Who were the Galatians? How did they get where they were?
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When I was a wee lad and went to bible school each week, I had a hard time comprehending just whom were all of those epistles in the New Testament addressed to. Of course, there are many other books in the New Testament, a total of 27, but the ones that intrigued me most were the 9 Pauline letters to Christian churches that we refer to as "epistles". I was most captivated by these 9 books and I wanted to know what kind of people they were, what their communities were like, what their ethnicities were, and, above all, even way back then, what languages they spoke.
These communities were called:
Romans
Corinthians — Paul wrote two epistles to them
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
Thessalonians — Paul also wrote two epistles to them
I knew who the Romans were, and what language they spoke, so no problem there. Moreover, I was aware from a sense of architectural history that a Corinthian capital column was a Greek creation. Several of the others had a Greek ring to them as well. But the one that attracted my attention above all the others was the letter to the Galatians, who were located in a region of Anatolia known as Galatia. Somehow Galatians didn't seem to fit the Mediterranean paradigm that I suspected for the other communities.
Only much later did I learn that the Galatians were a type of Gauls, i.e., Celts, who had migrated from what is now France to what is now Türkiye. What, pray tell, would have driven them there so far from the north to the south, when most population movements during the Holocene Epoch (last ten thousand years) generally were from south to north?
The Gauls and their confrères were outstanding miners. They mined a variety of minerals, including gold, iron, and tin. The latter was important in its own right, but also for alloying with copper to produce bronze, the metallurgy of which the Celts were renowned for. Above all, however, the Celts / Gauls were masters of saltmining, which is reflected in these toponyms: Hallstatt, Hallein, Halle, G(h)alich.
Even today, though, when I think of Celts, a bucolic picture of shepherds with their flocks comes to mind, and it's not difficult to imagine that, just as the Celts went wandering in search of metal sources, so they were ever in quest of better pastures for their sheep.
It is no wonder that, being the skillful shepherds that they were, the Celts would become the premier wool weavers we know them to be. It just so happens that one of the textile types they perfected was diagonal twill. If you add some colored thread into the warp and the weft in a repeated pattern, you get plaid, beloved of the Gaelic Scots still to this day. It is not an accident that the earliest and best preserved plaids in the world are found in the salt mines of the Celtic areas of Europe, as well as in the bogs of northern Europe, whose tannin preserves organic materials, including plaids and other woolen textiles (not to mention human bodies!). The only other place on earth I know of for the early conservation of woolen textiles, including very early plaids from the same period as those in the northern European bogs and Celtic salt mines of north central Europe, is the Tarim Basin, especially Qizilchoqa (near Qumul [Hami]) and Zaghunluq (near Chärchän [Qiemo]). both of which have highly saline soils and exquisite Bronze Age woolen textiles, including plaids. I have tasted the deposits exposed in a tunnel 400 meters down at Hallstatt and from the tableland where Ur-David (Chärchän Man) was discovered. You can use them as table salt to flavor your food.
The Celts / Gauls certainly had a wanderlust, and that would explain what brought them to Anatolia — and other far-flung places.
Selected readings
- "Roman curse tablets" (1/24/25) — Gaulish inscriptions
- "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/19)
[Thanks to Elizabeth J. W. Barber, J. P. Mallory, and Douglas Q. Adams]
Scott P. said,
July 2, 2025 @ 9:59 pm
What, pray tell, would have driven them there so far from the north to the south, when most population movements during the Holocene Epoch (last ten thousand years) generally were from south to north?
Is this true? The Greeks, Italic Indo-Europeans, Cimmerians, Scythians, Goths, Heruli, Gepids, Lombards and Slavs, just to name a few, all migrated north to south in the same general area.
Victor Mair said,
July 2, 2025 @ 10:02 pm
I carefully and consciously said "during the Holocene Epoch".
Chris Button said,
July 2, 2025 @ 10:58 pm
Asterix the Gaul is Asterix o Galatis (Αστερίξ ο Γαλάτης) in Greek, which I suppose could also be translated as Asterix the Galatian.
loonquawl said,
July 3, 2025 @ 1:12 am
@VictorMair could you expand on that north-south (or vice versa) trend you see during the Holocene (is the 'Holocene Epoch' the same as the 'Holocene' (i.e. -12ka to now))?
Lasius said,
July 3, 2025 @ 3:08 am
I thought the hypothesis that the "Hall" toponyms were of Celtic origin had been thoroughly discredited.
