Roman London - Origins and Language

Origins and Language

Londinium was established as a town by the Romans after the invasion of 43 led by the Roman Emperor Claudius. Archaeologists now believe that Londinium was founded as a civilian settlement or civitas by 50. A wooden drain by the side of the main Roman road excavated at No 1 Poultry has been dated by dendrochronology to 47, which is likely to be the foundation date.

Prior to the arrival of the Roman legions, the area was almost certainly lightly rolling open countryside traversed by streams such as Walbrook. Londinium was established at the point where the Thames was narrow enough to build a bridge, but deep enough to handle sea-going marine vessels. Remains of a massive Roman pier base for a bridge were found in 1981, close to the modern London Bridge.

It was traditionally thought that Londinium started as a civilian settlement, although there is also slight evidence that there was a Roman fortress. However, archaeological excavation undertaken since the 1970s by the Department of Urban Archaeology of the Museum of London, now called MOLAS, has failed to unearth any convincing traces of military occupation on the site, so many archeologists now believe that Londinium was the product of private enterprise. Its site on a busy river-crossing made it a perfect place for traders from across the Roman Empire to set up business.

The name Londinium is thought to be pre-Roman (and possibly pre-Celtic) in origin, although there has been no consensus on what it means. It was common practice for Romans to adopt native names for new settlements. A common theory is that the name derives from a hypothetical Celtic placename, Londinion which may have been derived from the personal name Londinos, from the word lond, meaning 'wild'.

A theory proposed by Richard Coates, which does not have widespread acceptance, suggests that the name derives from a Celticised Old European river-name forming part of the oldest stratum of European toponymy, in the sense established by Hans Krahe; Coates suggested a derivation from a pre-Celtic Plowonida — from two roots, plew and nejd, possibly meaning "the flowing river" or "the wide flowing river". Therefore, Londinium would mean "the settlement on the wide river". He suggests that the river was called the Thames upriver where it was narrower, and Plowonida downriver, where it was too wide to ford.

Inscriptions and graffiti found by archaeologists confirm that Latin was the local language. It has been implied by modern scholars that many of the local people spoke the Celtic language now termed Brythonic, called lingua Gallica (Gaulish) by the Romans; this language is ancestral to Welsh, Cornish and Breton.