Celtic Pathways – Country Gardens

Radio Omniglot

In this episode we uncover links between words for country and land in Celtic languages, and words for garden, wood and related things in other languages.

Bodnant Garden / Gardd Bodnant

The Proto-Celtic word *mrogis means border(land), march, mark, region, country, territory or province, and comes from Proto-Indo-European *mórǵs (frontier, border) [source]

Related words in the modern Celtic languages include:

• brugh = dwelling, mansion in Irish
• brugh [bruh] = broch (a type of Iron Age stone tower with hollow double-layered walls – see below), fortified tower, large house, mansion, fairy mound in Scottish Gaelic
• brogh = broch in Manx
• bro [broː] = region, country, land, neighbourhood, border, limit, boundary in Welsh
• bro = country, land in Cornish
• bro [broː] = counry(-side) in Breton

For more about words for border, land, country and related things in Celtic languages, see the Celtiadur post: Region and Country

Words from the same Proto-Celtic root, via Gaulish *brogis and Latin brogi-/broges, include brolo (vegetable garden, orchard, grove) in Italian, and breuil (wood, copse, coppice) in French, bröol (a lawn or vegetable garden surrounding house) in Cimbrian, and Brühl (enclosed land, (wet/swampy) meadow) in German (found mainly in place names).

Words from the same PIE root include margin, and march (a border region; formal, rhythmic way of walking) in English, and marge (margin, markup) in French, marca (brand, make, trademark) in Italian [source], Mark (a fortified border area, marches) in German, and mark (field) in Danish, as in Denmark [source].

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