Talk:Cornovii (Midlands)

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Cornovii (perhaps meaning people of the horn) Latin names are rough transliterations. A re-translation like this (Latin cornus, "horn") is a naiverty. --Wetman 01:58, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's not a naivety, as there was a cognate word 'corn' in the Brythonic/Celtic language as well, also meaning horn, in the sense of a distinctive pointed hill. The word was not transliterated from Latin, it already existed in the local speech. There are a number of such place-names across Britain, and the 'corn' referred to here would have been the Wrekin itself.

[edit] Cornish Cornovii

"I would refer you to Oxford historian, Dr John Morris, who wrote an eminent three volume work called 'The Age of Arthur' about the Cornish Cornovii.

Dr John Morris had no primary evidence for postulating that the Cornovii from North Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire migrated to Cornwall. The only connection between the two seems to be a name similarity. There was also a Cornovii tribe in Northern Scotland (Caithness), but there is no evidence that they were in any way connected with the Shropshire Cornovii either.
According to Philip Payton, in "Cornwall: A History" (2004), the Cornovii could have been a sect or offshoot of the Dumnonii but did not migrate from the Midlands like Morris stated but were indigenous. Payton, a foremost historian of Cornwall and head of the Institute of Cornish Studies, covers this in some detail in Chapter 4 'From Dumnonia to Cornubia' pages 50-51. The names of 'tribes' Dumnonii, Damnonii, Cornovii, Cornavii occur at several locations all over Britain and may simply reflect some language similarity, etc in the eyes of the Romans.
It seems that whenever people see similar names, they assume that the tribes must be the same or closely related. For instance there was a Damnonii tribe in Scotland (the Clyde Valley), whose name looks very similar to the 'Dumnonii' tribe of South West Britain, so many have assumed that they must be the same people. Again, there is no evidence of any contact between the two. 217.134.76.221 22:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)