Navimago regentium
Attested: Navimago regentium at position 44 in the Ravenna Cosmography
Where: It has become customary to emend this name to *Noviomagno *regnentium and to locate it at Chichester or else the grand villa at Fishbourne attributed to a client king ?Togodumnus, but a better guess may be Selsey.
Name Origin: Latin navis meant ‘ship’, but in place names it may have meant river, possibly in a boat-shaped valley. Alternatively, it might be related to nub and knob, meaning something sticking out, an idea weakly supported by the proximity of the Nab Tower and rocks. The -magus part was a common element in early place-names, discussed under Magis as applying particularly to flat ground. The regentium part is Latin for ‘of the rulers (plural)’.
Notes: Selsey is often suggested to be cymenes ora, where one of the first post-Roman Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was established. The whole Manhood peninsula behind Selsey has some of the “best arable land in the country”. This analysis rejects the promontory fort jutting into the river Itchen at Bitterne, which also used to be assigned (probably wrongly) to Clausentum. See about Ptolemy's Ρηγνοι people for a discussion of the difficulties raised by Reg-, in an area where the Cosmography also lists Regno and Raxtomessasenua.
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