Talk:Riothamus

"Breton records"

>Riothamus appears in Breton records[citation needed] as one of the Princes of Domnonée, the Breton coastal region named for Dumnonia, being mentioned in the early biographies of Breton saints. He is identified as a son of Deroch I.[2]

This is not true. IIRC, "Reith" appears as a son of Deroch II, too late to be Riothamus: it has been hypothesised that he was in fact a son of Deroch I, so as to explain the dates, but there is no proof that Reith was Riothamus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.3.45.16 (talk) 22:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Grammar and relevance of distinction between Bretons and Britons

The construct "Briton colony" isn't grammatical, it should be 'British colony' or 'colony of Britons.' I understand how the first could be misconstrued as being about the later British Empire, so it probably should not be used, but the second is preferable to the present phrase, perhaps the link attached to the word "Briton" might have to be lost.

The distiction between Breton and Briton (inhabitants of Less Britain (Armorica) and Great Britain (the island)) was really not relevant in the 5th century. Britons were then in the process of migrating to Brittany from SW Britain and links were very close (eg. the areas of Cornwall in Britain and Cornoualle in Brittany), essentially the same people lived in both places and movement of persons in both directions was constant. King Mark (of Tristan and Isolde fame) is described as ruling both in Britain and Armorica simultaneously. A ruler who achieved some sort of paramount power in Britain would also, by default almost, assume a similar status over the Britons in Armorica.

Urselius 12:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Origin of the name

About the origin of the name, it could come from Latin rex ex rivo Tamesis, i.e. the king from the river Thames. This would fit with all the decsription, but I do not have an evidence for that.--Franco3450 (talk) 14:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Sadly that means your speculation must remain here. Paul B (talk) 15:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Well for what its worth, I will ditto the words of Franco3450 above! Certainly "rio" (river) and "Thamus" (Thames) should be considered! Regards96.19.156.227 (talk) 21:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)Ronald L. Hughes

That rigotamos meant "most royal" or similar is very doubtful; we have an attested inscription of a Latinised British Deo Marti Rigisamo "(to) Mars Rigisamus" where we clearly have a British superlative -amo(s) based on Proto-Celtic *rīks giving *rigisamos not *rigotamos. The name Rigotamos is more likely "Dark king". Paul S (talk) 17:28, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

The Celtic languages also had -tamo- superlatives, which are amply attested (see Delamarre, DLG; Schrijver, SBCHP; Lambert, La Langue Gauloise; Matasovic, Addenda et Corrigenda to the EDPC). The "dark" word in Celtic, *temos (oblique *temes-; see: Matasovic, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, Brill, 2009, p. 378), was an s-stem and should retain its -e- in stressed position. Cagwinn (talk) 20:46, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

A suggested translation of the Gallaecian PN ROTAMUS is the only instance I know of where a superlative -tamos is supposed specifically for any Celtic language. You may know differently. There are no Welsh superlatives I know of in -taf. Still, nevermind, not worth another edit war. Paul S (talk) 10:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, I suggest you do some actual research on the subject; I provided you above with numerous sources in which the -tamo- superlative is discussed. If you are not well read on a topic such as this, perhaps you shouldn't be making uninformed edits to Wikipedia articles? Just a though. Cagwinn (talk) 21:44, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Sources

I added (or corrected) some sources, as precisely as could be given (Gregory of Tours, Sidonius Apollinaris, Jordanes).Romanus451 (talk) 16:15, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Full citation request for The Discovery of King Arthur

The full citation request here requests the ISBN number (which is already given) and the page number. In this article, the only time the book is referenced is when saying that "Rothamus has been identified as a candidate for the historical King Arthur by some recent writers and scholars, notably the academic Léon Fleuriot[8] and popular historian Geoffrey Ashe.[9]." In this case, requesting a page number is not appropriate, because the identification with King Arthur is sort of the argument of the entire book. We could look for a specific page that says "I think this person was Arthur," but the truth is that argument is made many times on many pages in the book because it's the book's main purpose. Thus, I think we should delete this citation request. Aduff01 (talk) 05:20, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Go for it. Cagwinn (talk) 15:46, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay then. Aduff01 (talk) 22:03, 8 February 2013 (UTC)