Name
According to Rivet and Smith, viro- may mean either "true" or "man". The -conium portion is unknown, but seems to refer to some large geographic feature such as a lake or forest. Jackson suggests that the name is a Latin form of the Brythonic Uriconon, which would have been applied to the nearby hill fort on the Wrekin. The name may be related to personal names such as Welsh Gwrgi, Breton Gurki, and Irish Ferchu, meaning "Man-hound" or "Werewolf", which in ancient Common Celtic would have had a nominative singular *Wiro-kū (oblique *Wiro-kon-); Viroconium could thus be derived from such a personal name and mean "(the place belonging to) *Wirokū". Cornoviorum means "of the Cornovii", the local tribe whose civitas it became.
Read more about this topic: Viroconium Cornoviorum
Famous quotes containing the word name:
“Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore than name. Are they all alike. I think so.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)