Celtic dictionary

The Celts did not write down their knowledge, but their language has not fallen entirely silent. Of Gaulish, which the Helvetii also spoke, there remain inscriptions on stone, lead and bronze, names of gods, people and places, and words recorded by Greeks and Romans. In the British Isles and in Brittany, Celtic languages are alive to this day: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton, with a rich literature since the early Middle Ages.

Here you will find a selection: sacred places and the Otherworld, goddesses and gods, druids and bards, the wheel of the year and the calendar, nature, trees and animals, the twenty letters of the tree script, Celtic names in Switzerland, words that have travelled into our own languages, and a few greetings. You can search in Celtic or in your own language, even without special characters: «sid» finds síd. Click a word to see its meaning in the other languages, its source and how well it is attested.

The page Celtic Traditions tells more about the wheel of the year, ogham and the druids.

How certain is a word?

Attested means the word appears in an inscription, an ancient report or a medieval manuscript, or, for the living languages, in the dictionary. For many Gaulish words we still only know the meaning by comparison with Irish and Welsh. Anything uncertain is noted with the word.

Reconstructed means the word is not written anywhere. Linguists have recovered it from daughter languages and loanwords. Such forms carry an asterisk, for example *derwo-, «oak».

Modern coinage means the word is new or only gained its present meaning in modern times, often through Iolo Morganwg (around 1800), Robert Graves (1948) or the neo-druid movement. These words have their own value, they are simply not old. Books and websites often mix the two, which is why it is marked here.

Spelling and pronunciation

Gaulish was written in Greek and Latin letters. Here it appears in Latin transcription, mostly in the base form given by Xavier Delamarre. A u before a vowel stands for w: uindos sounds like «windos». For names you will also find the Latin form, such as Vindonissa.

Old Irish follows the spelling of the eDIL; the modern Irish form appears among the spelling variants (Samain – Samhain). The accent marks a long vowel. In Irish and Gaelic, bh and mh sound like w or v, th like h, dh and gh like a soft guttural or fall silent; s before e and i is sh: sí sounds like «shee».

In Welsh, w is often a vowel u (awen like «a-wen»), dd sounds like the th in «this», ll is a breathy l, f is pronounced v and ff f.