the mere existence of a foreign name for a particular object in any language is no proof that the object in question came into use for the first time along with the borrowing of the name. When the Franks conquered that portion of the Roman empire to which they gave their name, they must have had Teutonic words of their own for silver and gold, closely related to our own forms of the words. Yet whilst many Teutonic words lingered and became absorbed into what became in process of time the French language, their names for the metals disappeared and the Latin derivatives remained in possession.
Again, we get another instance of such borrowing in the case of our own penny, old English pendinga, penning, German Pfennig. The philologists seem agreed in recognizing this as a loan-word from the Latin pecunia. Yet money was familiar to the northern peoples long before they ever came into contact with even the advanced posts of the Empire. The use of rings and spirals of gold as a form of currency in Scandinavia is well known; our word shilling seems to mean no more than portions of such a coil of gold or silver wire cut off, to be used as small change. But as the first coined money with which they became familiar was the currency of Rome, they seem to have taken the generic Roman name for money as their own expression for the Roman silver coins with which they became familiar, just as the Latin aurum under the form of aura (eyrir) became in old Norse the general term for coined money or treasure in money.
We may ask why did the Kelts especially choose the Roman form of the name for gold, if they were then for the first time getting a name for the substance then (according to Schrader) first known to them? Before they ever reached Latium they had been in contact with peoples in Northern Italy who undoubtedly were well acquainted with gold. The Etruscans were a wealthy people, who coined gold pieces before Rome had struck coins of any kind[1]. The Umbrians on the east side, the ancient Italic race who had in the days before the Etruscan Conquest held all Northern Italy up to the Alps, which was hence known to the earliest Greek geographers by
- ↑ W. Deecke, Etrusk. Forschungen, p. 5.
