# Celtic judges



## john welch

Picts were possibly connected with Prittani people, which may be from _cruth_. It has been suggested that _prittani _means "the makers, formers ( of materials)". In a parliament, the Speaker acts judicially and Acts are the verbal decisions made. Brehon law is connected with judicial action. It appears that the possible root of Prittani, * krt, as in Sans_krit_ well-"formed" text, has a semantic of "judge". Then "Prittani" and "Brehon" may both describe judicial acts. That is, these may mean the druids as leaders.
Here are details:

bràth judgement, gu bràth, for ever (pron. gu bràch) "till Judgment", so Irish, Old Irish bráth, judgment, Welsh brawd, Middle Breton breut, Gaulish bratu-, *brâtu-; *brâ, *bera, judge, decide, from Indo-European bher, in the sense of "say", as in abair. . Hence also breath, or breith *br@.t-,
breath judgment, so Irish, Old Irish breth, *br@.tâ, Welsh bryd, Gaulish vergo-bretus, *br@.to-s.
(Vergo Bret were the elected chief magistrates).
britheamh a judge, Irish breitheamh, Old Irish brithem, g. britheman; root br@.t, of breath, judgment,
( this became "Brehon law").
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Indonesia has about 50% Sanskrit words. In Bali, the water goddess is Danu, connected with _Danu_be , Dneister rivers and maybe Dannan of Eire. The village-people were_ desa_ in a lord-client structure as in boaire-_desa_ of Irish lord-clients.

Bali : kerta. Judge

Old Java.: kĕrta (cf kṛta) aṅĕrtani to adjudicate, to give a decision on .
.kArta adj. relating to or treating of the kRt suffixes...

कर्त karta m. separation
कर्त karta m. distinction


cruth form, figure, Old Irish cruth, Welsh pryd, *qr@.tu-s, root qer, make; Latin cerus, creator, creo, English create; Lithuanian kuriù, build; Sanskrit kar, make, kr@.tas, made.


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## john welch

Old Persian of the Achaemenians. _karta_  meant "village," as in a_ karta_ Abiradush nama (a village named Abiradu) in Susa Inscription (Darius Sf, line 46).

Old Persian . _karta_ "deed", from kar 'do, make'
Telugu southeast India. _karta_ "heirs, persons entitled. author." (grammar) nominative case.
dharmakarta : "judge.arbitrator. trustee of temple. executor of estate".

Hindi : _karta_ ." family's  senior member to manage affairs."


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

john welch said:


> Picts were possibly connected with Prittani people, which may be from _cruth_.



Why do I get the feeling there is an conspiracy in recent years by Scottish nats(?) to gobble up Pictish as Celtic. For all we know Pictish is more related to Germanic hence English/Scots then Gaelic.


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## john welch

here are some gobblers of the Picts:
Watson 1926; Jackson 1955; Koch 1983; Smyth 1984; Forsyth 1997; Price 2000; Forsyth 2006; Woolf 2007; Fraser 2009.

"Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas use variants such as _Prettanikē_, "The Britannic [land, island]", and _nesoi Brettaniai_, "Britannic islands". . Although technically an adjective (_the Britannic_ or _British_) it may have been a case of noun ellipsis, a common mechanism in ancient Greek."_wiki
I wonder if the adjective of Bret means "the speaking" * bher rather than the Pryd "makers" *krt. This would further suggest "judges" as in vergo-bret "elected chief magistrate ". And may connect with Brettanos of Gaul , father of snake-woman Kelto the  partner of Hercules.


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## Treaty

Would you please tell us what your question is? Is it whether the root of Britain is "to make" or "to say"?

The PIE root for "karta", "pryd" and "cruth" is _*kʷer _"to do, to make" (it is not the root for "create" and "cerus" though). The initial _kʷ _evolved differently in two branches of Celtic languages popularly known as P- and Q- Celtic. It became [k] in Q-Celtic and [p] in P-Celtic. On the other hand, the PIE [p] almost disappeared in both branches. Therefore, considering a name for Britain began with [p] in a P-Celtic language (Welsh), it might have been the cognate of an Irish (Q-Celtic) word starting with [k] or similar (like "cruth") not with [b.] (e.g., "brehon"). In other terms, "brehon" and "britain" are unrelated.


