[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)]

Faint inscriptions on lead pigs found in Chester and Staffordshire are thought by some to include the name DECEANGL.

The tribal name Deceangli is not actually on record in any of the ancient sources. It was simply deduced by scholars on the basis of the inscriptions on the lead pigs referred to above. It would appear that Deceanglani would be a better form for the tribal name, this being based on a topographical place-name of the form Descecanglanion, where Desc means ‘summit of hill steep’ and can and gl are both old-style elements meaning ‘steep hill’. Descecanglanion will thus have been a hillfort on the summit of a steep hill and since the can element uses the hill-letter n₁ the hillfort will date back to the 3^rd or even the 4^th century BC. At some stage the s and second c were lost or omitted (a common change in Romano-British place-names) to leave the modified place-name Deceanglanion, and the people of, or the people ruled from, Deceanglanion were called the Deceanglani.

The river Conway in the northwest of Wales will have had a composite river-name somewhat of the form Descecanglubena, in which the hill-letter s in desc element corresponds to the river-letter b in the river-suffix ubena. The Romans (presumably the Romans) deleted some letters from Descecanglubena to produce the reduced composite river-name Canubena. On the basis of this reduced composite river-name the Romans then applied the name Canubio to their fort at Caerhun, close to the river Conway.

Note that if we write the full tribal name in the genitive plural form as [Des]ce[c]ang[l]anorum and then delete the letters in brackets we obtain Ceanganorum. which is of course Ptolemy’s Caeanganorum promontory. Ptolemy’s replacing the linking vowel e after the element Desc by ae is of no importance. The Ceaeanganorum promontory, apparently at the southern end of the Lleyn peninsula, thus means ‘promontory of the Deceanglani’, in the sense of ‘promontory in the territory of the Deceanglani’.

[This page was last modified on 27 September 2024]