Which European countries & regions do you consider as "Celtic"?

[Tomenable]

Which European countries & regions do you consider as "Celtic"?:

- Wales
- Ireland (island)
- Scotland
- Brittany
- Cornwall
- France
- Switzerland
- Belgium
- Spain
- Portugal
- North Italy
- Austria
- South Germany
- Czechia
- others (write which ones)

 

[thunorr]

Which European countries & regions do you consider as "Celtic"?:

- Wales
- Ireland (island)
- Scotland
- Brittany
- Cornwall
- France
- Switzerland
- Belgium
- Spain
- Portugal
- North Italy
- Austria
- South Germany
- Czechia
- others (write which ones)

Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, and Cornwall.

 

[Maciamo]

The choices are too restrictive. France and Spain are not homogeneous. It's not just Brittany in France that is Celtic. Most French people are a genetically close to La Tène Celts i.e. Gauls), but some regions have substantial germanic at mixture (Normandy, Hauts-de-France, Alsace), while others are neither really Celtic nor Germanic (Aquitaine, Corsica).

In Spain I think it is especially the Center and Northwest that are Celtic, especially Castile.

 

[Tamakore]

All of the above were largely Celtic speaking during the late Iron Age. So were the ancient Britons of England before and during the Roman occupation, so England should be on the list. The later influx of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Danes and Normans added a substantial minority, but the majority of English males remained R1b-L21 (like the Welsh, Scottish and Irish).

 

[HereToLearn]

To me it only makes sense to define Celtic in a cultural sense, therefore only the fringes of the British Isles and Brittany (even Cornwall is hardly Celtic today).

 

[Tomenable]

Check also my new thread about Y-DNA haplogroups:

T

Thread 'Ethnic breakdown of Y-DNA in Europe'

Sep 17, 2025

Check my ethnic breakdown of Y-DNA haplogroups in Europe:

Ethnic breakdown of Y-DNA in Europe

docs.google.com

I assigned haplogroups to ethnic groups in the following way:

Mesolithic: In Western Europe I2a & I2b; in Eastern & Central Europe only I2b.*
South European: G, J2, J1, E, T, H, L, F, R2, R1b-PF7562, R1b-Z2103, R1b-V88, etc.
Celtic-Italic-Beaker: R1b-P312 (except for R1b-L238), R1b-PF7589, R1b-S1194, etc.
Germanic: I1-M253, R1b-U106, R1b-L238, Q and also R1a in Western Europe.
Balto-Slavic:...

• Tomenable

• 

Populations with majority or plurality of Celtic-Italic-Beaker:

Irish
Welsh
Spanish
Scottish
Portuguese
French
Swiss

 

[Tomenable]

but the majority of English males remained R1b-L21 (like the Welsh, Scottish and Irish).

Actually not, R1b-U106 is slightly more numerous in England than R1b-L21.

 

[Tomenable]

There are Gallo-Romance languages which have a Celtic substrate which influenced lexicon and phonetics:

There is also the abundant toponomastic and some traditions, festivities and symbols which also survived:

Gallo-Romance languages - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Tomenable]

It is interesting that in Belgium Germanic Y-DNA is a bit more numerous than Celtic Y-DNA.

In terms of auDNA it is the opposite - Germanic and Gallic admixtures in northern Belgium:

Urbanization and genetic homogenization in the medieval Low Countries revealed through a ten-century paleogenomic study of the city of Sint-Truiden - Genome Biology

Background Processes shaping the formation of the present-day population structure in highly urbanized Northern Europe are still poorly understood. Gaps remain in our understanding of when and how currently observable regional differences emerged and what impact city growth, migration, and...

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com

 

[MOESAN]

It's true that it depends on what criteria you take as relevant...

 

[Pax Augusta]

There are Gallo-Romance languages which have a Celtic substrate which influenced lexicon and phonetics:

There is also the abundant toponomastic and some traditions, festivities and symbols which also survived:

Gallo-Romance languages - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The theory of an Iron Age substrate in modern languages is a nineteenth-century theory. It has never been fully proven, nor has it ever been fully discredited.

As usual, genetics, linguistics, culture, and ethnicity are all mixed together here. But this is also an old approach.

 

[MOESAN]

The theory of an Iron Age substrate in modern languages is a nineteenth-century theory. It has never been fully proven, nor has it ever been fully discredited.

As usual, genetics, linguistics, culture, and ethnicity are all mixed together here. But this is also an old approach.

There is a phoetic trait of some interest but it concerns nly P-Celtic dialects.
The French and western Romances evolution of *W- into *Gw- an then /g-/ had been considered in France as a Germanic effect spite it is completely foreign to Germanic trends (Germanic *W- stayed /w/- only in Britain where the Celtic input is very strong, and evolved into
/v-/. This evolution had some reflects in Iberian Romance and Gallo-Italian dialects. It did not appeared in the Romance *W- words of Gaulish origin because these words had been adoted in vulgar latin since a long enough time, where the evolution soon passed from /w-/ to /v-/ like in Germanic and Slavic languages whatever the origin of the word - I think it proves that some Celtic populations (under their own substratum influence?) kept on a relatively long time with this kind of phonetic trend which had an input on the Germanic words borrowed during the High Middle Ages ( and even on Arabic words borrowed in Spain). This evolution has taken place in the modern P- Celtic languages (*W- /w-/ > /gw-/) but without reduction to /g-/ as in French.