" in Great Britain and Ireland; Britishness became "superimposed on much older identities", of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish cultures, whose distinctiveness still resists notions of a homogenised British identity. Because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by unionists.

Britain (place name)

The term Britain is a linguistic descendant (reflex) of one of the oldest known names for Great Britain, an island off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The terms Briton and British, similarly derived, refer to its inhabitants and, to varying extents, the smaller islands in the vicinity. "British Isles" is the only ancient name for these islands to survive in general usage. Its first written appearance was by Pytheas of Massalia in the 4th century BC. It originates with a group of P-Celtic speakers, resident on Great Britain, who were referred to, and perhaps referred to themselves, by the earliest known form of the term "British".

Etymology

"Britain" comes from Latin Britannia~Brittania, via Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Breteyne, possibly influenced by Old English Bryten(lond), probably also from Latin. The earliest known written references to the British Isles derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas use variants such as Prettanikē, "The Britannic [land, island]", and nesoi Brettaniai, "Britannic islands".