The Britons, also called Celtic Britons or ancient Britons, were a group of people who lived in Great Britain from the Iron Age until the High Middle Ages. During this time, they became the ancestors of the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons, among other groups. They spoke a language called Common Brittonic, which is the origin of the modern Brittonic languages.
The first written records about the Britons come from Greek and Roman writers during the Iron Age. Ancient Britain was divided into many tribes and kingdoms, often connected to hillforts. The Britons practiced an old Celtic religion led by druids. Some groups in the south had close ties to mainland Europe, especially Gaul and Belgica, and created their own coins. The Roman Empire conquered most of Britain in the 1st century AD, forming the province of Britannia. While the Romans controlled much of Britain, groups like the Caledonians and Picts in the north remained independent. Hadrian’s Wall, which runs through parts of modern-day Northumberland and Cumbria, marked the western boundary of the Roman Empire. A culture blending Roman and British traditions developed, mainly in the southeast, and the local Latin language coexisted with Brittonic. Scholars believe the Picts, who lived north of the Firth of Forth, spoke a language closely related to Common Brittonic and were also Brittonic Celts.
After the Romans left Britain in the 5th century, Anglo-Saxon settlers moved into eastern and southern Britain. Over time, the Britons’ culture and language broke apart, and much of their land became Anglo-Saxon. In the north and on the Isle of Man, Gaelic-speaking groups from Ireland gradually settled, forming what would become Scotland. It is still debated how much of this change involved large movements of people. During this time, some Britons moved to mainland Europe, creating communities in Brittany (now part of France), the Channel Islands, and Britonia (now part of Galicia, Spain). By the 11th century, Brittonic-speaking groups had separated into distinct populations: the Welsh in Wales, the Cornish in Cornwall, the Bretons in Brittany, the Cumbrians in the Hen Ogledd (Old North) in southern Scotland and northern England, and the remaining Picts in northern Scotland. Common Brittonic evolved into the separate Brittonic languages: Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, and Breton.
Name
In the study of Celtic languages, the term "Britons" describes people who spoke Brittonic languages during ancient and medieval times, from the earliest evidence of such speech in the pre-Roman Iron Age until the central Middle Ages.
The earliest known mention of people living in Britain was made by Pytheas, a Greek explorer who traveled around the British Isles between 330 and 320 BC. Although none of his writings remain, later writers frequently referenced him. The ancient Greeks called the people of Britain the Pretanoí or Bretanoí. Pliny’s Natural History (77 AD) states the island was once called Albion, and Avienius referred to it as insula Albionum, meaning "island of the Albions." This name may have come from the Gauls.
The P-Celtic name Pritanī is believed to have originated from the Common Celtic word kʷritu, which later became Old Irish cruth and Old Welsh pryd. This likely means "people of the forms" or "shapely people." It may be connected to the Latin name Picti (the Picts), usually interpreted as "painted people." In Old Welsh, the Picts were called Prydyn. Linguist Kim McCone suggests the name was later used only for people in the far north after the Welsh and Cumbrians began using Cymry instead. The Welsh word prydydd, meaning "maker of forms," was also used to describe the highest rank of a bard.
In medieval Welsh, the Latin term Britanni became Brython (singular and plural). John Rhys introduced this word into English in 1884 to clearly describe the P-Celtic speakers of Great Britain, pairing it with Goidel for Gaelic speakers. This led to the term Brythonic, used to describe the group of languages. The phrase "Brittonic languages" was first recorded in 1923, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
In the early Middle Ages, after the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, the Anglo-Saxons called all Britons Bryttas or Wealas (Welsh). They were still referred to as Britanni or Brittones in Medieval Latin. By the 11th century, they were often called separately the Welsh, Cumbrians, Cornish, and Bretons, as they had distinct political histories. Starting in the early 1600s, especially after the Acts of Union 1707, the terms "British" and "Briton" were used to describe all people living in the Kingdom of Great Britain, including English, Scottish, and some Irish people, or subjects of the British Empire.
Language
The Britons spoke a type of Celtic language called Common Brittonic. This language was used across the island of Britain (which includes modern-day England, Wales, and Scotland) and the Isle of Man. Early medieval stories, like The Dream of Macsen Wledig, suggest that after the Roman Empire left Britain, some Celtic-speaking people from Britain moved to Armorica, a region in France. These people helped create the Breton language, which is related to Welsh and similar to Cornish in the early period. Breton is still spoken today in the area now called Brittany (Br. Breizh, Fr. Bretagne, which comes from the Latin word Britannia).