DJL said,
July 3, 2025 @ 3:34 am
I'm pretty sure it is 'Turkey' in English.
ardj said,
July 3, 2025 @ 3:39 am
Leaving aside what appears to be a new Holocene definition, I wonder if Profesor Mair is entirely happy with his effort to tell it like it was. "just whom were all of those epistles in the New Testament addressed to" is a meritorious step in the defence of 'whom'; but it might perhaps have been more happily phrased as "to whom exactly were all of those epistles in the New Testament addressed".
Sabiola said,
July 3, 2025 @ 5:23 am
@DJL The country has asked people to use its endonym because it "represents and expresses the culture, civilization, and values of the Turkish nation in the best way". Personally I think it's because of bad translations. In many translations from English, the word for the bird is used where it should be the name of the country…
DJL said,
July 3, 2025 @ 5:40 am
@Sabiola I know, I know, and Turkey – or rather, Erdogan's barely democratic government – can ask whatever they want, but the names of countries in each language is set by custom and/or the rules of each language or nation, not by other peoples and governments.
languagehat said,
July 3, 2025 @ 8:00 am
What DJL said. I still say "Burma" in defiance of the brutal junta that insists on "Myanmar."
DDeden said,
July 3, 2025 @ 8:03 am
I wonder if these Galatians mined the Anatolian deposits of magnetite lodestone, and if it could have been used for navigation on the silk road. Has it been found amongst the Tarim basin mummies?
ajay said,
July 3, 2025 @ 9:26 am
If you add some colored thread into the warp and the weft in a repeated pattern, you get plaid, beloved of the Gaelic Scots still to this day.
An interesting distinction: in BrE, the garment (a sort of vestigial cloak/wrap/sash worn over one shoulder) is a plaid. The cross-striped pattern is a tartan.
Originally "tartan" seems to have referred to neither the garment nor the pattern, but the type of cloth, and may possibly have come from "tyrius" = "from Tyre", as did "tartan" in the sense with which Aubrey-Maturin readers will know it, a small sailing ship from the eastern Mediterranean.
Peter B. Golden said,
July 3, 2025 @ 9:44 am
The Galatians derive from Gauls that came to Anatolia from Tyris in Thrace after Gallic invasions of the Balkans in the 3rd century BC. There is a good entry on them in Wikipedia.
Galatia (Γαλατία) probably derives from the ethnic designation “Celt” (Kelt). There is a Galicia (of the same origin) in Spain, in which Gallego/Galego, a Romance language close to Spanish and Portuguese, is spoken. There is also a “Galicia” (Galitsia, Halyč in Modern Ukrainian) in Southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, in which speakers of Polish and Ukrainian are now found. The Boioi (> Bohemia: Boiheim) who were in the area of the modern Czech Republic were also Celtic. The origins of the ethnonym “Celt” are unclear, a number of explanations have been offered. They do not appear to have used the name, yet it surfaces in areas in which they settled
J.W. Brewer said,
July 3, 2025 @ 9:54 am
I'm not sure why "migrated" or "driven" are the best words for the movement of Gauls into Asia Minor when "invaded" could be used instead. Invasion was a quite popular form of population movement and associated change of territorial range of languages back then. Celtic people speaking a Celtic language entered Asia Minor in pretty much the same fashion that Turkic people speaking a Turkic language did a dozen or so centuries later, except from the northwest rather than northeast.
Another southward movement by Gauls in the century before they got to Asia Minor famously led to their sack of Rome in 390 B.C., although they didn't stick around afterwards and settle the region.
Victor Mair said,
July 3, 2025 @ 10:37 am
For a lengthy, detailed post on how the bird came to be called "turkey" in English, and all of its other nomenclatural misadventures in other languages (e.g., it is called "hindi" in Turkish), see "No more 'turkey', please" (12/21/22), with 60 mostly learned comments.
Note from Neil Schmid:
A couple of the comments reminded me of a photo I took way back when in Istanbul of turkey in Türkiye (“à la d’Inde”!).
VHM: "Hindi Füme" means "smoked turkey".
Clifford Coonan said,
July 3, 2025 @ 6:06 pm
One buzzing quartier in the Beyoğlu district of downtown Istanbul, on the European side, is Galatasaray. This is a compound word derived from "Galata" and "Saray," or "Galata Palace" in Turkish and refers to the Galatians who settled in central Anatolia in the 3rd century BCE as mentioned above. There are Galatian torcs from that period in the Istanbul Archeological Museum which are very similar to those seen in other Celtic regions.
