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This resource guide has been designed for students in The Celts: People or Construct?, a Spring 2022 courses taught by Professor Catherine McKenna. To get started, use the navigation menu on the left. Please reach out to your librarian, Ramona Crawford, as questions arise. I'll be delighted to help!

Celtic Head - from Northern England?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




Image: Celtic Head [from Northern England?], Cleveland Museum of Art

Researching Celtic Words


Start by looking up each of your two words in the appropriate dictionary, below, to learn their meanings:

eDIL (Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language)
The electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (eDIL) is a digital dictionary of medieval Irish. It is based on the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials (1913-1976) which covers the period c.700-c.1700 but incorporates corrections and additions to thousands of entries. DIL generally provides etymologies only where a word is a borrowing from another language (such as Latin or Anglo-Saxon) or where it is derived from another, extant early Irish word (for example, diminutives). We followed this policy throughout, save that we permitted reference to Indo-European etymologies where DIL a) had proposed a borrowing for which an inherited etymology could be argued or b) had itself proposed an Indo-European etymology. While we have not set out to revise DIL as an etymological dictionary, it seemed perverse not to warn readers of errors or draw their attention to alternative proposals.

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (A Dictionary of the Welsh Language)
Translated as “Dictionary of the University of Wales,” this publication is sometimes called GPC. There is no etymological dictionary of Welsh yet, so this synchronic dictionary (which is also a historical dictionary of the language) is the best alternative. Its short etymological notes are usually to the point. GPC is the only standard historical dictionary of the Welsh language. It is broadly comparable in method and scope to the Oxford English Dictionary. It presents the vocabulary of the Welsh language from the earliest Old Welsh texts, through the abundant literature of the Medieval and Modern periods, to the huge expansion in vocabulary resulting from the wider use of Welsh in all aspects of life in the last half century. This vocabulary is defined in Welsh, and English equivalents are also given. Detailed attention is given to variant forms, collocations, and etymology. Harvard Library also has volumes of this dictionary in print.

 


Next, consult the dictionaries and glossaries below to find the Celtic root of each word (and its semantic range):

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (A Dictionary of the Welsh Language)
Translated as “Dictionary of the University of Wales,” this publication is sometimes called GPC. There is no etymological dictionary of Welsh yet, so this synchronic dictionary (which is also a historical dictionary of the language) is the best alternative. Its short etymological notes are usually to the point. GPC is the only standard historical dictionary of the Welsh language. It is broadly comparable in method and scope to the Oxford English Dictionary. It presents the vocabulary of the Welsh language from the earliest Old Welsh texts, through the abundant literature of the Medieval and Modern periods, to the huge expansion in vocabulary resulting from the wider use of Welsh in all aspects of life in the last half century. This vocabulary is defined in Welsh, and English equivalents are also given. Detailed attention is given to variant forms, collocations, and etymology. Harvard Library also has volumes of this dictionary in print.

Etymological Glossary of Old Welsh
Combined treatment of the oldest remains of the Welsh language, including morphological information and references. The materials must be regarded as a basis for further analysis rather than as established etymologies. To access Bd. 18, visit the HOLLIS record for Buchreihe der Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (in which it is contained), then scroll down to the "Get It" section and click on the arrow (>) to the right of the "Widener Library OLD Widener Celt 149.1.5" label (this will open up a list of volumes, revealing their availability for request).

eDIL (Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language)
The electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (eDIL) is a digital dictionary of medieval Irish. It is based on the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials (1913-1976) which covers the period c.700-c.1700 but incorporates corrections and additions to thousands of entries. DIL generally provides etymologies only where a word is a borrowing from another language (such as Latin or Anglo-Saxon) or where it is derived from another, extant early Irish word (for example, diminutives). We followed this policy throughout, save that we permitted reference to Indo-European etymologies where DIL a) had proposed a borrowing for which an inherited etymology could be argued or b) had itself proposed an Indo-European etymology. While we have not set out to revise DIL as an etymological dictionary, it seemed perverse not to warn readers of errors or draw their attention to alternative proposals.

