Ratae
Attested: Ptolemy 2,3,20 Ρατε (or Ραγε); Antonine Itinerary iter 6 Ratas and iter 8 Ratis
milestone ... A RATIS M II ‘2 miles from Ratae’; RATIS on an AD 110 bronze diploma (CIL XVI 160) of a British soldier in Dacia.
Where: Leicester, a Roman city but possibly never a fort, on the Fosse Way and the river Soar, around SK582044. Securely located by that milestone and the Itinerary mileages.
Name origin: Rivet & Smith suggested that the Latin nominative form was Ratae (feminine plural), latinized from a “British *rātis” original and went on (probably wrongly) to relate that to words in medieval Celtic languages meaning ‘fortification’. A much better way to explain Ratis at Leicester is with Latin ratis ‘log-raft, float, boat’ or ‘barge’. Latin ratis has been linked (weakly) with Latin retae ‘trees in the bed of a stream’, or with Old English rod, or with rowing (see de Vaan, 2008, 514). Possible cognates include modern French radeau ‘raft’, which can also refer to an island of slightly high ground in a marsh (Benoit, 1940), and rade ‘harbour’.
Notes: The Raw Dykes, a double-banked ditch located 2km south of Leicester's Roman public baths, may be a remnant of a navigable Roman canal (Mitchell and Poulter (2023). It could have served to carry building stone into the city. Conceivably there was a basin where that canal met the river Soar and nowadays there is part of the Grand Union Canal plus the name Knighton which commonly occurs where a Roman road met a waterway. Leicester was Legorensis civitas in a charter of AD 803, which suggests that the river's ancient name resembled Liger, the Roman name of the river Loire in France. Since the Loire is “a major communication route for the transportation of goods ... Bargees need to use flat-bottomed boats”, it makes best sense to note that Graeco-Latin lego ‘to bring together’ would fit a place for collecting agricultural produce (or people). Words beginning with L and associated with liquids, such as the Welsh word for ‘damp’ mentioned by Breeze (2016), may be a later development. Ekwall (1928:374-5) needlessly puzzled over the river name Soar, but Krahe (1963:290-1) put it among 27 river names across Europe derived from PIE *ser- ‘to flow’.
Old Irish ráth or ráith can mean ‘surety, guarantee’ or ‘earthen rampart surrounding a chief's residence, fort’. Fitzpatrick (2009) explained how the essence of a ráth (as distinct from a lis, dun, cashel, cathair, crannog, etc) was earthiness (rather than defensive strength) so that ringfort is a less-than-ideal translation. In any case, something like 45 thousand instances are known throughout Ireland, and ráth has contributed to hundreds of Rath- place names in Ireland, plus analogues in Scotland and other Celtic areas. No evidence has been presented that Ratae, or any other Roman-era places with Rat- names, possessed an ancient ráth-type structure, which is surprising since earthen mounds often survive for millennia. Also, there is no evidence that any Irish Rath- place received its name before Christian times, but that is no reason to doubt that ráth structures sprang from prehistoric traditions. Edmund Spenser (1596, vol 6, p 628) wrote: “There is great use among the Irish to make great assemblies together upon a Rath or hill, there to parley”. This puts ráth firmly among the structures discussed at great length in two books by Hadrian Allcroft (1927,1930), who showed that, from deep in prehistory, circular structures, which could be either or both of rings (such as henges) and cones (such as moot mounds), were associated with burials, veneration of ancestors, and tribal assemblies. He focussed primarily on one set of words (cruc, circus, curia, church, kirk, etc) which show a sense development from places of deliberation to places of worship. These Celtic words would make sense related to German Rath, the early spelling for Rat ‘council’, seen in modern words such as Rathaus, and cognate with Old English rǽd ‘counsel, advice’, seen in names such as Ethelred and Alfred, and probably from *redh-, derived from PIE *əre- ‘to reason, to count’. Maybe an ancient moot-gathering word developed in sense towards earthen cattle corrals in Ireland, famous for its cows and cattle-raiding, whereas all the trees in Germany led towards town halls.
Evidently two ancient roots of form R-vowel-T compete to explain Roman Leicester, with Celticists focussing on the wrong one, having found no convincing etymology for Irish ráth, not even by Delamarre (2003).
Rat--containing names elsewhere often seem to occur at sites where easy access to small-boat-navigable water was a top consideration, rather than military control of an area. Places whose ancient river-port status is best attested are at the top of this list, with those of late or debatable attestation towards the bottom.
Ratiaria (a Roman naval base on the Danube, near Vidim, Bulgaria)
Argentoratum (Strasbourg Roman fort, on river island near the Rhine)
Ratiatum (Rez , on the Loire, see here p113 about its status as a ratis-port and vicus)
Ρατοσταθυβιου (at or near Magor Pill on the Severn)
DEA RATIS is on an inscription found at Chesters on Hadrian's Wall, with a port on the river North Tyne at NY916702 (Selkirk 1995:247,258)
Ratis (Ile de R , off La Rochelle, in the Ravenna Cosmography)
Corterate (Coutras, at a river confluence and ford, upstream of Bordeaux)
Carbantorate (Carpentras, on river Auzon, tributary of the Rhone)
Ratecorion (most likely the Trent Vale fort at Stoke-on-Trent)
Argentrato (800s, Argentr on river Jouanne, leading to the Loire)
Ratisbona (869 Radasbona, now Regensburg on the Danube)
Barderate (Pliny; somewhere in the Po Valley, Liguria; possibly on the river Tarano)
Baiorate (on a Merovingian coin, struck ?580 at B r , possibly a variant of Bairacus)
RATIN BRIVATIOM is on an inscription found at Naintr , by the river Vienne. Briva probably meant ‘bank’ (related to brim etc) not ‘bridge’.
Ρατομαγος (Ptolemy etc, Rouen, port on the Seine, but ROTO on Merovingian coins, etc)
Ra Mastrabalae (Avienus 300s; later Beata Maria de Ratis, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Rhone delta).
Suarattaratae = Saurashtra in India. Pliny 6,75 also mentions Oratae
You may copy this text freely, provided you acknowledge its source as www.romaneranames.uk, recognise that it is liable to human error, and try to offer suggestions for improvement.
Last edited 28 November 2025 To main Menu.