Matrushka; Hryvna

[David Bergdahl]

Jim Landau wrote

"Which brings up the etymology of "Galicia".  The region in Spain was, I am
told, named after the Gauls (the people who lived in Omnis Gallia), which is
confusing because the Spanish trace their ancestry to the "Celtiberians",
the
supposed merger of Celts with the pre-existing (proto-Basque?) Iberians.
Also, the region's name seems to be spelled "Galicia" but the local dialect
is "Gallego" (with palatalized "ll").

Is the Eastern European Galicia also named after the Gauls?  And if so how
did they get so far east, past the Goths into Slavic territory?"

Your assumption is wrong--the Gauls did not originate in the west and
migrate east, but originated in the east.  They first show up north of the
alps and then come in contact with the Romans in the Po Valley.  The
Germanic and Slavic peoples are later arrivals in northern and southwestern
Europe.

The Gauls, like the rest of the Celts--and all other
Indo-Europeans--originated in the east and spread westwards into Europe;
their origin has been contested over the last century but the center of the
competing hypotheses seems to be the area north of the Black Sea.  The Celts
first invade Italy around 400 BCE and battle the Romans at Clusium in 390
BCE, defeating the Roman army on the Allia, advance on Rome, burn it and
besiege the Capitol in 387 BCE--this is how they enter history, coming over
the alps in N. Italy. (Dates from Gerhard Herm, The Celts [1975]).

Jim McKillop (Dictionary of Celtic Mythology [1998]) says in part in his
entry for Gaul "The culture and the language of the Celts extended across
the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul ... what is today northern Italy down to the
Apennines; at various times Celtic dialect was also spoken in much of
northern Europe, from Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, much
of the Balkans, to Galatia in what is today Turkey."

The entry for Galatia says it is an "ancient district in central Anatolia
... settled in the 3rd century BC."
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"Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht"
--Albert Einstein