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## john welch

Treaty
um, please read #1. " It appears that the possible root of Prittani, * krt, ., has a semantic of "judge". Then "Prittani" and "Brehon" may both describe judicial acts.... Hence also breath, or breith *br@.t-, "
The 2 roots and base meanings are different. Just maybe they converge with a sense of "judge". This could relate to druids as teachers, rulers or as a "Speaker" in a government assembly.
Then again, Pytheas may have had a typo where Gk  B looks like a P.( Bret- / Pret-). (_nesoi Brettaniai_,) .Possibly a grease spot on his papyrus. In that case, Pret- *krt is deleted.

However , medieval Welsh may have p /b. " The peoples north of the Roman borders eventually came to be known as the Picts (Welsh: _Brithwyr_); the Welsh term for Pictland was _Prydyn_, which caused some confusion in the texts with _Prydain _south Britain_."_
But is this a back-loan from Pytheas?
aha..
"The name _Brythonic_ was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word _Brython_, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael. The name _Brittonic_ derives ultimately from the name _Prettanike_, recorded by Greek authors for the British Isles."


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## berndf

Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> For all we know Pictish is more related to Germanic hence English/Scots then Gaelic.


There is no substance whatsoever to that claim. It makes no sense. Pictic cannot be proven to be Celtic either but that assumption make infinitely more sense than the assumption of a Germanic language.


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## john welch

It's odd that "Prettani" is emphasised because in a list of ancient authors who quote Pytheas there are 2 who use it: Diodorus of Sicily. Marcian of Heraclea.  The rest use "Brettan-". Julius Caesar and Romans in general used Britannia. 
Maybe *krt means "curtains"?


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## Treaty

Considering _sanskrit_ (_samskrta_), what gives a the "well-" meaning is the _sans_ (_sams = _"together") part not the _krta _part. The other _karta_ ("distinction" or "separation") is from yet another root *_(s)ker-t _that means "to cut". In other terms, there is not much to conclude a "judgment" meaning for *_kʷer_. I guess the confusion between these words is the root of all your posts. If you remove this wrong assumption, there is nothing in your posts which suggest a connection between Irish _brehon_ and P-Celtic-based _britain_.

Welsh had (and have) both [p] and [b.]. While it was likely that [p] changed into [b.] in Welsh, the reverse was much less probable. That's why the existence of words for "Britain" which begin with [p] is crucial for considering that the original word also started with [p] (that means it was probably from PIE [kʷ]). While the existence of words starting with [b.] is not as crucial. Besides, Picts were called with names starting with [cr] in Old Irish that further supports its origin from PIE [kʷ].

Bottom line, whatever the Irish _brehon _came from, it did not start with [kʷ] in PIE (because [kʷ] didn't become in Irish [b.]), while _britain_ (from whatever root it is) seems to be from a word starting with PIE [kʷ] (because it is [cr] in Irish and [br]/[pr] in Welsh).

P.S. You may need to take a look at Greek alphabet before claiming P and B were resembling letters. The importance of Pytheas is that he was there in person and he was there before others.


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## john welch

Sanskrit (n.) 


 + krta- "to make, do, perform," from PIE *kwer- "to make, form"
OED has *kr.
If a B has a smudge in the centre, it becomes a II .


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## Treaty

john welch said:


> Sanskrit (n.)
> 
> 
> + krta- "to make, do, perform," from PIE *kwer- "to make, form"
> OED has *kr.
> If a B has a smudge in the centre, it becomes a II .



No. OED doesn't have _*kr_. It has a _kṛ _that is an attested Sanskrit root, not a reconstructed PIE root (with an * ), similar to _kṛta _that is an attested Sanskrit word. There is no direct connection between Sanskrit and Celtic. Therefore we can't use a Sanskrit word as the root for a Celtic word. 

You need a very good imagination to confuse between Β and Π in a manuscript like this by a smudge.


