Celtic Lexicon

CELTIC LEXICON

The Celtic Lexicon will contain the reconstructed Proto-Celtic vocabulary and the attested cognates in the ancient and modern Celtic languages (i.e. Early and Modern Irish, Scots Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Old British, Pictish, Gaulish, Celtiberian and Galatian).

At the moment we have published the following online documents:

These files are in the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF); if you do not have the free Acrobat Reader on your computer yet, you can download it here.

These documents should very much be understood as a work-in-progress, and they are not a citable reference yet. They contain the Proto-Celtic etymologies that were found by going through Stokes’ Urkeltischer Sprachschatz (Göttingen, 1894), Pokorny’s Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Bern, 1959–69) and Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (Caerdydd, 1950–2002). We estimate that we will find around 500 more etymologies after we have incorporated the Breton, Cornish, Scots Gaelic and Gaulish material.

The Proto-Celtic reconstructions are based on our interpretation of the Proto-Celtic phonological system, which is briefly explained here.

Further Resources

Publications