SEGANTII, NOT SETANTII?: DECIDING ON A TRIBAL NAME IN NORTHWEST ENGLAND

River Mersey, the Seteia of Roman Britain

The lot of difficulty has attended scholarly attempts to etymologize Seteia, the Roman period name for the River Mersey.  To date, we do not possess a satisfactory solution to the riddle of this British hydronym.  

What follows is a brief discussion of the current literature on the subject.  

"The suggestion that a deity-name *Sentanā- ‘traveller, wanderer’ might underlie the ethnic name Setantii and the river-name Seteia (PNRB pp. 456-7) requires an improbable grafting of an early Goidelic form *Sēt- onto Brittonic suffixes (Cúchulainn’s given name Sétanta raises similarproblems, see CPNS p. 25, DCM p. 102). An ancient river-name unconnected with the root*sent- seems more likely to underlie these (and any connection between the Setantii and Cúchulainn remains doubtful); but see Breeze (2006b). Seteia was probably the River Mersey,and Portus Setantiorum a site (Meols?) on the Mersey estuary (D. J. Breeze 2017, 5)."

https://spns.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Alan_James_Brittonic_Language_in_the_Old_North_BLITON_Volume_II_Dictionary_2019_Edition.pdf

* A.L.F Rivet & Colin Smith : The Place-names of Roman Britain, p 456-457 : 

Sources : See the nex entry. (voir noms de lieux : Setantorum Portus / Fleetwood, Lancashire)

DERIVATION. This ethnic name is mysterious; there seem to be no British roots visible, and very few analogues anywhere of names in Set-. It is tempting, in view of Ptolemy's variants which show Seg- (Seg-) both for the port-name and the river-name, to suspect some confusion with the Seg- of Segontium, a possibility that occurred to Rhys (1904) 315 with regard to the river, though eventually he seems.to wish to main tain Setantii as a proper form. The strongest argument for so doing is provided by Watson CPNS 25, who points out that the first name of the Irish hero Cuchulainn was Setanta (from an earlier *Setant(os) : 'the Setantii were an ancient British tribe near Liverpool. . . the inference is that Setanta means "a Setantian" and that Cuchulainn was of British origin'. But the relation between these two names has been questioned. There is a full exposition of the problem by Guyonvarc'h in Ogam, XIII, (1961), 587-98, with discussion of views of Mac Neill, Osborne, and others, including Brittonic-Goidelic transferences in both historical and phonetic aspects. The essence of the matter is that it is tempting to see in this name Irish sét ('path'; = British *sento-, for which see CLAUSENTUM), but *-ant- suffix (as in DECANTAE) is Brittonic only, for -nt- does not exist in Goidelic. The name might be based on a divine name *Setantios, not otherwise known, and he in turn might be related etymologically and by sense to the goddess Sentona, perhaps 'wayfarer' (see further TRISANTONA1). Clearly there is an additional problem in reconciling the a/e vowels in these forms (Trisantona, Gaulish Santones) if they are indeed connected. There, for the présent, the matter rests; but it is as well to reiterate that one cannot base too much speculation on forms recorded by Ptolemy alone, particularly when, in numbers, the MSS of his work record attractive variants.

IDENTIFICATION. Presumably a minor tribe, but since they appear only as part of a 'descriptive' name in the coastal list (next entry) and not in their own right in the full list of tribes, they probably formed part of the Brigantian confederacy. If the river name seteia is directly connected with them, they should have stretched along the Lancashire coast from the Mersey to Fleetwood.

Graham Isaac's *sego- [1] was not hard to come by, as we have the following variant spellings for Setantiorum Portus and Seteia:

Segantiorum

Gesantiorum

Segeia

Segeiais

Segeiatis

According to THE DICTIONARY OF CONTINENTAL CELTIC PLACE-NAMES (ed. by Alexander Falileyev), which quotes from G. R. Isaac, Place-Names in Ptolemy’s Geography. CD-ROM. Aberystwyth 2004.:

"Due to the very easy and frequent confusion of tau and gamma in Greek transmission, it is possible that some, or even all, of the apparent instances of set(i)o- are for sego- (as very frequently in names in ms. {Set-} in Hispania, where there are ample other sources to confirm the correctness of the reading {Seg-})."

The same source allows for a possible derivation from seit-:

"But there may also be a genuine base set-, or {se:t-} <*seit-, involved. But if so, I cannot suggest an analysis of it at this time.’"

The only thing I could find on seit- in relation to these Set- place-names is a brief discussion in http://www.asciatopo.altervista.org/narbonensis.html:

Extension: *seit-

Reconstructed from Lithuanian sietuva 'a deep place in the river, pool'

Suffixed full-grade form *seit-i-a in Setia (Latium)

Suffixed full-grade form *seit-i-o in Setius m. (Narbonensis)

Setia

Place: Sezze, province Latina, region Lazio, Italy

Name: Setia (Ptol., Plin., Liv., Dion.)

