Talk:Chatti

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I'm not sure about the accuracy of the 1911 encyclopedia on this -- putting on my to-do list...JHK

JHK seems to have left. Too bad. Democracy can be tedious, no doubt about that. It has its virtues. With respect to Wikipedia, this material gets broadcast all over the Internet and is far more widely read than the journals and books. You can't avoid it. It is everywhere and gets repeated in hundreds of sites. Someone has a responsibility to the people to publish valid rather than invalid stuff. I'd say to JHK, don't be too proud to take a few blows on behalf of truth. It isn't fellowship that counts, but truth. We can't even imagine what Wegener went through, and Copernicus didn't even dare to publish his revolutionary work on astronomy in his life. The book was placed in his dying hands. But, that isn't the topic.

We have this article that needs work. Unless there is some real evidence that the Chatti, Chasuarii and Cattuarii are the same, I wouldn't lump them together on the say-so of a 1911 encyclopedia. Someone needs to look at the sources and present the arguments in words the public can understand. If no one else does it eventually I will do it but I want fill in some of the tribal gaps first if I can.Botteville 00:37, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Keith?

What about the Catti who went to Scotland to become the clan Keith (or so I've read)? Is this the same as the Chatti mentioned in the article? The Jade Knight 08:30, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Dear Jade Knight, most of these "migration" hypotheses tend to date back to a time before modern historical and etymological methods were generally used in family histories. For groups not attested anciently enough, many pseudo-historians were happy to draw on similar names of peoples from an earlier time. The Keith family name is most probably derived from the Gaelic word for forest. Trigaranus 17:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you happen to know what word that is? (The Welsh word I know is "coed", which could theoretically be related to "Keith"). The Jade Knight 22:23, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I see you are quite a linguist! I checked out the languages on your profile - chapeau! So I better don't make a mess here: the word I originally had in mind was in fact the Welsh word you quoted (Gaelic coille is, as far as I know, not related; it goes back to Proto-Irish *kaldet-, related to Welsh celli and, ultimately, German holz, English holt). So don't take me serious with the "Gaelic" in my response. However, there is a Proto-Celtic root *kaito- meaning forest, to which the placename Keith is traced back. If you are interested in Celtic etymology (Ha! how silly -- who isn't?!?), check out the sources I checked this on: [[1]] and [[2]] (check out the pdf-file with a list of Celtic roots). Toponymy is a bit of a slippery slope sometimes, but I think that most of that site is fairly well-based. BTW: The name of the Chatthi is most likely of Celtic origin, and not Germanic (and does not directly explain the later Hassi form). It would then be related to the -cassesnames of some Celtic tribes, referring to a specially adorned hair-style. I was going to thoroughly rework the article, but I don't have the time at the moment. Hope this was a help to you. Trigaranus 19:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)