Introduction
The "Britons" or "British" have been known to history, under several related names, for a period spanning 25 centuries.
It began when the Greek traveller Pytheas, in the fourth century BC, used the name "Pretaniké" to describe the island home of the Pretani. The Romans then continued this tradition, from at least the first century BC, with their name of Britannia, home to the Britanni.
These Britons spoke a language known variously as "Brittonic", "Brythonic" or "British", and the languages descended from it are still spoken today by over a million people.
In the year 1707, however, two events took place which have altered the common usage and understanding of the name British ever since.
The first was the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. This, despite being based upon the political union of the kingdom of England and Wales with the kingdom of Scotland, would result in the general practice of British being used as simply another word for English.
The second was the publication of Archaeologia Britannica by the linguist and scholar Edward Lhuyd. He, quite correctly, recognised affinities between the ancient British and Irish languages. His discovery, though, would lead to the gradual submergence of both in favour of the more fashionable category of Celtic.
The name British, then, which by 1707 was already over 2000 years old, became synonymous with English in the modern world and Celtic in the ancient one, and was in most respects lost to its original owners.
These pages have been produced to mark, rather than celebrate, the three-hundredth anniversary of both these events, and give an account of a people who neither call themselves English today, nor called themselves Celts yesterday.