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I realize this is going to come off as extremely oversimplified BUT...I am working on a short story. And this is something I've never really been able to figure out.
After the withdrawal of Rome in Britain, when the British were getting their bearings and "chieftanships" were popping back up - or being recognized - what did people call their rulers?
They obviously couldn't have called them kings, at the time. That's an Anglo-Saxon word...I think. Only the Saxons and Jutes and so on would have used their word for king. In retrospect we call them kings...King Vortigern and so on. But that's based on writings that were put down many centuries after the fact, and on our own understanding looking back.
But what would they have called them then? As a form of address (i.e. "lord") and when speaking OF them "the X of Dumnonia"?
Anybody know? Google isn't my friend on this issue.
A completely sideways answer, but if you look into "king/pharaoh" usage in the various languages (on up to English, as in "Carter") you might find some useful parallels.
A completely sideways answer, but if you look into "king/pharaoh" usage in the various languages (on up to English, as in "Carter") you might find some useful parallels.
Okay...this is the thing...when I try to look up, for example, "Celtic king," "celtic language king," "celtic term for king," etc. I'm coming up with just...a list of celtic kings in retrospect, LOL.
I'll keep digging though.
I guess it's possible nobody knows. Who knows...maybe I can just use the word anyway...obviously if we tried to stay true to a language when writing a book in a different language, well...the whole book would be in the first language.
I just thought they must have called their chieftains SOMETHING...you know? I may just roll with My Lord and the Lord.
That was a good king. Cyning (pronoucned like koening, or König in German) is the Old English word for King.
Thank you! Yes, I didn't want to use "king" as I was looking for a Celtic root word.
But I may roll with Ri - which although it seems specifically gaelic, also has formats in other languages - or I may actually just wind up using "king." I may be being silly about this as all the REST of the story is written in English, LOL. I mean I'm not writing the thing in p-Celtic...I may be overthinking this.
But I LOVE all this information. I'm a history nerd and I love words as well so I can't thank everyone enough. This is awesome.
Thank you! Yes, I didn't want to use "king" as I was looking for a Celtic root word.
But I may roll with Ri - which although it seems specifically gaelic, also has formats in other languages - or I may actually just wind up using "king." I may be being silly about this as all the REST of the story is written in English, LOL. I mean I'm not writing the thing in p-Celtic...I may be overthinking this.
But I LOVE all this information. I'm a history nerd and I love words as well so I can't thank everyone enough. This is awesome.
It's your story. Call him whatever you want, and use context to explain the title's function. If you were writing sci-fi and had a character say "Take me to your leader" and that character was then introduced to a person who makes decisions called a "Zigwa", most readers will interpret "Zigwa" as "leader" at the very least.
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