Abandinus was a theonym used to refer to a

Celtic god The gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples are known from a variety of sources, including ancient places of worship, statues, engravings, cult objects and place or personal names. The ancient Celts appear to have had a pantheon ...

or male spirit worshipped in

Godmanchester Godmanchester ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Huntingdonshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. It is separated from Huntingdon, to the north, by the valley of the River Great Ouse. Being on the Roman road network, the town has a lo ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

during the Romano-Celtic period.

Epigraphic evidence

Abandinus is represented in Britain on a single altarstone. He is unknown throughout the rest of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...

and is therefore thought to have been a local god of the Roman fort at

, possibly associated with either a natural spring or a stream in the neighbourhood. The Roman fort at

, a strategic site on

Ermine Street Ermine Street is a major Roman road in England that ran from London (''Londinium'') to Lincoln (''Lindum Colonia'') and York (''Eboracum''). The Old English name was ''Earninga Strǣt'' (1012), named after a tribe called the ''Earningas'', ...

at the crossing of the

River Great Ouse The River Great Ouse () is a river in England, the longest of several British rivers called "Ouse". From Syresham in Northamptonshire, the Great Ouse flows through Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk to drain into the Wa ...

, is thought to have been called Durovigutum.Dvrovigvtvm
The god is known only from an inscribed bronze feather, very likely some sort of votive object, dedicated to him. The inscription on the bronze feather reads:

"DEO ABANDINO VATIAVCVS D S D" *‘To the god Abandinus, Vatiacus dedicates this out of his own funds’.

Semantics of the theonym

The

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

of the

theonym A theonym (from Greek ''theos'' (Θεός), "god"'','' attached to ''onoma'' (ὄνομα), "name") is the proper name of a deity. Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics (the study of the etymology, history, and u ...

are unknown. All the same,

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

knowledge of

Proto-Celtic Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed through the compar ...

lexis Lexis may refer to: * Lexis (linguistics), the total bank of words and phrases of a particular language, the artifact of which is known as a lexicon *Lexis (Aristotle), a complete group of words in a language *LexisNexis, part of the LexisNexis onl ...

permits a narrowing of the likely possibilities of the theonym's semantics. The name could be interpreted as an extended form of a stem composed of

elements deriving from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

roots *''ad''- ‘to’ + either *''bʰend''- ‘sing, rejoice’ or *''bʰendʰ''- ‘bind’. Along these lines, the name would mean ‘(the god) who sings to (something/someone)’ or ‘(the god) who binds (something/someone) to (something/someone).’ However, it is also possible to see the name as an extended form of a variant form of the

word *''abon''- ‘river,’ derived from the

root *''ab''-, *''h₂eb-'' ‘water, river’.

Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch The ''Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch'' (''IEW''; "Indo-European Etymological Dictionary") was published in 1959 by the Austrian-German comparative linguist and Celtic languages expert Julius Pokorny. It is an updated and slimmed-down ...

:entry 2, ''Indogermanisches Wörterbuch'', 1. The shorter element *''abo''- likely existed in the

hydronomy as a word for ‘river’ or ‘water.’ It is evident in Romano-Celtic as an unspecific variant name for the rivers flowing into the

Humber The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal rivers Ouse and Trent. From there to the North Sea, it forms part of the boundary between th ...

, documented as ''Abus''. This element developed in

Modern Welsh The history of the Welsh language (Welsh: ''Hanes yr iaith Gymraeg'') spans over 1400 years, encompassing the stages of the language known as Primitive Welsh, Old Welsh, Middle Welsh, and Modern Welsh. Origins Welsh evolved from British, the Cel ...

as ''aber''- meaning ‘river estuary’. This *''abo''- element could have been the source of the ''Ab-''- element in the theonym ''Abandinus''. So the name can also be analysed as *''Ab-Andinus'' ‘

Andinus Andinus is an Illyrian god worshipped among the Dardanians in Moesia Superior. The only trace left is a name carved on an altar dedicated by a ''beneficiarus'' ("a foreigner"). Variants of the name such as ''Andia'' or ''Andio'' were common among ...

of the River,’

being a

attested elsewhere in the ancient

References

{{Celtic mythology (ancient) Gods of the ancient Britons Godmanchester