Talk:Venta Silurum

Venta = Market, Market Town or Capital?
Possible references...

Venta occurs three times applied to tribal capitals - Winchester, Caerwent and Caistor in Norfolk (Venta Belgarum, Venta Silurum, Venta Icenorum) - where Venta indicates an area of local administration.

Venta Silurum - The Market Town of the Silures

The Roman name for Caerwent first appears in the Antonine Itinerary of the late-2nd century. Iter XIV of this document, "an alternate route from Isca [Silurum] to Calleva [Atrebatum]", lists a station named Venta Silurum, 9 miles from Isca (Caerleon, Gwent) and 14 miles from Abona (Sea Mills, Avon), this latter part of the itinerary likely represents a journey by ferry across the Bristol Channel to the seaport serving the thriving Romano-British spa-town at Aquae Sulis (Bath, Avon).

The town is also mentioned in the Ravenna Cosmology of the seventh century, this time as Ventaslurum (R&C#48), between the entries for Pontes (Staines, Surrey) and the unknown road-station Iupania. The name of the Roman town, Venta Silurum, means 'the market town of the Silures', and is partially carried through in the present name of the modern town Caer-went, which is Welsh for 'fortified place with a market'.

The name Venta Belgarum is an amalgam of the Celtic word venta meaning 'market or market town', and the determinative Belgarum meaning 'of the Belgae', denoting that Winchester was the chief town of this southern British tribe.

The local capital became Venta Icenorum, a large, bustling market town that is mentioned in Roman sources. The Latin name of Venta Icenorum is translated as market place of the Iceni.

