A LETTER in a recent Sunday National queried the name “Great Britain” – unaware that there is a Lesser Britain, called Brittany, Bretagne or Bretonne after the people who settled there (just as the part of Edinburgh at the Infirmary where Mary Queen of Scots and her retinue settled was known till the 1950s as “Petty” – now “Little” – France).
During the attacks on southern and eastern Britain by the Saxons, Angles and Jutes from around 500 AD onwards – sometimes called the “English Invasion” – many of the native Brythonic people on the south coast fled over the channel and settled in what is now France in such numbers that it was called “Little Britain”.
The invasions along the south and south-east coasts were by Saxons, hence Essex, Sussex and the Kingdom of Wessex. (The Normans later invaded Wessex, conquering the Saxons there, and later other Kingdoms of what is now England.)
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The Brythonic peoples were driven west by Anglo-Saxon invaders till they were confined to what is now Wales, Cumbria, Strathclyde in Scotland, and Cornwall and most of Devon – known then as West Wales. The Brythonic language remained in those parts, eventually becoming Welsh (and possibly Cornish?). The Saxon word “wealish”, meaning “foreign”, has also remained, just as the word for Anglian was eventually applied to the country, and the language which derived from Saxon, as “English”, while the language derived from Anglian is Scots.
The Brythonic peoples were of Celtic origin – Scottish Gaelic is Q-Celtic and Welsh is P-Celtic – and places where Celts have lived, and the people, often have “Gal-” at the start: Galicia, the Gauls, and the French name for Wales – Pays de Galles.
So there is a basis for “Great”, in the size sense, Britain, and “Little” Britain. Perhaps “Big” and “Small” would have avoided the suggestion of meretricious glory.
Susan FG Forde
Scotlandwell
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