This word is explained in every dictionary, English, Latin, or French,
as a general name for the indigenous inhabitants of a country; when in
reality it is the proper name of a peculiar people of Italy, who were
not indigenous, but supposed to have been a colony of Arcadians. The
error has been founded chiefly on the supposed derivation of the word
from _ab origine_. Never (except in Swift’s ludicrous work) was a more
eccentric etymology--a preposition, with its governed case, made plural
by the modern final s! The university of Oxford, some years ago, added
to this solecism by a public prize poem on the Aboriginal Britons.
The most rational etymology of the word seems to be a compound of the
Greek words απο, ορος, and γενος, a race of mountaineers. So Virgil
calls them,
“--Genus indocile ac dispersum montibus altis.”
It seems more probable, that the name of the oldest settlers in Italy
should have a Greek than a Latin derivation.
The preceding remarks are by a late poet-laureate, Mr. Pye, who
concludes by inquiring, what should we say of the etymologist who were
to deduce the name of an ancient British tribe from the modern English?
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