The Times would usually be the most satisfactory reference but, in this case, I think they've just picked up the generally accepted translation.--Cavrdg (talk) 05:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Useful sources which seem to authenticate early date and generality of use. But an explanation of the hybrid nature of the name might still also be useful? As would etymology for "the Celtic word venta meaning 'market or market town'", if any could be found. (Is this what the previous version was aiming at with its French/Spanish?). Interesting that the Celtic name part was used in Norfolk. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:08, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I've found this, and quote it here in full: Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)"Venta is a well-known problem. It is found again as a second element in Glannoventa, and as an independent word in the city-names Venta Belgarum,  Venta Icenorum and  Venta Silurum. Neither Latinists nor Celticists wish to claim it. Those who have favoured a Latin origin have not considered their Du Cange carefully enough. They seck a Latin  venta ' market' and find it ('Locus, ubi merces vcnum exponuntur') copiously documented as a medieval Latin legal word; they also find in Du Cange venda,  venta in the sense 'toll on goods for sale'. But these are mere medieval relatinisations of vernacular French  vente 'sale', etc.  Vente itself proceeds from a late Latin  vendita abstracted from vendere, this vendita replacing classical venditio. It is just possible in theory for  vendita > venta by the time of Ptolemy, who records  Venta Belgarum and  Venta Icenorum, in spoken Latin; elision of both pre-tonic and post-tonic vowel is recorded in the graffiti of Pompeii, e.g.  oriclas for auriculas, and was repeatedly censured by grammarians. This elision is abundantly registered in Latin texts of Britain; among the few datable examples are some from the second century, such as  Hercli for  Herculi (RIB  2177),  piissma (RIB 369), perhaps  sanctissmo (RIB 600). Yet it is almost inconceivable, for several reasons, that the British  Venta names should really show a derivative of this Latin  vendita 'market': (I) because these names are recorded for us in official, that is classical Latin forms; (2) because Ptolemy nowhere offers us a vulgar rather than a classical form; (3) because  vendita itself is not registered as a Latin word until long after the period in question, and it is virtually impossible to suppose that a usage arose within the Latin of this province alone. Most telling of all is the fact that no Continental places have  Venta as an independent element. Holder I. 174 mentions Ventadour <  *Ventadornum (Corrèze, France), but there are no ancient forms recorded for this and it may well be of different origin. Spanish venta, both 'sale' and 'inn, hostelry' has been temptingly mentioned in this connection but is not relevant; it is either a native word proceeding from  vendita, or a later borrowing from French vente; the numerous place-names in Iberia having venta, the best-known of which is Venta de Baños (Palencia, Spain), are medieval names based on the sense 'inn', in no way Roman. Nor does an origin in  venio and a sense of 'coming together, assembly' seem possible; from the supine  ventum were formed adventus, conventus, but both in  -us and both with prefix. If on all these grounds the word cannot be Latin, it can hardly be other than Celtic. Certainly it is easier for a word to belong exclusively to Insular Celtic than for it to be uniquely British Latin. Williams discussed the problem under Venta Belgarum and less fully under Glannoventa. He noted that venta produced Welsh gwent (which does not of course prove that venta was originally Celtic, since many words were borrowed into British and preserved as this evolved into Welsh), and continued: 'I suggest that gwent in Welsh meant 'field'. Cadwent occurs for 'battle', and since cad- itself means 'battle' or 'host', -went can mean 'field'. Llinwent in mid-Wales is llin- 'flax', with an element -went which should mean 'field'. Arddunwent, in which Arddun is a woman's name, is naturally explained as ' Arddun's field'.' He concluded that venta was a Celtic word for' field', perhaps with a secondary meaning 'market-place', comparing magus with similar sense-development. The meaning of Bannaventa is, then, 'prominent field', 'market on the spur', or the like, acceptably enough; a similar sense for this element suits Glannoventa and the civitas-names. Jackson in Britannia, I (1970), 80, objects very properly to the proposed Latin origin of venta and observes that 'no convincing Celtic etymology has been proposed'; that is, no Indo-European roots are visible, no cognates known in Gaulish, etc., and no derivatives of supposed British *uenta appear in Cornish or Breton. He also objects to Williams's reasoning out the sense ' field' and thinks his evidence 'slight', concluding 'One may well guess that it means something like 'town', but this can be nothing but a speculation.' The problem, then, remains. It is diminished, but not solved, if we note that in both Bannaventa and Glannoventa the word is associated with impeccably Celtic elements, and that in the three  civitas-names the venta element is distinctive, unusual in our toponymy — that it may have been brought in exceptionally to designate artificial tribal centres newly founded under Roman pacification of the Belgae, Iceni and Silures. We have seen that there are no names on the Continent having Venta as an independent element; but in form there is very close resemblance to such centres as Forum Gallorum (now Gurrea, Huesca, Spain), Forum Gigurnium (now La Rua S. Esteban, Orense, Spain), and Forum Segusiavorum > Feurs (near Lyon, Rhône, France), the sense offorum in all being 'market (of the tribe)'. We lean, then, towards Williams's solution, while not denying that the problem remains. A possible solution lies in Rostaing's identification of a pre-Indo-European *vin-' hill', which with the common infix -t- figures in such compounds as Ventabren (a mountain in Alpes-Maritimes, France) and Ventabrun (a mountain in Basses-Alpes, France), and in the names of a village and three other hills outside Provence: ETP 295-96. Possibly French Ventadour, noted earlier, belongs with these. Unfortunately there are only medieval, not ancient, records for Rostaing's examples. A sense-development 'hill > flat hill > flat place > field' would be by no means impossible; for the sense 'field > market' compare then magus. Rostaing ETP 86-87 has a further element from pre-Indo-European, *ban- *ben-, with the same meaning (see BANNA), citing among examples Beneventum of S. Italy and British 'Bennaventa' (which is more properly Bannaventa). If we are right in following Rostaing (and recalling Gaulish *benno- indicated by Dottin) we are in sight of a solution : Bannaventa is equivalent to Beneventum; both could mean 'spur-hill' or 'promontory-hill', but equally both have further sense-developments (especially *uenta within Celtic) which carry the names some distance from that primitive meaning. There are also hints in Rostaing's work which explain the reluctance of Celticists to accept venta as Celtic. The word - like *banna, probably - was indeed not Celtic originally, but was adopted by Celts in contact with pre-Celtic peoples presumably on the Mediterranean fringes, leading thereafter a somewhat tenuous existence (being little known in Gaulish) until emerging as an element with a very specific sense in Romano-British toponymy. It might also have some relation to Vendum, a place of the Japodes people (described by Strabo as a mixture of Celts and Illyrians) which J. G. von Hahn in Albanesische Studien (Jena, 1854, p. 243) identifïed as having a root meaning ' Ort, Land, Platz', a word related in turn by E. Cabej to Venta in the British names (Studi Linguistici in onore di Vittore Pisani (Brescia, 1969) I, 175-76), that is, another originally non-Celtic element absorbed into Celtic speech; see further Pokorny, Zur Urgeschichte der Celten und Illyrier (Halle, 1959), 136. On the whole, one feels that to follow Rostaing's trail produces better results, mainly because his examples are numerous and because some of them are in Gaul, providing a geographical link - though hardly a close one - with Britain. In this context, a note by E. McClure (Archaeologia Cambrensis, 6th series, IX (1909), 239-40) has its importance. This note has been dismissed, rightly, because McClure insisted on a Latin origin of venta, on very weak arguments. But he did have the merit of assembling relevant names. To S. Italian Beneventum he adds a Mutatio Beneventum (Bordeaux Itinerary, 55810), between Brescia and Verona in N. Italy; three modern names from Spain - Benaventa south of Astorga (Zamora), Benavent north of Lérida (Lérida), Benavente near Oviedo (Oviedo) - and one from Portugal, Benavente near the mouth of the Tagus. There are several other such names in Iberia. McClure also adds all the recent Spanish Venta names, which, as noted above, are to be removed from the discussion. McClure's interprctation of the name was erroneous, naturally, since of the S. Italian Beneventum he observes that Pliny NH III, II took the name as an auspicious one, it formerly having been ' Maleventum' — but this was mere amateur etymologising. Even if further evidence should show that we are right in arguing the claims of one of the non-Celtic words taken into Celtic and known in British, and in the senses we have applied to it, it remains true that unlike Bannaventa, Glannoventa, which seem natural cnough, the three civitas-names with Venta are a puzzling feature considered as an isolated and un-typical naming act."