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## john welch

Pliny referred to the main island as _Britannia_, with _Britanniae_ describing the island group.[13][14]

Catullus also used the plural _Britanniae_ in his _Carmina_.[15][16]

Orosius used the plural _Britanniae_ to refer to the islands and _Britanni_ to refer to the people thereof.[18]



Ptolemy,  Greek  , in his Almagest, used _Brettania_ and _Brettanikai nēsoi_ to refer to the island group and the terms _megale Brettania_ (Great Britain) and _mikra Brettania_ (little Britain) for the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, respectively.[21] However, in his Geography, he referred to both _Alwion_ (Great Britain) and _Iwernia_ (Ireland) as a _nēsos Bretanikē_, or British island.[22]

Pseudo-Aristotle used _nēsoi Brettanikai_, _Albion_ and _Ierne_ to refer to the island group, Great Britain, and Ireland, respectively.[25]

Procopius, in the 6th century AD, used the terms _Brittia_ and _Brettania_ though he considered them to be different islands, the former being located between the latter and Thule.
----------( I can't remove these bullet points).
That's 6:2 for "Brett". Is there another explanation than unclear text for p /b ?  Your tidy image doesn't mean all texts were un-smudged. OED 'Sanskrit'. kr is explained as "make", so * kwrt.   Skr and Celtic may not be directly connected today but anciently were.
If Skr karta "distinction" is *s-kert "cut",  other terms are:
Bali : kerta. Judge

Old Java.: kĕrta (cf kṛta) aṅĕrtani to adjudicate, to give a decision on .
.kArta adj. relating to or treating of the kRt suffixes..


Old Persian of the Achaemenians. _karta_ meant "village," as in a_ karta_ Abiradush nama (a village named Abiradu) in Susa Inscription (Darius Sf, line 46).

Old Persian . _karta_ "deed", from kar 'do, make'
Telugu southeast India. _karta_ "heirs, persons entitled. author." (grammar) nominative case.
dharmakarta : "judge.arbitrator. trustee of temple. executor of estate".

Hindi : _karta_ ." family's senior member to manage affairs."
However, if * Prettani is a false spelling as in Roman experience of Britannia, then this is a dead horse.


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## berndf

john welch said:


> _karta_ meant "village,"


That is a Semitic and not a IE root.



john welch said:


> Is there another explanation than unclear text for p /b ?


The most obvious explanation would be different transcriptions of what people hear. What is one man's b is and other man's p. What might have been an unambiguous b some Celtic language 2000 years ago might have been a b/p borderline case to a Latin or Greek speaker. If I spell something in English with my accent, Ay-Bee-Cee, which is totally unambiguous in both, English and German, and an Italian writes it down, you can almost be sure he writes down APC.


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## john welch

The source for " Pritani" is Pytheas' text copied by others. The verbal sound is then set in concrete or ink. Unless sea-water splashed on  the B / II.
BP had trouble in the Gulf of Mexico.


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## berndf

john welch said:


> The source for " Pritani" is Pytheas' text


Sure. And he would then be the person who misheard b as p.


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## sotos

I found the O.P. a bit confusing, but there may be some truth there. That  "Prittani" is almost the same with the Gr. πρυτάνεις (plur.) (the letter Y was not necessarily pronounced U but possibly I, like in new Greek)   http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:alphabetic+letter=*p:entry+group=290:entry=pru/tanis
If you want to find a connection to the meaning "judge", and if you think that P may correspond to a K, then consider the Gr. "κριτής" (judge).
Btw, do you believe that Myceneans were travelling to Britain to buy copper and tin?


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## john welch

berndf
."he would then be the person".
Just the 1 person. It seems no-one else heard a /p/. Strabo copied Pytheas' grubby old papers as  B-, Diodorus read a  P-. Or maybe Diodorus spilt coffee and his text has the error.


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## john welch

sotos
Thanks. I found Gr keirotonia "election" but it's keiro-tonia "hand. lay-on".
The magistrates are interesting and maybe vergo-bret "elected magistrates of Gauls" is L virgo / verga "fasces rods of magistrates".
Pytheas said *Pritons grew wheat. Possibly the Irish cruithneach were not a tribe ( "Picts"?) but wheat-growers in general , cruithneachd "wheat".  And then *pretani were the wheat-growing Britons?
Pytheas of Massilia probably used British tin. They say that outrigger boats of the Bronze Age were fast.


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## john welch

Pytheas' text is lost but is it possible he wrote 2 words : Prettani / Brettani?
Ptolemy in 1st century wrote of Ebudae in Ireland for "Epidii". ( Woolf 2005), who suggests an early example of intervocalic consonant softening.
Today, Welsh has initial consonant mutation p>b in certain cases. So E "there (.) plastic in" remains ( mae  plastic yn) but mutates for "is plastic" (yn _b_lastic). Could Pytheas have heard " in " Prettani and "is " Brettani?  Then maybe the forceful Romans used the defining "it is Britain" in preference to the more passive "when in Britain"?


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