I’ve written a previous piece on what I think the ancient post-Roman name for South Shields, Caer Urfa, could mean, and I now believe this is wrong!
Image by expert aerial photographer Peace Drone: x.com/DronePeace & youtube.com/@PeaceDroneAerialVideo/videos
This is because of the principle of Occam’s Razor: that the most simple explanation of something is likely the correct explanation.
Caer means castle in Brythonic (Archaic Welsh). Many towns and settlements have or had ‘caer’ in their names, such as Carlisle and Cardiff. It is a cognate with castrum in Latin which became ‘caster’ and ‘chester’.
Ufer is ‘riverbank’ and ‘shore’ in German (Low German) which translates as oever in Dutch.
So surely Caer Urfa means ‘Shore Fort’. We know from the archaeological record and from 16th century antiquary John Leland, that the Roman fort and vicus had been repurposed after the Romans abandoned the place.
If this is the correct meaning, it represents a hybrid of Brittonic and Old English, which is not uncommon but very interesting to consider. Ports have always been mixing places and an important one like South Shields surely has been that since ancient times.
My other musings on the name:
Listen to the audio for this post here:
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No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Hi Luan
I tend to think that the associations probably have a different root.
Septimus Severus and his wife were Arabs – a Libian and a Syrian.
They married at Lugudunum and had a son we know as Caracalla.
Both had significant input to the Hadrian wall and Antonine walls.
No doubt, they both were at Arbeia as a natural dock for seafaring to and fro.
Caracalla died between Harran and Edessa, otherwise known as Urfa.
Urfa according to Islamic tradition is where Abraham was born. It is an important Roman site also, and heavily relates to the first Jewish revolt, as the princes of Urfa began it according to Josephus.
The presence of Aramaic at South Shields is therefore not unsurprising. Neither is the name Arbeia therefore.
Caracalla is also known to have been a Serapist, converting the temples of Bacchus and Hercules to Serapis. Both former deities being basically derivatives of the Osirian archetypes anyway.
The Car of Caracalla, likely are rooted way back in the Gothic languages of the Anatolian area that utilized the hydrophonic aspects of Kar and Gar, Cal and Gal, relating to enclosure of things, or the idea of a rock worn by water etc. Though it is usually stated that his name came from his Celtic cowl – which is likely rooted in the same Kal/Cal root, in the sense of a protective surround. And the Calla likely related to ‘gala’.
The Caer is then related to the same idea rooted in the idea of a fort or castle being an enclosure, where things are protected by the hard surround. In a castle we also have a keep – and to keep is related to the idea of bearing something to bring in, and to care for. Care also holding on to that car/kar idea of an enclosure.
I also suspect strongly that the other water related rock words have worked into the Ar root of Arcturus, and other bear-related symbolism. The bear being the totem of enclosure from the maternal and mothering sense, as the bear bears the bairns when they are born – all of the same etymology. A creature also associated with rivers as their natural feeding ground. Also a symbol of great strength as an apex creature. Most bears were brown in Europe, and Ar also relates to brown or bronze, which is most likely the origin of the AR in arcturus, and the Ur in ursa, relating to strength.
They also have similarity to the name of the Egyptian god Osiris as Asar, or wsir, lord of inundation, later life and death, harvest etc. The syncretism would have transferred one animal totem to another regional animal, lions for bears perhaps?
Both Osisris and Lugh are from the same root and both associated with Orion, the hunter, whose essence was the waters of life, and the subject of the tear of Isis – or wsir.
That all this associated symbolism is found at the hmouth of the Tyne, and the Tyne relting to Serapis/Cor wearing the modius or water and grain is not likely coincidental 😉
Related to Abraham, is that he is, according to Biblical sources, from Ur of the Chaldees. Thus making Urfa Ur.
Scholars have denied that there is any link between Chalybes, the Chaldoi and the Chaldeans of Babylon and the Celts or Celtoi.
I beg to differ.
And the hydrophonic development of the Gothic form from the Danube area down through Anatolia into Syria and Iraq seems consistent too. Often relating to Car/Cal Gar/Gal (as in Charchemish etc.) Chalebes being the origin of our word chalybeate, relating to iron-bearing water. It is also the same regional origin of the St George myth and red cross.
The Romans being here after all to take our iron. And the Romans were the ultimate syncretists, bringing cultural references from the entire empire to local regions that retain words relating to those roots. These were pragmatic polytheists all through their history. And explains a lot about their use of gods of their empire such as Serapis (Osiris), Bacchus, Mithras etc. in our region. Even finding inscriptions in Aramaic are suggested.