 * Goodness me, well that's hardly going to fit in any footnote. But the previous version with the "obviously impossible" etymology seems now more explicable, if not accurate, since the non-Celtic "venta" adopted by the British Celts seems to have had its origins in Gaul. The primary source seems to be Rivet, A and Smith, C., (1979) The Place-Names of Roman Britain, Batsford Ltd, London, the quality of which seems to me very unlikely to be bettered. I'd suggest putting something in the article closer to the previous explanation but with a footnote about the non-Latin/ non-true Celtic Venta, and referring to the primary source. I'm still not entitely certain, though, whether any exact meaning can yet be attributed to Venta. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:41, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Just for fun, I tried the online translator again and it gave venta = winnowing. ;-) Whilst the Romans might have been amused by this post-conquest cheek, somehow I can't see the locals accepting that as a name, nor keeping it after being left to their own devices. The same site gives market = venalicium; sale = venitio; sell = exigo; wind = ventus, flamen, but I was roundly slapped for using this thing, just the other day, for breaking down the hybrid word noviomagus into 'newness magical'. Anyway, I would like to see these linguists address the fact that the Romans didn't have a letter-equivalent of the 'oo' sound, for which the Welsh annotation is/was/became 'w' and that the Welsh use 'f' for the 'vuh' sound, making the mutation process that bit harder to explain away if Venta had been a latin word; Venta > ?Gfent? > Gwent - where does that G come from, all of a sudden? More sensible is (C) Uenta -R> Venta (as written) -W> Caer Uent, C'uent, Guent (as spoken), Gwent (as written). It would be interesting in its own right to know when they switched from ogham (or whatever) to latin characters. EatYerGreens (talk) 03:43, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The "gw" sound is a normal mutation in Welsh as it then existed (at least in south Wales), but what is not clear is whether Venta and Gwent derived from the same original word or whether (as is usually stated) the word Gwent derived from Venta. Just to broaden this a little, what theories have people encountered for the origin of the word Silures ? - it does not appear to have continued in use after the Romans, unlike, say, Deceangli (>Tegeingl >Englefield), Demetae (>Dyfed), or Dumnonii (>Dyfnant >Devon).  Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Where does Wentwood fit into this? And do we know what Bradney says on the subject? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:28, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wentwood is a straightforward medieval English translation of the Welsh name Coed Gwent. Gwent was known in English as Wentland (or Wentset), Gwent Is Coed as Netherwent, and Gwent Uwch Coed as Overwent.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * So a simple medieval reversal of the Welsh `g+' mutation? This seems to discount the possibility that 'went' was still in use as a separate (non-Welsh Celtic?) descriptor. St. Brides Netherwent is still there, but had I never heard of anywhere Overwent - what's in the middle between these two places? Caerwent I'm guessing. We are still left with indeterminate meaning/origin for qwent/went/venta. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

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