Celts. Strabo, indeed, speaks of the ancient Spaniards in terms which seem to imply that he regarded them as one race, with whom he says that the Aquitani, in Gaul, agreed in language and manners. But the fact that the entire peninsula, as well as the southern parts of Gaul, was occupied by people who, with the exception of some Celtic tribes, were of one race, and that from that race the Euskaldunes are descended, admitted of no other method of satisfactory proof than that which has been adopted by M. de Humboldt, namely, a careful collection and analysis of local names throughout the peninsula, as well as in the countries beyond its limits, which are said to have been tenanted by people of the same stock with the Iberi. By this writer it has been clearly proved that a very great proportion of the ancient names of places, cities, or towns, and districts, both within the countries where the Basque is spoken, and beyond them, in parts of Spain and Aquitaine which it is probable that the Iberians formerly inhabited, are certainly of Euskarian origin, since they bear a clearly significant and appropriate meaning, and may be interpreted with ease and probability, by means of words actually in use among the Biscayan or Basque people. The following instances will exemplify the proofs of this fact.

1. ASTA, meaning a rock, appears as the etymon of many local names. These occur in Biscay, Asta, Asteguieta, Astigarraga, Astobiza, Astorga, Astulez, Asturia. Asta is mentioned by Pliny in the Turdetanian, Astigi and Astapa by the same writer and by Livy, in Bætica, and the latter name, as its meaning indicates, is still appropriated in Biscay to places situated at the feet of rocks. Asturis, Asturia, and the name of the river Astura, are derived from Asta, rock, and Ura, the Euskarian term for water.

2. Not less evident is the Euskarian origin of local names beginning or ending with IRIA, written also URIA, and frequently ULIA, or ILIA, which in the Basque language means city, town, place. Examples are Iria Flavia, Urium, Ulia, Ilia, Ilipa, Graccuris, Calaguris, Lacuris, Ilarcuris, and many other similar names, mentioned by Pliny, Ptolemy and Livy, in different parts of Spain.

3. From URA water, comes a variety of names, as Asturia,

compounded with Asta; Iluria, Uria, Verurium; from ura, and bi, two, Urbiaca, Urbina, Ilurbida, and many others.

4. From ITURRIA, fountain, source, we find Iturissa, Turas, Turiaso, Turuca, Turdetani, Turduli. Turiga, that is, destitute of springs, was a place, which according to Pliny, had another denomination, namely, Ucultuniacum. This town. was in the country occupied in part by Celtic tribes of

Bæturia.

Ucultuniacum appears to be a Celtic name, and may be rendered a lofty hill-town, which agrees well with the Iberian designation of Turiga.*

Other etymons existing in the Basque language may be traced very extensively among the names of places in the peninsula. Terminations of local names, derived from the old Iberian idiom, and frequent in various parts of Spain, are those in "uris, pa, tani, tania, gis, ula, ippo."+ The initial syllables of similar names are very commonly "al, ar, as, bae, bi, bar, ber, gal, cal, car, men, man, ner, or, sal, zal, si, tai, tu." Some of these words are clearly significant in the present Basque, and applicable as such to the etymology of the names of places to which they belong; the meaning of others is lost, but they are known to be of Iberian origin from their frequent concurrence with the former, within the same districts of Spain. Even the structure of Euskarian names bears with it a character which can be recognised; the form of syllables, and the orthography of these words is peculiar and easy to be recognised in the great aggregate of original Spanish names.

The prevalence of topographical names significant in the Euskarian language, and evidently derived from it, being thus clearly established through nearly the whole peninsula, it be

• Pliny remarks on Ucultuniacum, " quæ et Turiga nunc est." (Hist. Nat. i. 139. 17.) Uchel-dun, is Old Welsh; a dialectic difference, or, a different pronunciation might produce Uxellodunum.

+ This last termination is derived by Gesenius with, perhaps, greater probability, from the Phoenician. Besippo he derives from 1D' N’A. It is the more likely to be a Phoenician ending, since it occurs in Africa. A few other Spanish names of places are also derived by Gesenius from the Phoenician or Hebrew, as Hispalis, Castalo, &c. See Gesenius, Scripturæ Linguæque Phæniceæ Monumenta, i. p. 340.

comes a safe inference that this language had formerly a similar extension, and consequently that it can be no other than the old Iberian speech, the idiom spoken by the native people of Spain, in times anterior to the Roman, and even to the Carthaginian conquests in that country. A confirmation of this opinion is obtained by comparing likewise the names of places in Aquitaine, and on the southern coasts of France. There, as we learn from many ancient writers, the people belonged to the Iberian race, while the maritime tracts on the Mediterranean, were the country, as we have seen, first termed Iberia; in the interior, towards the Pyrenees, Bayonne, and St. Jean de Luz, the Basque language still exists. It has been clearly proved by M. de Humboldt, that the local names through all these countries, are similar to the names of places occuring in the Spanish peninsula.

