Eboracum

Eboracum (Classical Latin: [ɛbɔˈraːkũː]) was a fort and later a city in the Roman province of Britannia. In its prime it was the largest town in northern Britannia and a provincial capital. The site remained occupied after the decline of the Western Roman Empire and ultimately developed into the present-day city of York, in North Yorkshire, England. Two Roman emperors died in Eboracum: Septimius Severus in 211 AD, and Constantius Chlorus in 306 AD. The first known recorded mention of Eboracum by name is dated c. 95–104 AD, and is an address containing the settlement's name, Eburaci, on a wooden stylus tablet from the Roman fortress of Vindolanda in what is now Northumberland. During the Roman period, the name was written both Eboracum and Eburacum (in nominative form). The name Eboracum comes from the Common Brittonic *Eburākon, of disputed meaning. One view is that it meant "yew tree place", if Proto-Celtic *ebura meant "yew" (cf. Old Irish ibar "yew-tree", Irish: iúr (older iobhar), Scottish Gaelic: iubhar, Welsh: efwr "alder buckthorn", Breton: evor "alder buckthorn"), combined with the proprietive suffix *-āko(n) "having" (cf. Welsh -og, Gaelic -ach) (cf. efrog in Welsh, eabhrach/iubhrach in Irish Gaelic and eabhrach/iobhrach in Scottish Gaelic, by which names the city is known in those languages). Other linguists, such as Andrew Breeze and Peter Schrijver, dispute the etymological connection of *eburos and "yew"; Schrijver suggests that *eburos meant "rowan", and that *iwo, giving Welsh yw and Old Irish éo, was the only Proto-Celtic word for "yew". Schrijver has suggested that the derivation from Latin ebur (ivory) instead refers to boar's tusks. The name was Latinized by replacing the Celtic neuter nominative ending -on by its Latin equivalent -um, a common use noted also in Gaul and Lusitania (Ebora Liberalitas Julia). Various place names, such as Évry, Ivry, Ivrey, Ivory and Ivrac in France would all come from *eburacon / *eburiacon; for example: Ivry-la-Bataille (Eure, Ebriaco in 1023–1033), Ivry-le-Temple (Evriacum in 1199), and Évry (Essonne, Everiaco in 1158).