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Lochmaben

Locus Maponi

page ouverte le 12.01.2007 dernière mise à jour 12/01/2007 14:14:42

Définition : agglomération u sud-ouest de l'Ecosse, dans le comté de Dumbries et Galloway 

 

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

Histoire; Archéologie

  

Étymologie

* Rivet & Smith, p. 395-396 : 

SOURCES

- Ravenna 108,17 (= R&C 228) : MAPONI

-  Inscription : JRS, LVIII (1968), 209 : A slab found at Birrens fort in 1967 : CISTUMUCI  LO(CO) MAbOMI ' (gift) of Cistumucus from Locus Maponi'
Before the discovery of the inscription, it could be conjectured (Holder) that Ravenna's genitive form should be completed as *Fanum Maponi (cf. Fanum Cocii). The existence of Locus Maponi on his map-source may well have misled the Cosmographer into forming his small section of diversa loca names, in which Maponi figures in first place. In the inscription, it is unlikely that b represents a voiced p (the instance would be unique in Britain in Latin, and could not be British at this date).

DERIVATION. The name is apparently 'place of Maponus', with Locus as, or to be taken as, Latin 'place' (but hardly as an officially-designated' meeting-place of a tribe' as R&C thought about all eight names in Ravennaf, section). But some caution is necessary, for there are no analogues anywhere for such a use of Latin locus 'place'; and despite the existence of Latin Fanum in this region (for Cocidius), it is in principle safer to consider that a British word is involved. This can only be *loc-' lake, pool' as in the previous entry, which as we see from examples there is reprcsented as -locus and similar forms in the Latin records; indeed, inhabitants of such places, or the compilers of the Latin records, may well have assimilated the Celtic word to Latin locus 'place' in both Gaul and Britain. In the Birrens inscription, indeed, the restoration of the middle term to Lo(co) is only a possibility; *Lo(uco) with vowels closer to those of British is equally justifiable. The association of Maponus with two Gaulish water-names (see below) allows us still more support for such an association in the present case.

Maponus was the '(divine) youth', a god who enjoyed a cult in northern England and south-west Scotland, and who in four out of five British inscriptions to him is equated with Apollo (Ross, 1967, 368-70). The cult involved 'high Roman military officials and [was] thus of some standing' (Richmond in Arch. Ael.4, XXI (1943), 206-10). His name uses in a special function the common noun *mapo- of British, represented by Old Welsh map, Welsh mab 'boy, youth; son'; his name in a proper function is found in Welsh Mabinogion, and he is 'in the old Welsh tales Mabon, son of Modron' (Williams), that is son of Matrona the mother-goddess. In Old Irish macc, mac retains the consonant of original *maqo-. There is some evidence of the cult of Maponus in Gaul, in a mention de Mabono fonte in a cartulary in about 1090 (Holder II. 414), and in an inscription of Bourbonne-les-Bains (Haute-Marne, France), though in this Maponus might be the common rather than the divine name (DAG 990).

IDENTIFICATION. R&C, citing Watson CPNS 181, say 'Probably the Clochmabenstane near Gretna (on the north shore of the Solway Firth), the traditional meeting-place of the Western March and the site of a prehistoric stone circle.'But in that name Cloch- is 'stone' (which Anglo-Saxon -stane duplicates) and has nothing to do with locus. However, there is also in Dumfriesshire the village of Lochmaben, also noted by Watson, which is surely a precise derivative of Locus Maponi, with locus representing British *loc-, 'lake, pool', here referring to Castle Loch. This is one mile west of the Annan, and a Roman fort to protect its crossing by the Roman road Margary 76 (leading to Nithsdale) might be expected"

Sources

* Ordnance Survey : Map of roman Britain

* A.L.F RIVET & Colin SMITH : The Place-names of Roman Britain. Batsford Ltd. London. 1979

Liens électroniques des sites Internet traitant de Lochmaben / Locus Maponi 

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