The Britons (sometimes Brythons or British) were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages.[1] They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic. They lived throughout Britain south of about the Firth of Forth; after the 5th century Britons also migrated to continental Europe, where they established the settlements of Brittany in France and the obscure Britonia in what is now Galicia, Spain.[1] Their relationship to the Picts north of the Forth has been the subject of much discussion, though most scholars accept that the Pictish language during this time was a Brythonic language related to, but perhaps distinct from, British.[2]
The earliest evidence for the Britons and their language in historical sources dates to the Iron Age.[1] After the Roman conquest of 43 AD, a Romano-British culture began to emerge. With the advent of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in the 5th century, however, the culture and language of the Britons began to fragment. By the 11th century their descendants had split into distinct groups, and are generally discussed separately as the Welsh, Cornish, Bretons, and the people of the Hen Ogledd ("Old North"). The British language developed into the distinct branches of Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Cumbric.[1]
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was originally compiled on the orders of King Alfred the Great in approximately A.D. 890, and subsequently maintained and added to by generations of anonymous scribes until the middle of the 12th Century, starts with this sentence: “The island Britain is 800 miles long, and 200 miles broad, and there are in the island five nations; English, Welsh (or British), Scottish, Pictish, and Latin. The first inhabitants were the Britons, who came from Armenia, and first peopled Britain southward”.("Armenia" is probably a mistaken transcription of Armorica, an area in Northwestern Gaul.) [3] The earliest known reference to the inhabitants of Britain seems to come from records of the voyage of Pytheas, a Greek geographer who made a voyage of exploration around the British Isles between 330 and 320 BC. Although none of his own writings remain, writers during the time of the Roman Empire made much reference to them. Pytheas called the islands collectively as αι Βρεττανιαι (ai Brettaniai), which has been translated as the Brittanic Isles, and the peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Πρεττανοί (Prettanoi), Priteni, Pritani or Pretani, the painted people because they were heavily tattooed. The group included Ireland which was referred to as Ierne (Insula sacra, the sacred island, as the Greeks interpreted it) "inhabited by the race of Hiberni" (gens hiernorum), and Britain as insula Albionum, "island of the Albions".[4][5] The term Pritani may have reached Pytheas from the Gauls, who possibly used it as their term for the inhabitants of the islands.[5][6]
The Latin name in the early Roman Empire period was Britanni or Brittanni, following the Roman conquest in AD 43.[7]
Welsh Brython was introduced into English usage by John Rhys in 1884 as a term unambiguously referring to the P-Celtic speakers of Great Britain, as complementing Goidel; hence the adjective Brythonic referring to the group of languages.[8] Brittonic is a more recent coinage (first attested 1923 according to the Oxford English Dictionary) intended to refer to the ancient Britons specifically.
(In non-historical usage Briton and British describe a citizen of the United Kingdom – the British people; it is a collective term for the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish, as well as some people from Northern Ireland.)
The Britons were speakers of the Brythonic (or Brittonic) languages. Brythonic languages are believed to have been spoken throughout the island of Britain.[1][9] According to early mediaeval historical tradition, such as The Dream of Macsen Wledig, the post-Roman Celtic-speakers of Armorica were colonists from Britain, resulting in the Breton language, a language related to Welsh and identical to Cornish in the early period and still used today. Thus the area today is called Brittany (Br. Breizh, Fr. Bretagne, derived from Britannia).
The Brythonic languages developed from Proto-Celtic, after it was introduced to the British Isles from the continent. The first form of the Brythonic languages is believed to be British. Some linguists have invented the terms Western and Southwestern Brythonic to classify subsequent developments of the British language. The Western and Southwestern developed into Cumbric, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton in Gaul. While Welsh, Cornish and Breton survive today, Cumbric became extinct in the 12th century.
Throughout their existence, the territory inhabited by the Britons was composed of numerous ever-changing areas controlled by tribes. The extent of their territory before and during the Roman period is unclear, but is generally believed to include the whole of the island of Great Britain, as far north as the Clyde-Forth isthmus. The territory north of this was largely inhabited by the Picts, although a portion of it was eventually absorbed into the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata. The Isle of Man was originally inhabited by Britons also, but eventually it became Gaelic territory. Meanwhile, Ireland is generally believed to have been entirely Gaelic throughout this period.
In 43 the Roman Empire invaded Britain. The British tribes initially opposed the Roman legions, but by 84 the Romans had decisively conquered southern Britain and had pushed into what is now southern Scotland. In 122 they fortified the northern border with Hadrian's Wall, which spanned what is now Northern England. In 142 Roman forces pushed north again and began construction of the Antonine Wall, which ran between the Forth-Clyde isthmus, but they retreated back to Hadrian's Wall after only twenty years. Although the native Britons mostly kept their land, they were subject to the Roman governors. The Roman Empire retained control of "Britannia" until its departure about AD 430.
Around the time of the Roman departure, the Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons began a migration to the Eastern coast of Britain, where they established their own kingdoms.[10] Eventually, the Brythonic language in these areas was replaced by that of the Anglo-Saxons . At the same time, some Britons established themselves in what is now called Brittany. There they set up their own small kingdoms and the Breton language developed there from Insular Celtic rather than Gaulish. They also retained control of Cornwall and Northwest England, where Kingdoms such as Dumnonia and Rheged survived. By the end of the 1st millennium, the Anglo-Saxons and Gaels had conquered most of the British territory in Britain, and the language and culture of the native Britons had largely been extinguished,[11] remaining only in Wales, Cornwall, parts of Cumbria and Eastern Galloway.
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