Manapii

The Manapii (Ancient Greek: Μανάπιοι) are an ancient tribe from southeastern Ireland mentioned by Greek geographer Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD.

They were later attested as (Fir) Manach (var. Manaig, Monaig) in the Early Christian period, a tribe dwelling further north in County Down and near Lough Erne which gave its name to the modern County Fermanagh.^[1][2] Early Irish genealogists mentioned that the Manaig had emigrated from the south of Leinster.^[1]

Name

The ethnonym Manapii has been phonetically compared with the Gaulish Menapii, a tribe from northern Gaul first recorded in the 1st century BC.^[1][2] Those names may ultimately derive from a Proto-Celtic form reconstructed as *Menak^wī or *Manak^wī.^[3] The etymology is uncertain. It could mean the 'mountain people' or the 'high-living people', from the root *mon- ('mountain', cf. MWelsh mynydd, OBret. monid), or else derive from the root *men- ('think, remember'; cf. OIr. muinithir 'think', Welsh mynnu 'wish').^[4][3]

According to scholar Patrick Sims-Williams, the name Manapii may have been imported by settlers from Britain, for it shows a P-Celtic form that possibly came to be assimilated in the local Irish dialect as *Manak^wī > Manaig.^[2]

References

1. Foster 2000, p. 4.
2. Sims-Williams 2007, pp. 329–330.
3. Falileyev 2010, s.v. Menapii.
4. Isaac, Graham, "Place-Names in Ptolemy's Geography : An Electronic Data Base with Etymological Analysis of Celtic Name Elements". CD-ROM. 2004, CMCS Publications, Aberystwyth.

Bibliography

• Falileyev, Alexander (2010). Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-names: A Celtic Companion to the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. CMCS. ISBN 978-0955718236.
• Foster, R. F. (2000). The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-289323-9.
• Sims-Williams, Patrick (2007). "Common Celtic, Gallo-Brittonic and Insular Celtic". In Lambert, Pierre-Yves; Pinault, Georges-Jean (eds.). Gaulois et Celtique Continental. Librairie Droz. ISBN 978-2600013376.