Wiktionary: Proto-Celtic Terms With Unknown Etymologies
Proto-Celtic terms whose etymologies have not yet been established.


Use the following resource to identify any cognates (i.e., related words) in other Celtic languages (Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Breton, Cornish): 

Wiktionary: Proto-Celtic Language
Proto-Celtic is a reconstructed language. Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works, but have been reconstructed through the comparative method, which finds regular similarities between languages that cannot be explained by coincidence or word-borrowing, and extrapolates ancient forms from these similarities.


Find out whether your words come from an Indo-European root and identify the semantic range of the Indo-European root:

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Online)
An indispensable resource for anyone interested in the history of languages in the Indo-European family. More than 13,000 words are traced to their origins in Proto-Indo-European. In Calvert Watkins"s skilled hands, Proto-Indo-European language and society are rendered as alive and compelling as they must have been six thousand years ago. His introductory essay shows how words in an unrecorded ancient language can be reconstructed and offers a wealth of fascinating information about Proto-Indo-European culture. The dictionary contains nearly 1,350 reconstructed roots, plus two dozen new "Language and Culture" notes that explore interesting sidelights to the etymologies presented in many entries. See Also: HOLLIS record for this resource.

Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic
The only etymological dictionary that embraces all of Celtic, this dictionary focuses on the Proto-Celtic and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) etymology of Celtic words. A succinct list of the reflexes of each word in the main Celtic languages is provided, but there are no internal word histories. The reconstructions are explained only in a brief manner. Review: "The first etymological dictionary of Proto-Celtic to be published after a hundred years, synthesizing the work of several generations of Celtic scholars. It contains a reconstructed lexicon of Proto-Celtic with ca. 1500 entries. The principal lemmata are alphabetically arranged words reconstructed for Proto-Celtic. Each lemma contains the reflexes of the Proto-Celtic words in the individual Celtic languages, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots from which they developed, as well as the cognate forms from other Indo-European languages. The focus is on the development of forms from PIE to Proto-Celtic, but histories of individual words are explained in detail, and each lemma is accompanied by an extensive bibliography. The introduction contains an overview of the phonological developments from PIE to Proto-Celtic, and the volume includes an appendix treating the probable loanwords from unknown non-IE substrates in Proto-Celtic." See Also: HOLLIS record for this resource.

Wiktionary: Proto-Indo-European Roots
English-language Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary. It aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English.


Use the same sources as in step 4 to find some words in other, non-Celtic languages that derive from the same Indo-European root (and you may find some additional Celtic words as well). Investigate their semantic ranges, as well:

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Online)
An indispensable resource for anyone interested in the history of languages in the Indo-European family. More than 13,000 words are traced to their origins in Proto-Indo-European. In Calvert Watkins"s skilled hands, Proto-Indo-European language and society are rendered as alive and compelling as they must have been six thousand years ago. His introductory essay shows how words in an unrecorded ancient language can be reconstructed and offers a wealth of fascinating information about Proto-Indo-European culture. The dictionary contains nearly 1,350 reconstructed roots, plus two dozen new "Language and Culture" notes that explore interesting sidelights to the etymologies presented in many entries. See Also: HOLLIS record for this resource.

Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic
The only etymological dictionary that embraces all of Celtic, this dictionary focuses on the Proto-Celtic and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) etymology of Celtic words. A succinct list of the reflexes of each word in the main Celtic languages is provided, but there are no internal word histories. The reconstructions are explained only in a brief manner. Review: "The first etymological dictionary of Proto-Celtic to be published after a hundred years, synthesizing the work of several generations of Celtic scholars. It contains a reconstructed lexicon of Proto-Celtic with ca. 1500 entries. The principal lemmata are alphabetically arranged words reconstructed for Proto-Celtic. Each lemma contains the reflexes of the Proto-Celtic words in the individual Celtic languages, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots from which they developed, as well as the cognate forms from other Indo-European languages. The focus is on the development of forms from PIE to Proto-Celtic, but histories of individual words are explained in detail, and each lemma is accompanied by an extensive bibliography. The introduction contains an overview of the phonological developments from PIE to Proto-Celtic, and the volume includes an appendix treating the probable loanwords from unknown non-IE substrates in Proto-Celtic." See Also: HOLLIS record for this resource.

Etymological Glossary of Old Welsh
Combined treatment of the oldest remains of the Welsh language, including morphological information and references. The materials must be regarded as a basis for further analysis rather than as established etymologies. To access Bd. 18, visit the HOLLIS record for Buchreihe der Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (in which it is contained), then scroll down to the "Get It" section and click on the arrow (>) to the right of the "Widener Library OLD Widener Celt 149.1.5" label (this will open up a list of volumes, revealing their availability for request).

Wiktionary: Proto-Indo-European Roots
English-language Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary. It aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English.


Dictionaries and Encyclopedias


BrillOnline Dictionaries. Etymological Dictionaries
A lexicon for the most important languages and language branches of Indo-European. Dictionaries can be cross-searched, with an advance search for each individual dictionary enabling the user to perform more complex research queries. Each entry is accompanied by grammatical info, meaning(s), etymological commentary, reconstructions, cognates and often extensive bibliographical information.

A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar
Historical and comparative grammar of Celtic languages.

Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture
provides full, inclusive coverage of the major Indo-European language stocks and their origins. The Encyclopedia also includes numerous entries on archaeological cultures having some relationship to the origin and dispersal of Indo-European groups-as well as entries on some of the major issues in Indo- European cultural studies. There are two kinds of entries in the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture: a) those that are devoted to archaeology, culture, or the various Indo-European languages; and b) those that are devoted to the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European words. 
 

Handbooks and Guides


Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Volume 2.
This book presents the most comprehensive coverage of the field of Indo-European Linguistics in a century, focusing on the entire Indo-European family and treating each major branch and most minor languages. The collaborative work of 120 scholars from 22 countries, Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics combines the exhaustive coverage of an encyclopedia with the in-depth treatment of individual monographic studies. Volume 2 includes Celtic languages.

Schmidt, K. H. 1988. On the reconstruction of Proto-Celtic. In Proceedings of the First North American Congress of Celtic Studies, held at Ottawa from 26th to 30th March, 1986. Edited by G. W. Maclennan, 231–248. Ottawa, Canada: Chair of Celtic Studies, Univ. of Ottawa.
Contains sections on the principles of reconstruction and the position of Celtic within Indo-European.

Bibliographies


Celtic Languages. Sìm Innes (2013). Celtic Languages. Oxford Bibliographies Online in Linguistics.
Includes a guide to grammars, dictionaries, historical linguistics, and more.

Indo-European Etymology. Michiel de Vaan (2016). Oxford Bibliographies Online in Linguistics.
Covers resources on the Proto-Indo-European lexicon and recommended etymological tools for Celtic languages, among others.

Linguistic Bibliography Online
Provides bibliographical references to scholarly publications on all branches of linguistics and all the languages of the world, irrespective of language or place of publication, and contains all entries of the printed volumes of Bibliographie Linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography, with more recent references added monthly. Covers all disciplines of theoretical linguistics, both general and language specific, from all geographical areas, including less-known and extinct languages, with particular attention to the many endangered languages of the world.

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
Indexes and provides abstracts for journal articles from over 1200 journals annually in all areas of language and linguistics. LLBA also includes books, book chapters, bibliographies, monographs, conference proceedings, etc. International in scope, this index covers phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as well as descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical, and geographical linguistics.

MLA International Bibliography
Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Proved access to citations from worldwide publications, including periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies.

