Ουενικονες
Attested: Ptolemy 2,3,14 Ουενικονες (or Ουενικωμες), a tribe with one πολις at Ὀρρεα.
Where: Probably in modern Fife, where the river Tay is joined by the river Earn.
Name Origin: ‘River basins confluence people’. Ptolemy's spelling Wenikones suggests a Latin original, but a succession of Celtic scholars have tried to argue that the best parallels for this name's elements may be found in medieval Irish and Welsh. In particular, they like to explain C-vowel-N in ancient names as meaning ‘dog’. Even though personal names based on wolf or hound were common in Germanic societies and Irish folklore makes much of the hound Cú Chulainn, most supposed canine references in early place names do not stand up to close examination. See, for example, about Viroconium, Ariconium, Cunetio, or the Conii people around the Sacred Promontory (Cape St Vincent in Portugal). The key notion seems to be convergence towards a point, as in a cone, or in *coneo the likely precursor of Latin coeo ‘to come together’. The Roman name Condate, attested at least 7x and probably the origin of about 58 later names in France, is generally agreed to have meant ‘confluence’ (for which medieval Celtic languages used a different word). For the Weni- part, Celtic scholars' many suggestions seem to trend towards translating the whole name as ‘hunting hounds’, e.g. Breeze (2006, dead link). Their best parallels may be Latin venor ‘to hunt’ plus fianna, the Irish version of the early pan-european phenomenon of roving packs of male hooligans. However, the deep etymologies of those parallels are not clear, and it seems much better to follow Loicq (2003) in seeing Wenikones as one of the many tribal names related to Veneti, which can now be understood as referring to the river basins in which they lived.
Notes: The Roman army had extensive dealings with people living around the river Tay, judging by the thicket of names recorded in that area, provisionally identified as Bertha (Leviodanum), Scone (Ταμεια of the Ουακομαγοι people), Perth (Levioxava), Carpow (Poreoclassis), East Lomond Hill (?Ὀρρεα), the battle of mons Graupius, and all the Roman forts higher up the Tay's catchment.
The present analysis rejects any link to Greek εικων ‘image’, related to Latin victima ‘beast for sacrifice’, even though Germanic forms such as wih ‘idol’ would make the *wenicones ‘image lovers’, a very suitable name for Picts with their symbol stones.
Sadly, also to be rejected is any link to Phoenicians and a red-purple colour, like blood. Phoenicians got rich from the indigo-related dyestuff Tyrian Purple extracted from shellfish in the eastern Mediterranean, thought they were far from the only or the earliest people to use shellfish dyes. See Jackson (1917) about the widespread use of shellfish dye in the ancient world, from long before Roman times, or Cooksey (2013) for a recent review. Part of this video shows a modern recreation of the whole ancient craft of producing whelk dyes. Archaeologists have found shells with characteristic breakages to obtain dye at Roman sites in Cornwall (p134) and in France. Molluscs were collected all around the coast of Ireland from the earliest times. It was tempting to imagine that the names Pexa and Picti meant that Taysiders became like the earlier Canaanites behind the myth of Joseph's coat of many colours in developing a whelk-dye trade!
There is a near parallel in the Ωυεννικνιοι of Donegal, though that name ends in the -ikno patronymic seen in Gaulish names.
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Last edited 1 January 2024 To main Menu