RETHINKING ROMANO-BRITISH *CORINIUM Richard Coates, FSA Richard Coates, FSA, Bristol Centre for Linguistics, University of the West of England, Bristol BS16 1QY, United Kingdom. E-mail:
[email protected] It is suggested that the name generally accepted as the Romano-British name of Cirencester, *Corinium, the traditional spelling deriving from a Latin rendering of that in Ptolemy’s Geography, is mistaken, and that for philologically sound reasons the authentic name is more likely to have been Cironium, as recorded in the Ravenna Cosmography. The ancient name of the town of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, has caused considerable problems of interpretation. It is recorded in the second century C. E. in Ptolemy’s Geography (II, 3, 13) as Korínion (variants Korínnion, Korónion).1 Korínion, taken as authentic, has generally understood to represent a Romano-British *Corinium.2 The most recent commentators, A. L. F. Rivet and Colin Smith, do not state in which of the many surviving manuscripts of Ptolemy the variants occur. I have not been able to locate a variorum edition of the Geography, and I cannot therefore form an independent view on their relative authority. Ptolemy expert Dr Florian Mittenhuber has kindly provided me with the information set out in the Appendix, but I am responsible for the use made of it. Of the three forms, Korínion has always carried most weight so far, no doubt because it is overwhelmingly the most frequent form in the record. Korínnion is what we find in the MS. considered to show the most ancient features, whilst Korónion is a ghost-form, i.e.