Why shouldn’t the untrustworthy ancient folk etymology be as ancient as the Romans? Shouldn’t we be as mistrustful of resorting to otherwise unrecorded (in this case Latin) cognates? Why should the Romans have chosen to identify the people in question by a characteristic which was or had been common to most of their neighbours?
There's a lot there for me to answer. But the etymology that links the name of the Picts with Latin pictus comes from St Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, and St Isidore also explains the name of the Britons as reflecting Latin brutus 'brute'. These kinds of etymologies were pure speculation -- authors from the ancient and early medieval periods used to just look for similar words in Latin or Greek to explain names. Their attempts predate the establishment of the discipline of linguistics in the 19th century and are 100% unreliable. The Romans were not in the habit of inventing names for barbarian peoples they came across, so the 'painted peoples' etymology is as wrong as it could possibly be from a modern linguistic perspective.
I wasn't suggesting that the Romans were the first to refer to the Picts as such, but that they would inevitably have made the association with Latin 'pictus', when they adopted the name - whatever the source (and regardless of the etymology). Doesn't your final sentence also rule out the idea that the Romans would have dubbed them 'hostile', or have I misunderstood something?
I don't think many Romans would have thought much about a linkage between Picti and pictus 'painted' -- do many people in the UK think that the Finns were named after fins or the Swedes after swedes? The Romans could well have adopted the term Picti without understanding what it meant in Pictish too.
Thank you so much for this. Evidence - nay, proof - I have been seeking for some time!
Couldn’t Double Caledonian Ocean refer to the Seas between current Scotland and Ireland, People’s by culturally similar people?
The ancient names of seas like the "German Ocean" (the Roman name for the North Sea) were typically just taken from those of a single people
Why shouldn’t the untrustworthy ancient folk etymology be as ancient as the Romans? Shouldn’t we be as mistrustful of resorting to otherwise unrecorded (in this case Latin) cognates? Why should the Romans have chosen to identify the people in question by a characteristic which was or had been common to most of their neighbours?
There's a lot there for me to answer. But the etymology that links the name of the Picts with Latin pictus comes from St Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, and St Isidore also explains the name of the Britons as reflecting Latin brutus 'brute'. These kinds of etymologies were pure speculation -- authors from the ancient and early medieval periods used to just look for similar words in Latin or Greek to explain names. Their attempts predate the establishment of the discipline of linguistics in the 19th century and are 100% unreliable. The Romans were not in the habit of inventing names for barbarian peoples they came across, so the 'painted peoples' etymology is as wrong as it could possibly be from a modern linguistic perspective.
I wasn't suggesting that the Romans were the first to refer to the Picts as such, but that they would inevitably have made the association with Latin 'pictus', when they adopted the name - whatever the source (and regardless of the etymology). Doesn't your final sentence also rule out the idea that the Romans would have dubbed them 'hostile', or have I misunderstood something?
I don't think many Romans would have thought much about a linkage between Picti and pictus 'painted' -- do many people in the UK think that the Finns were named after fins or the Swedes after swedes? The Romans could well have adopted the term Picti without understanding what it meant in Pictish too.