The root is keltoi, the ancient greek word for foreigners. According to Caesar the people of Gaul called themselves Celts.

It seems we've had this discussion before.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34586656

I should have said that celtic <b>entered</b> the English language via French and that the correct pronunciation is <b>seltic</b>.

In any case, the Scots, Welsh and Irish are about as Celtic as my uncle Mustapha bin Abdul.

J R Hartley wrote: &quot;In any case, the Scots, Welsh and Irish are about as Celtic as my uncle Mustapha bin Abdul.&quot;

Wow! My precursors (note that I don't say ancestors) ranged even further that I had supposed. Does he speak a Brythonic or a Goidelic language?

As a Turk, his precursors would have spoken Galatian, a now extinct Continental Celtic language, and so would be closer to Celtiberian and Gaulish than to the insular Celtic Languages you cite.

When I was a young English teacher and announced that it could be pronounced either way, an older English teacher, very categorically, told me &quot;it's Keltic.&quot; I'm glad to know there's some room for disagreement on this.

Where is that %&amp;*# now!!!

Hi Pal,

have you nothing better to do on your travels than find daft threads for us to answer?

but then you are in Tonbridge for goodness sake, so I've just answered my own question. [just think dundee on a wet sunday afternoon with even less to do].

the cornish think of themselves as Celts [or Kelts if you prefer] like the welsh, Bretons, etc. recent DNA testing revealed that they have most in common with the Basques of northern spain. how did that happen?

regards, ann

annhig, apparently northern Spain was settled by Celts who spoke a form of Celtic called Celtiberian. Apparently, the Celtiberian people formed when Celts migrated from France to Spain and bred with the local populace.

In Ireland we say Keltic unless when referring to the football team who are Glasgow Seltic.

Either pronunciation is correct. Which pronunciation is preferred depends on where you are (e.g., England, the USA, or Ireland) and the context, but neither is incorrect, EXCEPT if a team or some other entity chooses one pronunciation or the other for its name; e.g., the Boston (S)eltics basketball team. In this case, (S)eltics would be the correct pronunciation.

I've only ever heard Keltic when listening to Irish/Scottish/Welsh music. Seltic for the sports teams. When I first came across the difference, it was when speaking to a Welshman living in America, he was quite insistent that it was Keltic. That's the first time I'd heard the hard C sound for it.

Of course, I have also heard Seltic in a song by Steve McDonald, a new age Scottish musician.

And I've seen Keltoi from the Greeks.

I think there is no hard and fast rule, but certainly popular preferences. I call it Keltic unless I'm talking sports (which I rarely do) :)

&quot;Apparently, the Celtiberian people formed when Celts migrated from France to Spain and bred with the local populace&quot;

Genetics has thrown the migration theory out of the window.

It was language and culture that spread, not people.

Annhig. It that the British and Irish came to the islands about 15000 years ago from Spain, and no subsequent migration, be it Roman, Viking, Saxon, Norman, or anything else has impacted any more than 5% of the gene pool.

The English aren't Anglo-Saxons, and the rest (for which I couldn't give tuppence) are not Celts.