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Définition : îles situées au sud-ouest du Cornwall. Réputées dans l'antiquité pour les gisements d'étains (supposés).

Extrait de la carte Ordnance Survey : Map of Roman Britain.

Histoire :

Étymologie : 

* Rivet & Smith, Place-Names of Roman Britain, p 457-458-459 : 

Texte brut de scannage, à corriger.

SILINA (?)

SOURCES: These are unusually complicated, and it is best to consider each in turn : 

I.  Pliny NH, IV, 103 : SILUMNUS, inter Hiberniam ac Britanniam; var. (in three MSS) SILIMNUS

As a geographical location, Pliny's 'between Ireland and Britain' is too vague to tell us much; in the group, Silumnius appears after Vectis (Wight) and before Andros (probably Howth, near Dublin), which at least does not inhibit us from postulating that the name refers to the Scillies. If we take Pliny's variant Silimnus and recall that -mn- is often a hypercorrect rendering of -nn- (as in Garumna for original Garonna, because in spoken Latin columna was sounded colonna, etc.), we can restore *Silinnus and then *Silin(n)a.

2. Solinus 22, 7: SILURAM quoque insulam ab ora quam gens Brittana *Dumnonii tenent turbidum fretum distinguit.

Dumnonii is Mommsen's restoration of a corrupt passage. Siluram in the text has a variant Sillinas quoque insulas (in three inferior MSS) which Mommsen discusses, thinking it more of an interpolation produced by someone who was aware of Sylina in Sulpicius Severus (see below), knew that the Scillies were intended by that and also knew that they were to be associated with the Dumnonii; yet this seems to show an unusual knowledge — in a Continental scribe — of British geography, moreover of a little-known region, and it may be better to regard Sillinas in Solinus as an entirely genuine and potentially superior variant. Silura has been thought (p. 41) to refer to Lundy Island, but this is not separated from the mainland by a 'strait' and can hardly have had a population large enough to produce anything for barter or to bring its 'ancient customs' to the attention of a writer; this objection applies also to Steep Holm and Flat Holm. For Silura to refer to the land of the Silures, we have to explain away the insula(s) of both text and variant. Hence the variant Sillinas quoque insulas, or better, a singular (in keeping with the main text, and for a reason to be mentioned below), *Sillinam quoque insulam, is worth retaining and associating with the Scillies.

3. Sulpicius Severus II, 51, 3-4: [Instantius was] in SYLINANCIM insulam, quae ultra Britannias sita est, deportatus;. . . [Tiberianus was] in SYLINANCIM insulam datus (var. of the first mention : SYLINAM).

Here again, the variant Sylinam could be preferable, and can be placed in immediate relation to the forms isolated earlier. For a conjecture about the very strange Sylinancim (acc. ; nominative *Sylinancis) we revert to Solinus. If we take his variant, *Sillinam quoque insulam, we can see that in some early text there could have appeared, with standard abbreviations, *Silinamq in ; which, with only minor miscopying of a name that must have seemed obscure, could produce Silinancim in a tradition known to Sulpicius Severus.

DERIVATION. It may seem from the above that risky methods have been used to isolate *Sil(l)ina; but to propose this as the possibly correct form does not rob in y place of a name, for the entries of Pliny and Solinus have never been clearly assigned by etymology or location to any surviving place, and to select variants does no injustice to the main texts whose rorms are dubious enough.

In what follows we depend heavily apon the generosity and expert knowedge of Professer Charles Thomas, who las very kindly communicated to us materials assembled for his forthcoming study of the place-names of Scilly.

It should first be noted that the singular form upon which our sources more or less agree is to be expected; in classical times Scilly consisted of one large island (with a few outliers), and assumed its present form of many islands in a phase of submergence during the eighth to twelfth centuries.

In post-Roman times there have been three main forms of the name of the islands, which should provide clues to the orrect ancient form: 

a) The commonest version is Sully (from 193), which is the Scilly/Scillies of today, fully documented by K. Sisam in The Scillonian, No. 129 (1957), 51-55. What is presumably a variant of this, Sullia, Sulleya, etc., is found from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and may have a Norse or English termination expressing ' isles '.

(b) Beside a tradition in English, there has naturally also been a Cornish tradition of the name. This is found in an alleged charter of Athelstan about A.D. 925-930, Sillanes insulae, and surfaces again in a number of records of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, e.g. a Sillinis insulis (Camden), Sillane islands, etc. This Cornish name has -n- (an essential feature) in a type S^vL-aN (*Sillan) and presumably represents an authentic spoken tradition, i.e. it is not due to a learned revival of the sixteenth century as one might suspect if Camden's, within his Latin text, were the only example. On this, see Professer Thomas's paper in Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, XXXIII (1977), 352-54 (though since that was written he has found other examples, including that of 925-30).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

corrections en cours.

(c) The form Syllingar and its relatives is Scandinavian and is found from about 1150. The -ingar ending implies something like 'place of the inhabitants of, as in other island names in Norse, etc. French Sorlingues was based on this and propagated among Continental naviga-tors by Mercator's map of 1564. This is hardly relevant to our inquiry.
The only proposai about an etymology of which we are aware is that of Rhys (1904) 316—17. On a reading Silulanus of a name in a Lydncy (Goucestershire) inscription, now RIB 306, he envisaged a connection of the Silures and of Solinus's Silura with the Scillies (the latter, through the variant, we now favour) ; but the Lydney name is now read as Silvianus.
The Cornish form documented in (b) above is clearly the most important for us, and rather than having originated at an early stage within Cornish (where it is hard to explain), it is best regarded as a continuation of an original British name which was latinised probably as Sil(l)ina, on our reading of the sources. In British the stress would have been Silina. For mis to suit the varicty of later forrns it seems that the first i was short (see LHEB 282—86, and Sisam's paper, 52, on Sully/Scilly and Syllingar). The namc might have *-ina suffix as in Lindinis, Sabrina, but the base seems to be unknown. It is tempting to think that a religious site on the early island might have contained the name of the goddess Sûlis, as at Bath, and in this name M would (via iï) have produced /' in Cornish (5i7/-), but of course ail three classical sources are firm in showing original SU-. If there is some connection with Sn//5, it is just possible that the Minerve which Ravenna lists as an island at IO910 (=R&C 278) belongs hère rather than to Bath, in whose entry (AQUAE CALIDAE, AQUAE SULIS) we discuss the mattér.
IDENTIFICATION. The Scilly Isles.

*****

Commentaire JCE : 

Sources : 

Eilert EKWALL : The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names. Clarendon Press. Édition 1980.

ALF RIVET & C. SMITH : Place-names of Roman Britain. Batsford Ltd. London. 1979; Édition 1982.

Liens électroniques des autres sites traitant des îles Scilly.  :   

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