Chris Button said,
July 3, 2025 @ 6:44 pm
@ Peter B Golden
Maybe so. But "Asterix the Celt" is way too broad :)
Lucas Christopoulos said,
July 3, 2025 @ 7:29 pm
In Martigny, Switzerland, there is the bronze sculpture of The three-horned Bull or Tavros Trigaranos and many other Celtic remains from the Helvetii. When the Gaulish strategos Brennos (-279 BC) invaded Greece with his eighty five thousand blue-painted and tattooed warriors, he got killed at the Temple of Delphi, where he wished to take the treasure. Brennus and his troops were anihilated and his remaining soldiers crossed the Hellespont and then founded the Galatia region by settling in Asia Minor.
Victor Mair said,
July 3, 2025 @ 7:47 pm
Thank you very much, Clifford.
As for saray:
Sarajevo
capital of Bosnia, founded 15c. and named in Turkish as Bosna-Saray, "Palace on the (River) Bosna," from saray (see caravanserai); the modern name is a Slavic adjectival form of saray.
seraglio (n.)
1580s, in reference to Muslim lands, "the part of the dwelling where the women are secluded," also the name of a former palace of the sultan in Istanbul, which contained his harem; from Italian seraglio, alteration of Turkish saray "palace, court," from Persian sara'i "palace, inn." This is from the Iranian base *thraya- "to protect" (source also of Avestan thrayeinti "they protect"), from PIE *tra-, a variant form of the root *tere- (2) "cross over, pass through, overcome."
The Italian word probably reflects folk etymology influence of serraglio "enclosure, cage," from Medieval Latin serraculum "bung, stopper" (see serried). Sometimes in English in early use serail, via French sérail, which is from the Italian word. The meaning "inmates of a harem" is attested by 1630s.
caravanserai (n.)
1590s, carvanzara, "Eastern inn (with a large central court) catering to caravans," ultimately from Persian karwan-sarai, from karwan (see caravan) + sara'i "palace, mansion; inn," from Iranian base *thraya- "to protect" (from PIE root *tere- (2) "cross over, pass through, overcome").
(all three from etymonline)
P.S.: Another long post on the Galatians coming up in a day or two.
Lucas Christopoulos said,
July 3, 2025 @ 10:07 pm
rect. Brennos had about 25 000 warriors not 85 000
Michael Watts said,
July 4, 2025 @ 1:09 am
The Greeks called themselves "Hellenes", but nobody else did. The Romans called them Greeks; other groups referred to them by the name of various Greek subgroups, like Ionians or Danaans. There is an obvious inference to be drawn that when the Greeks actually referred to themselves, they didn't ordinarily use the word "Hellenes".
Rodger C said,
July 4, 2025 @ 9:46 am
They do not appear to have used the name
"qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur"
KevinM said,
July 4, 2025 @ 2:56 pm
@Michael Watts. And those other groups didn't call themselves barbarians, either!
Lucas Christopoulos said,
July 4, 2025 @ 4:39 pm
@KevinM: oui, par Toutatis!
David Marjanović said,
July 11, 2025 @ 9:32 am
Quite so. Here's a good article in bizarrely lowercase German (with an English abstract) by an actual publishing Celtologist. In short: 1) the change *s > h is a specifically British innovation – there is no evidence of it in other branches of Celtic, and there is evidence against it in placenames in and around Austria; 2) the long ll can't be explained from Celtic; 3) there is no way a [h] would have survived transmission from Celtic (or wherever!) through late Latin and early Romance to German; 4) an uncomplicated Middle High German etymology that refers to crusts formed by boiling saline is available.
It's prescientific 19th-century speculation that made it into the history schoolbooks and has simply stayed there ever since because way too few people even know that historical linguistics is a science that exists.
The Holocene is still continuing, so you must be referring to a greater number of prehistoric population movements than the number of the historic ones Scott P. listed. I can come up with: 1) the spread of Western Hunter-Gatherers from Italy northwards when the places northwards became inhabitable right after the last ice age; 2) the spread of Balkan Hunter-Gatherers from the Balkans northwards ditto; 3) the spread of Early European Farmers from the Bosphorus & Dardanelles westward and northwestward. In other directions, there are 1) the Funnel-Beaker Culture spreading south; 2) Yamnaya/Corded Ware spreading west; 3) Fatyanovo or whatever ( > Indo-Slavic) spreading northeast; 4) Saamic and Finnic spreading west (and later north, twice separately). So… what have I missed? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely interested.