Another series of observations regards the intermixture of Euskarian names or their dispersion through districts where others are also recognised of a very different class; I allude to names which have been proved and acknowledged to be of Celtic origin. It is well known that several parts of Spain were inhabited by Celtic tribes, and that through a great portion of the interior of the peninsula, Celtic people had become blended with Iberians, forming the Celtiberian nations, who were the most considerable and powerful clans in Spain. Now the region of Spain through which Celtic names are dispersed in conjunction with those of Euskarian origin, comprehends, according to Humboldt, all the districts where Celtic tribes are placed by the ancient historians. It is likewise more extensive, and embraces some neighbouring portions of the peninsula, whence there is reason to conclude that the Celtic influence had prevailed more widely in earlier times than during those in which Spain became known to the Romans, or, at least, than the Roman writers appear to have been aware. These last remarks require some further illus

tration.

Certain local names are known to belong to the Celtic parts of Gaul, and many of them are also to be traced in other countries inhabited by the Celtic race, as in Britain, and the northern parts of Italy. Some of these names

have an obvious meaning in the existing dialects of the Celtic language; others are not so clearly understood; but from the fact that they are of frequent occurrence in Celtic countries, and only in those countries, it has been inferred that they are of Celtic origin, and it is probable that their meaning would be apparent if only the whole Celtic language had been preserved to our days. I shall not enter, at present, upon any investigation relating to the history of the Celta, but shall only mention the Celtic names which have been pointed out by M. de Humboldt, as occurring in Spain. These epithets are characterised by particular terminations; one of the most striking is briga, which occurs very frequently in all the Celtic countries. In all these regions there are cities or tribes of people, the names of which terminate in Briga, Briges, Brica; some in Bria, Briva, which, however, probably belong to a different etymon. In Spain this word occurs in the country inhabited by the Celtiberi, the Celtici in Boetica, and the Celtic colony in the north-western corner of Tarraconensis, and in some other parts. On examining geographically the extent of these countries, it appears that the region in which briga is found as a local name or termination, is the western and northern part of Spain, which may be divided by a line, beginning on the northern coast to the eastward of the Autrigones in Biscay, and having Juliobriga and Flaviobriga to the left hand; it passes thence southward, leaving the Caristii and Varduli on the eastward, to the limits of the Vascones and Celtiberi, and thence follows the boundaries of the latter people, whom it passes also to the eastward, as well as the Oretani, and it continues along the course of the river Bætis to the Mediterranean. To the westward and northward of this line a surprising number of local names containing briga, or brica, occur; they here are found in almost every district, but they never appear in the parts of Spain lying eastward of the same line towards the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. It is in the western division that all the Celtic and Celtiberian tribes mentioned by the ancients, dwelt. But the department of the peninsula thus marked out, is more extensive than the known limits of the Celta, and it seems

hence probable that this people, who were more warlike than the native Spaniards, had extended their power over a wide field. The Cantabri, as well as all the sea-coast people, as far as the Bætis, are within the region where vestiges of the Celtic language are found. All these countries are in the proximity of Celtic or Celtiberian states, and it may well be imagined that the latter had extended their conquests around their own boundaries, and had brought other Iberian tribes more or less under the influence of their manners and language. Yet it must be noticed, that even in these countries the Celtic names bear a very small proportion to those of genuine Iberian origin.

Other Celtic terminations of places in magus, dunum, durum, vices, vici, rarely occur in Spain, but where any of these are found, it is within the western region already defined. Such instances are the names of the river Durius, of Octodurum, and the Ocelloduri, in the country of the Vaccæi. A similar observation applies to component parts of words, Ebora, Sego, or Sege, Nemeto, which, frequent in Gaul, are found rarely in Spain, and only in the north-western parts.

It appears that the names of Iberian men, of which many occur in Silius Italicus, and scattered through the works of Roman historians, are all peculiar; they appear to be of unmixed Iberian origin. Such terminations as marus, rix, dunus, vicus, which we shall hereafter observe to be very frequent in Celtic nations, are wholly wanting among the old Spaniards.

The investigation of local names in Iberian Gaul turns out remarkably in confirmation of M. de Humboldt's opinions. All the names of Aquitania, properly so termed, or among the tribes of real Aquitanian race, have the Euskarian form, and many are similar to local names occurring in Spain, and significant in the dialects of the modern Biscayans. On the other hand, not a single place in proper Aquitania has a Celtic name.*

The southern coast of Gaul, divided of old between Iberian and Ligurian tribes, gives two local names, derived from the idiom of the former people, viz., Illiberis of the Bebryces, and Vasio of the Vocontii.

* Lugdunum was built by the Convenæ, a mixed tribe.