The Dying Gaul. An ancient Roman statue (c. 225 BCE) depicting a defeated warrior from Galatia in Anatolia. A marble statue of a naked man sitting on his shield with a sword and a horn lying next to him. He is slumped, with his head bowed. A Celtic torc is around his neck, and there is a sword wound in his side.
28 October 2022
Despite bearing a superficial resemblance and referring to Celtic peoples, languages, or lands, Gaelic is etymologically unrelated to Gaul and Gallic. None of these have a direct lineal descent from one another; all are the result of multiple borrowings from multiple languages.
Gaul and Gallic are from the Latin Gallia (the country), Gallus (the people), and Gallicus (adjective for both). Generally understood today to include what is now France and Belgium, Gallia or Gaul originally included what is now northern Italy. The origin of the Latin root is uncertain, but it probably comes from a Celtic language or languages. It’s cognate with the Greek Γαλάται and Galatia/Galatian, which refer to Celtic peoples who settled in Asia Minor. It’s also cognate to the Germanic root which gives us Wales and Welsh, as well as Walloon. The exact relationships between all these roots are uncertain.
The Celtic languages spoken in Ireland and Britain, that is Insular Celtic, are divided into two major groups. The Brittonic languages were those spoken in what is now England, Cornwall, and Wales, as well as in Brittany in what is now France. The Goidelic languages were spoken in what is now Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. Gaelic is the English form of the Old Irish Goídelc (present-day Gaelige), the Scottish Gàidhlig, and the Manx Gaelg.
Scottish Gaelic or Gàidhlig is not to be confused with Scots, which is a Germanic language closely related to English. Whether you consider Scots to be a distinct language or a dialect of English depends on your opinion regarding Scottish nationalism; the distinction between a dialect and a language is a political, not a linguistic, one.
And confusing things even further, Goídelc, Gàidhlig, and Gaelg are not originally Goidelic words. They’re borrowings from Brittonic, the root that gives us the Welsh Gwyddeleg (Irish) and Gwyddel (Irishman). It’s not unusual for the names of peoples, that is demonyms, and languages to be coined by outsiders.
The use of Gaul in English to refer to the ancient people of what is now France dates to the fourteenth century, while the extended nominal sense and the adjective Gallic referring to present-day French people appear in the seventeenth century.
Gaelic also dates to the seventeenth century.
Sources:
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2018, s.v. Gaelic, n. and adj., Gael, n.; March 2022, s.v. Gaul, n. and adj.; September 2022, s.v. Welsh, adj. and n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. Gallic, adj.1 and n., Gallo-, comb. form1 (this last entry’s etymology was revised in March 2022).
Image credit: Anthony Majanlahti, 2005. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. The statue is in the Capitoline Museums in Rome.