Gloucester Civic Trust Historic Essays

THE NAMES OF GLOUCESTER By JOHN RHODES

The Roman name Glevum, pronounced Glay-wum, has evolved into Gloucester through four different languages. The sounds represented by G, L and V have persisted, but every other vowel in the alphabet has been tried in place of E.

The conquering Romans generally looked to the Britons to name their sites. Modern scholarship confirms that Glevum Latinizes a lost British word glaivon related to Welsh gloew, 'bright'. This need not mean that the name is pre-Roman. The Latin ending -um can be inflected -i and -o to convey the additional meanings 'at', 'of' and 'from'.

The name is located at Gloucester by the Antonine Itinerary, a third-century road book in the corrupt form Clevo, a scribe's error for Glevo. In the Ravenna Cosmography, a gazetteer based on fourth-century sources, it appears as Glebon colonia, Glebon being a lapse into the patois of the author's native Ravenna.

Oddly, the standard spelling appears only in inscriptions to men of Glevum who moved elsewhere. A lost tomb stone at Bath had coloniae Glev, a tombstone at Rome has Glevi with Ner, in allusion to the emperor Nerva, and a soldier's discharge certificate of the Antonine era (149-190) from Colchester has Glevi alone. The full form of the name can be restored by analogy as colonia Nerviana Glevensis, or -ium, 'the Nervian colony Gloucestrian' or 'of the Gloucestrians'.

The people of Roman and dark-age Britain wrote Latin but spoke British. Nennius, a Welsh priest of the late eighth century, gives the British name Cair Gloiv, 'bright citadel', alongside a Saxon equivalent, Britannico sermone Cair Gloiv, Saxonice autem Gloecester. In the mid-twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth said that the name Kaer Glov was still current, but the contemporary Chronicle of the princes (Brut y Tywysogion) adopted the modem Welsh form Kaer Loyw.

The Saxons captured the place in 577. They assimilated the name to their word gleaw, 'wise' and, as usual at a Roman site, added the suffix ceastre, 'city'. Gleaweceastre is the usual form in Anglo-Saxon charters and pre-conquest versions of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. In the eleventh century this was commonly modified to Gleweceaster, especially on pennies of the local mint where it is spelt Glee - with a runic wyn substituted for W.

A few pennies of Harthacriut (1035-1042), apparently under British influence, spell the name Gleov. Variants of this form were favoured by the Norman conquerors, who followed their usual practice in changing -ceastre to -cestre. Domesday Book, in 1086, has Glowecestre. Title deeds collected in the Cartulary of Gloucester Abbey show that the modern spelling prevailed from about 1100, initially Latinized as Gloucestria.

Since then the spoken name has diverged from the Anglo-Norman written name. The loss of the middle syllable is first documented by phonetic spellings Glowster in Thombury parish register for 1618 and Gloster in Leonard Stanley parish register for 1666. The shortening of the first syllable may be documented by the spelling Glocester or Glocestria which has recurred sporadically since it first occurred in the Tewkesbury Annals for 1148.

Today most people pronounce it short but the city's rugby football club supporters' chant Glou-ster, Glou-­ster preserves an older pronunciation of the ancient name.

The author is grateful for the help of the staff of the Gloucester Reference Library.

References

1. SMITH A H. Place-names of Gloucestershire.Cambridge.1965. 2.123-5
2. RIVET A L F. & SM1TH C, Place-names of Roman Britain. London. 1979. 368-9.
3. GELLING M. 'The mint names' in Sylloge of coins of the British Isles 19 Bristol and Gloucester Museums. London. 1972. 113-4
4. HASSAL M W C. In his contribution to the proceedings of the 'Glevum 97' conference evidence was given for using colonia Nerviana rather than colonia Nervia.