proper names, like Segomo. An inscription recording the building of a temple for Mars Camulus has been met with in the neighbourhood of Düsseldorf,[1] and others are known elsewhere[2] on the Continent, while one is preserved in a museum at Glasgow.[3] It is right to say that most of the Roman inscriptions found in this island may be the outcome of the piety of continental Celts, so that the gods in whose honour they were set up were not necessarily worshipped by the natives of Britain; but even here we have evidence of the popularity of Camulos in the name of the capital of the Trinovantes, which was Camulodunon, or the stronghold of Camulos.[4] The meaning of the god's name is regarded as unknown, but a very safe conjecture may be made on that point; for though there is a scarcity of Celtic words to explain it, there can be little doubt that it is to be equated with the Old Saxon himil and the German word himmel, heaven or sky, which etymologists refer to a stem, hem, Aryan kam, inferred to mean 'curving, vaulting or covering over.' Among other words from this origin have been reckoned the Greek καμάρα,[5]
- ↑ Brambach, 164.
- ↑ At Rome: see the Berlin Corpus, vi. No. 46; and a Camulo Viromanduo is reported from Auvergne in the Rev. des Soc. sav. (1875), i. 251.
- ↑ Hübner, 1103.
- ↑ What is the meaning of the word in the post-Roman personal names Camelorigi from Pembrokeshire, and Camuloris, Camulorigho, from Anglesey? For some notes on them, see my Lectures, pp. 364, 400. The name Camulogenus, which Caesar (Bell. Gall. vii. 57, 59, 62) gives the defender of Paris against the legions of Rome, would mean the descendant of Camulos, and similarly Camulognata.
- ↑ On the difficulties of this etymology, see Kluge's Etym. Wörterbuch des deutschen Sprache, s. v. Himmel.
