Gipuzkoa in antiquity: languages and linguistic areas in the light of onomastics

Abstract

Some recent studies claim that a pre-Latin Indo-European (Celtic) language was predominant in Gipuzkoa during antiquity. However, the pertinent information available is scant and often questionable. Here we examine the data that can be drawn from Roman-era epigraphy as well as geographers’ and historians’ books in a unified fashion and compare these data with medieval and Modern Age Basque onomastics. The purpose is to shed light on the linguistic situation of Gipuzkoan antiquity from a geographic as well as historical perspective. In the same vein, we attempt to verify whether linguistic and archeological data point in the same direction, in order to determine the existence of one or several cultural areas.

Keywords

• Gipuzkoa
• antiquity
• Basque (language)
• onomastics
• epigraphy