Common Brittonic came from the Insular branch of Proto-Celtic, an earlier form of Celtic language that arrived in the British Isles between the 10th and 7th centuries BC. Over time, the language changed, and experts have divided its later stages into Western and Southwestern Brittonic. Western Brittonic became Welsh in Wales and the Cumbric language in the Hen Ogledd, or "Old North" of Britain (modern northern England and southern Scotland). Southwestern Brittonic became Cornish in Cornwall and southwest England and Breton in Armorica. Pictish, the language of the Picts, is now believed to have come from Common Brittonic rather than being a separate Celtic language.
Today, Welsh and Breton are still spoken. Cumbric and Pictish disappeared by the 12th century. Cornish was no longer spoken by the 19th century but has been revived since the 20th century.
Tribal groups
Celtic Britain was divided into many areas ruled by Brittonic tribes. These tribes are thought to have lived across the entire island of Great Britain, including as far north as the narrow strip of land between the Clyde and Forth rivers. The area north of this region was mostly home to the Picts. Few direct records of the Pictish language remain, but place names and personal names found in later Irish records suggest it was connected to the Common Brittonic language. The Goidelic (Gaelic) name for the Picts, Cruithne, is related to the word Pritenī.
Below is a list of major Brittonic tribes, including their names in Latin and Brittonic languages, along with the locations of their capitals during the Roman period.
Art
The La Tène style, which includes British Celtic art, arrived later in Britain. However, after 300 BC, the ancient British people shared many similar cultural practices with the Celtic groups living nearby on the continent. There are important differences in artistic styles, and the most well-known period of the "Insular La Tène" style, which is found mainly in metalwork, occurred in the century before the Roman conquest and possibly a few years after it.
The carnyx, a trumpet with a bell shaped like an animal’s head, was used by the Celtic people in Britain during battles and special ceremonies.
History
There are different ideas about when Celtic people and their languages first arrived in Britain, but no one agrees on the answer. For most of the twentieth century, it was thought that Celtic culture came from the Hallstatt culture in central Europe and reached Britain around the first millennium BC. More recently, John Koch and Barry Cunliffe proposed the "Celtic from the West" theory, which suggests that Celtic languages developed as a trade language in the Atlantic Bronze Age before spreading eastward. Patrick Sims-Williams, however, argues that Celtic languages originated in Gaul and spread to Britain by the end of the first millennium BC.
In 2021, a major study of ancient DNA found evidence of a migration into southern Britain during the Bronze Age, between 1300 BC and 800 BC. These people were genetically similar to individuals from France and had more ancestry from early European farmers. Their genetic traits spread quickly through southern Britain between 1000 BC and 875 BC, making up about half the ancestry of people in the Iron Age in that area, but not in northern Britain. The study suggests that this change happened over centuries through trade, marriage, and small groups moving between Europe and Britain, rather than a sudden invasion. This process may have helped spread early Celtic languages to Britain. Later, during the Iron Age, there was less migration, so it is likely that Celtic languages arrived in Britain before this time. Barry Cunliffe believes that a branch of Celtic was already spoken in Britain, and the Bronze Age migration introduced the Brittonic branch.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, first written around 890 AD at the order of King Alfred the Great, includes a passage from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History:
"The island of Britain is eight hundred miles long and two hundred miles wide. In this island, there are five languages: English, British, Welsh, Scottish, Pictish, and Book-language. The first people who lived here were Britons, who came from Armorica."
Archaeological evidence shows that the pre-Roman Britons did not eat chickens or hares. During the late Iron Age and early Roman period, chickens were often buried with humans, suggesting they were treated as sacred. Julius Caesar wrote that the Britons believed it was against divine law to eat chickens, hares, or geese. Chickens were not widely eaten in Britain until the 3rd century AD, mainly in Roman-influenced cities. Some scholars think chickens and hares were not sacred but rare animals, as their consumption increased when they became more common.