Researching Celtic Artifacts


When searching the following resources for images, these key terms may be helpful (individually or in combination) to get you started. This is not an exhaustive list:

  • Celtic
  • Iron Age
  • La Tène 
  • Halstatt
  • Bronze Age
  • Gaulish
  • Gaul
  • Proto history (European)

When combining terms, you may use AND to retrieve results including all of your terms (for example: Celtic AND Iron Age; Proto history AND European), or you may use OR to retrieve results including any of your terms (for example: Gaul OR Gaulish). HINT: Some databases allow you to truncate terms using an asterisk (*). If you used truncation to find Gaul OR Gaulish, you could phrase your search more simply, like so: Gaul*

Choose Advanced Search to specify the Fine Arts Digital Images & Slides collection, to conduct your search, or modify this pre-constructed search.


Additional online resources for digital images may be found in the Fine Arts Library's Guide to Research in History of Art and Architecture.


When searching the following databases, these key terms may be helpful (individually or in combination) to get you started. This is not an exhaustive list:

  • Celtic
  • Iron Age
  • La Tène 
  • Halstatt
  • Bronze Age
  • Gaulish
  • Gaul
  • Proto history (European)

When combining terms, you may use AND to retrieve results including all of your terms (for example: Celtic AND Iron Age; Proto history AND European), or you may use OR to retrieve results including any of your terms (for example: Gaul OR Gaulish). HINT: Some databases allow you to truncate terms using an asterisk (*). If you used truncation to find Gaul OR Gaulish, you could phrase your search more simply, like so: Gaul*

To access, first click the VIEW ONLINE link. Next, click on the words Advanced Search. Then, in the left-hand column, select Grove Art Online.

This database includes several authoritative articles on visual and material culture, including articles dedicated to materials, such as gold or bronze. Some may provide clues to help you analyze your Iron Age Celtic artifact:

In the Advanced Search, you can specify particular subject areas, such as:

Archaeology or Art & Art History

Researching Ethnic Identities

Variant Spellings

Especially when looking for primary sources, try variant spellings of an ethnonym, and consider terms used by members of the group to describe themselves (i.e., endonym or autonym terms), as well as terms used by outside groups to describe this people (i.e., exonym terms). Because so many of the resources available are in English, you often may need to search for the name of the group translated in English, as opposed to the authentic term in the original language.

For example, Kootenai (or Kutenai) has been spelled many different ways: “Kootenai,” “Kootanay,” “Kootenaes,” and in some 19th century works, as “Cattanhowes,” “Cootonais,” “Cootanies,” “Coutanies,” or “Kootenays.” 

Subject Headings

Especially when searching HOLLIS for books, try a search using subject headings, controlled vocabulary terms used to consolidate a large number of resources on one topic. To find out if there is a Library of Congress subject heading for your ethnonym, choose the Browse option in HOLLIS, or if you want to do a thorough check for broader, narrower, or related terms, have a peek at the Library of Congress Subject Headings PDF files, browsing by letter (these are long documents that take a while to load, so be patient, and use keyboard shortcuts like Cntrl-F or Cmd-F to search within the file).

In the Advanced Search of HOLLIS and many databases, you can mix subject headings with simple key terms by using AND between the different queries. To capture variant spellings and synonyms, combine similar terms on one line, with OR between each of them.

In addition to subject terms describing your group, some subject headings that may be helpful for researching ethnicities include: 

  • ethnic groups
  • ethnic identity
  • ethnohistory
  • ethnology
  • Indigenous Peoples
  • names
  • names, ethnological
  • cultural ethnography

Additionally, the following terms, which are not Library of Congress Subject Headings, may be of use in HOLLIS keyword searching or may work as topical terms in other databases beyond HOLLIS:

  • culture
  • cultural identity
  • ethnological names
  • heritage


Representation

As you gather relevant sources, select some based on scholarly merits (peer review for journals, academic presses for books), and select others, particularly primary sources, for authenticity. Place the voices of your sources in conversation, conscious of the situational contexts and power dynamics from which they emerged. In this process, summon your own voice as a connecting, guiding thread. Be honest about any barriers you encounter to representing one or more perspectives. Are you limited by language or by documentation practices that privileged some voices over others? How might you overcome some of those challenges?

