[NB The brief explanation given below has been drafted on the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the basic building-blocks used in Celtic topographical place-names (Chapter 1 of the Home menu), with the structure of compound place-names (Chapter 2) and with the structure of Celtic river-names (Chapter 19)]
This tribal name is apparently not mentioned in any of the ancient sources but is deduced from a name Corionototarum appearing in an inscription found at Hexham Abbey but thought to have come from Corbridge.
Corionototae is another tribal name based on a river-name, in this case a river-name of the kind having a river-suffix attached to a place-name comprising one or more hill-letters. The first river-letter t in the river-suffix totae corresponds to the hill-letter l1 and the second to the hill-letter l2. The place-name will thus have had a form somewhat similar to Lagubalion or Olcaclavion. Assuming, for the sake of discussion, that the place-name had been Lagubalion, then the full name of the river will have been Lagubalionototena (though the ending might not have been ena). This name was then shortened in an absurd manner reminiscent of the modification of the river-name Abranobandion (the Water of Luce) to produce the tribal name Novantae. All the significant letters of Lagubalion were deleted, leaving only the n of the ending, plus the linking vowel o and then the river-suffix in full to give a modified river-name Nototena, the tribe then being called the Nototae. Someone, Celt or Roman is not clear, then added the Corio element at the front to give the name Corionototae by which the tribe is nowadays known. The Corionototae presumably lived in the valley of the Teviot, which had been in the territory of the Votadini, who used the hill-letter l1, but was taken over by an l2-people moving up from the southwest, from Carlisle and North Cumbria (see Chapter 25, 4.2). Alternatively they may have lived in the valley of the Jed Water, a tributary of the Teviot, if that valley was also taken over by the l2-people.
[This page was last modified on 24 March 2021]
