The Gauls

Nearly all the Gauls are of a lofty stature, white, and of ruddy complexion; terrible from the sternness of their eyes, very quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong, and with blue eyes.

Ammianus Marcellinus

The Gauls were a group of Celtic tribes who spread over most of what is now France and much of Central Europe during the Iron Age. Gallic power reached its apogee during the 3rd century BCE, when they expanded into northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul), the Balkans and Anatolia (Galatia). This success is in part due to their command of the trade routes along the major river systems of the Rhône, Rhine, Seine and Danube. The Gauls are associated with the La Tène culture, which flourished in the late Iron Age from the 5th century BCE to 1st century BCE, centred around the Rhineland and western Alps. They spoke Gaulish, a continental Celtic language, all of which are long extinct, although they share a common ancestor (Proto-Celtic) with contemporary insular Celtic languages, such as Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Breton. Gallic hegemony gradually declined from the 2nd century BCE onward, and they were finally definitively defeated by Julius Caesar’s army in the Gallic Wars (58 – 50 BCE), after which Gaul became a Roman province. Gaul was assimilated into the Roman sphere of influence, but a distinctive Gallo-Roman culture persisted for another seven hundred years. This blend of very different cultures is exemplified by the fact that Epona, the Gallic goddess of horses, donkeys and mules and fertility was added to the Roman pantheon. To the Imperial Horse Guard, Epona was the protector of the cavalry and they spread her cult across the Empire, which was very unusual for Celtic divinities. Epona is derived from Gaulish epos ‘horse’, a word which is related to Welsh ebol and Breton ebeul, both of which mean ‘foal’.

The Romans called the Gauls Galli, and both Gaul and Galli are derived from the Celtic root *gal- ‘power, ability’, whose descendants include Cornish gallos ‘power’, Irish gal ‘courage’ and French gaillard ‘brave, hardy’. The cock as the symbol of France is believed to be based on a pun which conflates the Latin words Gallus ‘a Gaul’ and gallus ‘cock’. The most famous Gaulish leader is undoubtably Vercingetorix, whose name means ‘leader of warriors’. Vercingetorix united the Gaulish tribes against Julius Caesar and fought a fierce, if ultimately unsuccessful, rearguard action to withstand the might of the Roman army. The 2nd century Roman historian Florus wrote in his Epitome of Roman History that Vercingetorix had ‘a name which seemed to be intended to inspire terror’. In fact, the -rix part of Gaulish leaders’ names – as well as Vercingetorix, there were Dumnorix and Orgetorix – means ‘king’. This was taken as -ix by Goscinny and Uderzo for their Astérix le Gaulois (Asterix the Gaul) comic books and given to all of the ‘indomitable Gauls’ in the series. Indeed, Asterix is pun central: Astérix is a modification of astérisque ‘asterisk’ and his best friend Obélix is a modification of obélisque ‘obelisk’. Other characters include Asterix’s dog, known in French as Idéfix (idée fixe) ‘fixed idea’ and in English as Dogmatix, a mix of dog and dogmatic; the village druid, Panoramix, in French, from panorama, i.e. ‘he who sees everything’ and Getafix in English ‘get a fix (from a recreational drug)’; and the chief of the village, Abraracourcix in French (à bras raccourcis ‘with shortened arms’ from the phrase tomber sur quelqu'un à bras raccourcis ‘attack someone violently’) and the inspired Vitalstatistix in English.

Centuries of Roman rule saw Gaulish coexisting with Vulgar Latin dialects, known as Gallo-Romance, in France. Around 1,500 years ago, Gallo-Romance supplanted Gaulish, but Gaulish influenced the way in which Gallo-Romance developed into Old French both phonologically and grammatically. Some of the most common words in French, such as aller ‘go’, petit ‘small’ and manteau ‘coat’, are of Gaulish origin. Most Gaulish loanwords borrowed by French are in semantic fields connected to the peasantry (who are likely to have held on to Gaulish the longest), though. For example, domesticated animals – cheval ‘horse’, cochon ‘pig’ and mouton ‘sheep’; trees and plants – bouleau ‘birch’, brosse ‘brush’, chêne ‘oak’, coudrier ‘ hazel’, érable 'maple', mélèze 'larch', sapin ‘fir’ and vergne ‘alder’; brewing – bren ‘bran’, brace ‘malt’, brasser ‘brew’, drèche ‘brewing dregs’, not to mention cervoise ‘barley beer’, which was adopted by Spanish as cerveza; and weights and measures – boisseau, lieue and tonne, which were subsequently borrowed by English as bushel, league and ton. Other French loans from Gaulish that made their way into English include change < Old French changier < Gaulish cambion; bat(ter) < Old French batre < Gaulish battu; cream < Old French cresme < Gaulish crama ‘skim, skin’; and piece < Old French piece < Gaulish pettsi.

Another legacy of Gaulish is the remains of a vigesimal number system (counting with twenty as a base) in French, as in quatre-vingts ‘eighty’, i.e ‘four twenties’ . French also used to have six-vingts ‘one hundred and twenty’ and quinze-vingts ‘three hundred’, a form which is preserved in the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts (Hospital of the Three Hundred), France’s national ophthalmology hospital, located in Paris’s 12th arrondissement. This hospital was founded in 1260 by Louis IX and had 300 beds to house poor, blind people. Contemporary Celtic languages still use twenty as a base, as exemplified by these words for “seventy”: Breton dec ha tri uéguend and Welsh deg a thrigain (both ‘ten and three twenty’), and Manx three-feed as jeih and Scottish Gaelic tri fichead ‘s a deich (both ‘three twenty and ten’). That’s nothing compared to Danish though, which really pushes vigesimalism to the limit. For example, seventy-eight is otteoghalvfierdsindstyve ‘eight and three score plus half of the fourth score’, while ninety is halvfemsindstyve ‘four score plus half of the fifth score’.

The word score is itself a remnant of the vigesimal system. It is used extensively in the Authorised Version of the Bible, where Psalm 90 reminds us that ‘the days of our years are threescore years and ten’ – so if you’re over 70, you’re living on borrowed time – and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address opens with ‘four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’, a laudable proposition, but one that has never been borne out by the realities of life’s rich tapestry, in the USA or anywhere else. Score is the Modern English version of Old English scoru ‘twenty’, from Old Norse skor ‘mark, notch, incision’. A vigesimal system of counting sheep was widespread throughout Britain until the early 20th century, and still exists in rural pockets of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Shepherds would count with numbers from a Brythonic Celtic language, using variations of yan tan tethera for one, two and three up to jiggit “twenty”, when the shepherd would score a notch on his crook.

The Gauls may have been assimilated into French society, but their language lives on in place-names. Many of the major cities of France are named after Gallic tribes – Paris (Parisii), Rennes (Redones), Nantes (Namnetes), Limoges (Lemovices), Angers (Andecavi) – or have Gaulish names – Caen ‘battlefield’, Lyon either ‘fortress of the god Lug’ or ‘shining fortress’, Brive ‘bridge’, Verdun ‘high fortress’ and Rouen, probably ‘wheel market’. However, French Pays de Galles for ‘Wales’ is not ‘country of the Gauls’, notwithstanding the nation’s Celtic roots, but ‘country of the Welsh’, Galles is derived from Old English Wēalas ‘Welshmen, foreigners’. Similarly, Gaels are also Celts, but they are not Gauls. Irish Gael is a descendant of Old Irish Gaoidheal, a borrowing from Old Welsh Guoidel ‘warrior, wild man.’