In 43 AD, the Roman Empire invaded Britain. British tribes resisted the Romans for many years, but by 84 AD, the Romans had conquered southern Britain and pushed into areas that would later become northern England and southern Scotland. At the same time, Belgic tribes from the Gallic-Germanic borderlands settled in southern Britain. Caesar wrote that the Belgae first arrived as raiders before settling on the island. In 122 AD, the Romans built Hadrian’s Wall in northern England to mark their northern border. In 142 AD, they built the Antonine Wall in the Forth-Clyde isthmus but abandoned it after 20 years, returning to Hadrian’s Wall. Native Britons south of Hadrian’s Wall remained under Roman rule but were governed by Roman officials, while Britons and Picts north of the wall likely stayed independent. The Roman Empire controlled Britain until around 410 AD, though some areas had already lost Roman control earlier.
About 50 years after the Romans left, Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons began migrating to the southeast coast of Britain, where they established their own kingdoms. Old Irish-speaking Scoti from modern-day Northern Ireland also moved to the west coast of Scotland and the Isle of Man. At the same time, Britons settled in Brittany and the Channel Islands, where the Breton language developed from Brittonic Celtic. Another Brittonic group, Britonia, was established in northwestern Spain.
Many Brittonic kingdoms gradually disappeared after the Anglo-Saxon and Scottish Gaelic invasions. Areas in modern East Anglia, East Midlands, North East England, Argyll, and South East England were among the first to be taken over by Germanic and Gaelic groups. The kingdom of Kent (modern Kent) fell in 456 AD. Linnuis (modern Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire) was conquered by 500 AD, becoming the English kingdom of Lindsey. Regni (modern Sussex and eastern Hampshire) was likely fully conquered by 510 AD. Ynys Weith (Isle of Wight) fell in 530 AD, and Caer Colun (modern Essex) by 540 AD. The Gaels arrived from Ireland, took over parts of Britain, and founded Dal Riata in modern Argyll, Skye, and Iona between 500 and 560 AD. Deifr (modern Teesside, Wearside, Tyneside, Humberside, Lindisfarne, and the Farne Islands) fell to the Anglo-Saxons in 559 AD, becoming an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Caer Went disappeared by 575 AD, becoming the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia. Gwent was partly conquered, with its capital, Caer Gloui (modern Gloucester), taken by the Anglo-Saxons in 577 AD. Caer Lundein (modern London, St. Albans, and parts of the Home Counties) fell by 600 AD, and Bryneich (modern Northumberland and County Durham) fell by 605 AD, becoming Anglo-Saxon Bernicia. Caer Celemion (modern Hampshire and Berkshire) fell by 610 AD. Elmet, a large kingdom covering parts of modern Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire, was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons in 627 AD. Pengwern (modern Staffordshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire) was largely destroyed in 656 AD, with only parts in modern Wales remaining under Brittonic control. Cynwidion, which stretched from modern Bedfordshire to Northamptonshire, likely fell around the same time as Pengwern, though a small part of Calchwynedd may have remained in the Chilterns for a while. Novant, which covered Galloway and Carrick, was also taken over.
Genetics
Schiffels et al. (2016) studied the remains of three people from the Iron Age in Britain who lived around 100 BC. A woman buried in Linton, Cambridgeshire, had a genetic group called H1e from her mother’s side. Two men buried in Hinxton had a genetic group called R1b1a2a1a2 from their father’s side, and their mother’s sides had genetic groups K1a1b1b and H1ag1. Their overall genetic makeup was similar to people from Northwest Europe. Even though these Iron Age individuals shared a common origin in Northwest Europe, they were very different from later Anglo-Saxon people, who were closely related to modern Danes and Dutch people.
Martiniano et al. (2018) studied the remains of a woman from the Iron Age buried in Melton between 210 BC and 40 AD. She had a genetic group called U2e1e from her mother’s side. The study also looked at seven men buried in Driffield Terrace near York between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD during the Roman period in Britain. Six of these men were native Britons. These six men had genetic groups from their father’s side called R1b1a2a1a and genetic groups from their mother’s side called H6a1a, H1bs, J1c3e2, H2, H6a1b2, and J1b1a1. The native Britons from Roman Britain had genetic similarities to the earlier Iron Age woman and were closely related to modern Celts in the British Isles, especially the Welsh people. This suggests that genetic traits from the Iron Age continued into the Roman period and partially into modern Britain. However, these people were very different from an examined Anglo-Saxon individual and modern English people in the area, showing that the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons had a major effect on the genetic makeup of Britain.