Citing Your Sources

TRACES: A Framework for Thinking About Citation 


Properly documenting one’s sources is an intellectual practice that reveals the interlocutors in a scholarly conversation, facilitates dialogue within and across disciplines, and traces the evolution of ideas and knowledge over time. The following principles clarify how conscientious citation practices contribute to the integrity of a scholarly conversation and your voice within it.

Transparency

Providing citations supports transparency in your scholarship. Your audience will expect that you have faithfully represented the work of cited authors, and the presence of citations not only allows them to find those sources for themselves, but also consult them and consider whether or not you have incorporated them accurately. In this way, citations can reduce the perpetuation of misunderstandings and false or exaggerated claims.

Responsiveness 

At least as far back as 1906, with the first edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, academic publishers anticipated that citation guidelines would need to accommodate idiosyncrasies and innovations; in their words, “Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.” In other words, citation styles offer scholars some measure of flexibility. Likewise, citation guidelines must accommodate changes in technology and scholarly practice—thus, the many editions of manuals published over the years: We now have a 7th edition of the APA, an 8th edition of the MLA, and a 16th edition of Chicago. Today’s digital world has given us new communication forms and these are often sources for research. Consider, for example, the important role that social media played in the unfolding of the Arab Spring. Citation styles aim to structure and codify, but their value also lies in their adaptability to special cases and emerging knowledge forms.  

Access

Citing the sources you consulted allows your readers to discover and access materials of import to your argument that may be useful for their own research in a related area. Likewise, your ability to read and interpret a broad spectrum of citations across formats and time periods facilitates your own discovery of research materials. Understanding that citations are like breadcrumbs will set you on the right path to problem-solving should you encounter a citation in an older source that exhibits long-obsolete stylistic conventions.

Credit and credibility

Finding your voice as a student and scholar requires distinguishing your intellectual work from that of others who have informed your thinking. Learning how to ethically and skillfully cite sources facilitates this endeavor by demarcating the line between your arguments and related ideas, while simultaneously recognizing all contributors. Just as important, good citation habits afford you the rhetorical power to clearly and respectfully position yourself relative to cited authors. You may choose to refute their logic or use their arguments as evidence to support your thesis, but regardless of how you incorporate others’ work, documentation helps legitimize your arguments by demonstrating that you have already examined the existing research on a given subject and are working in relation to that body of knowledge.

Economy

Citations save space by concisely conveying essential information about cited items in an understandable format. This elegance allows them to appear in texts without distracting readers from the flow of an argument. Readers can choose to attend to relevant citation information as needed.

Standardization

Citation styles each have their own guidelines about how to structure citations, depending on what information is most important for the discipline that established the style. For example, the prominence of dates in APA style citations reveals the importance of currency to the field of psychology. Because different fields tend to endorse a particular citation style, citing something in the preferred style makes it easier for researchers in the corresponding discipline to understand what you have cited. Much like mailing addresses on packages help the post office know where to deliver items, citations act as wayfinding tools. Though mailing addresses from various countries may be structured in different ways, they all convey the same basic information. So too, different citation styles employ distinct structures and elements to convey information about where an item came from, but in a standardized fashion that can be parsed across disciplines.
 


Take the time to read your style manual. In addition to telling you how to format citations, these guides offer tips on how to balance concision with clarity, how to format a date for adjectival use, when to use the singular they, and much more.


If you'd like to be more efficient with citations, use Zotero! Follow the Harvard-specific installation steps on Zotero: Getting Started