Etymology: A stem *set- is widely diffused in toponymy. The name has exact counterparts in Setia (Baetica), Setia (Tarraconensis). With different suffixes we have Setovia (Germania), Seterrae (Tarraconensis), etc. An Illyrian Setovia has been explained by [Duridanov] from a *seit-oua, thus from an IE root *seit-. This is not included in Pokorny's dictionary (some Baltic cognate appellatives meaning 'a deep place in the river, pool' are under the root *sei-t- 'to let fall'), but probably is an extension of the huge family *sei-/si- somehow related to waters. This probably is the Pokorny's *sei- 'to be damp, to drip'. The feature *ei>e found in Setia is typically Eastern Italic (Volscan).

Setius m.

Place: Mont Saint Clair (Sète), department Hérault, region Languedoc-Roussillon, France

Name: Setius m. (Ptol., Avien.) Sigius m. (Strab.)

Etymology: A cognate of Setia (Latium), the name derives from the extension *seit- of the IE root *sei- 'to be damp, to drip'. The reason of such a name is that the hill dominates a marshy area (étang de Thau).

Alas, we cannot prove the existence of seit- in Celtic.  We do, however, have plenty of examples of sego- place and personal names.

But if Segeia is the right form of the river-name, in what sense was it applied to the Mersey?  Breeze, whose met- idea for set- (see above) is unacceptable (there is simply no justification for assuming that a word spelled with either a Greek tau or a Greek gamma would have as its original form one starting with mu), complains that the Mersey was a "sluggish river".  

Breeze is not entirely correct in his assertion.  The Mersey has the second largest tidal bore in all of Britain (see http://www.merseyestuary.org/the-tidal-bore.html).  Furthermore, "The Narrows further downstream of the Inner Estuary are characterised by changes in geology ond the Estuary becomes a straight narrow channel with depths of up to 30m even at low water, and fierce tides of up to six knots (http://www.environmentdata.org/archive/ealit:4093/OBJ/20002960.pdf)." "The River Mersey is an extremely dangerous river. The Mersey has the third fastest tidal run in Europe, with the speed of the water reaching 10 knots in places (https://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/localhistory/mersey_times/issue_07/about.shtml#:~:text=The%20River%20Mersey%20is%20an,rapid%20death%2C%20often%20within%20minutes)."  

Breeze also contradicts himself, saying right after mentioning the River Seint that sego- is unknown in hydronyms!  Seint itself is from British *Segonti, and it is believed the fort of Segontium was named for the river.  The root of *Segonti is sego-. 

Xavier Delamarre (in Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental, 2003) proposes to derive the Belisama (= the River Ribble) name from the Gaulish root belo- ('strong, powerful'), rendering Belesama as 'the Very Strong' (cf. Sanskrit baliṣṭhaḥ 'the strongest').  According to him, cognates stemming from *bʰelH- do not seem to connote 'shining', but rather 'white, grey, pale'.  If he is right, we could have two major rivers in the same tribal region that meant 'strong'.

In response to my discussion of seg- rather than set- for the river-name, noted Brittonic place-name expert Alan James remarked only that "I think both those ideas [Segeia for the Strong One and Belisama for the Very Strong] are quite, well, 'strong' possibilities."

In brief, we might easily refer to the Mersey as 'the Strong or Forceful One', a goddess to pair with Belisama of the Ribble.  She would have given her name to the tribe, who became the people of the Strong One.  

[1]

victory *sego(s)- (?), SEMANTIC CLASS: action, Celtiberian Sego-bris (?); seko ‘victory-fort (?)’, Gaulish Sego- (-maros, dūnon, -briga, etc.) ‘victory’, Early Irish seg (MIr.) ‘strength’, Scottish Gaelic seagh ‘sense, esteem’, Welsh hy ‘bold, brave, undaunted, intrepid, valiant, steadfast, confident, daring; audacious, presumptuous, impudent’,

[English–Proto-Celtic Word-list with attested comparanda, University of Wales]

*sego- 'force' [Noun]

GOlD: Mlr. seg [0 m] (DIL sed, seg) 'strength, heed, interest, an equal'

W: MW hy 'bold, brave' (GPC hy, hyf)

GAUL: Sego-maros [PN], perhaps Segestica [Toponym]

LEP: sexe()u (?) 'Lepontic coin'

CELTIB: Segouia (?) [Toponym], Sekobirikez [Abl. s, Toponym] (A8)

PIE: *segh_ 'hold (by force)' (IEW: 888f.)

COGN: Skt. sahate 'be able, support', Gr. ekhi5 'hold, have', Go. sigis

'victory'

ETYM: Mlr. and Early Molr. seg is sometimes spelled sed (Gen. sg. seda,

seadha). Celtib. asekati (Botorrita I) might reflect *ad-seg- (Eska 1989). W

hoel [m] 'nail, peg, stake' has been derived from the o-grade of the root (?

PCelt. *sogHi), but this is not wholly convincing for semantic reasons. MW

hoen [m and f] 'joy, 'gladness, vigour' could be from *sogno-, but again the

difference in meaning is conspicuous. Finally, Olr. sar [0 m] 'outrage', sar-

'exceeding, excellent' may be related, if we start from PIE *saxsro- < PIE

*sogh-sro- and accept the lengthening of vowels before *xsL (cf. *taxslo-

'axe' < *tok-slo-).

REF: LEIA S-68, GPC II: 1945, 1884f., LIV 467, EIEC 123, Delamarre

269f., Jordan Colera 1998: 31, Sims-Williams 2006: 107f., MLH V.l: 329f.

[Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic By Ranko Matasovic]