Burglars

With UK travels ahead of course the question of side trips has been raised. Two weeks of digging Roman stuff is great, but if one takes the trouble to fly across the pond it only makes sense to see a few other things.

Our eventual selection was different but for a while we considered Edinburgh up in Scotland.  

Which of course got me thinking about cities named "burg" and assorted variations on that theme.

When the Western portion of the Roman empire imploded in the 5th century urban areas overall did quite poorly.  And their modern names give us some clues.

A few places had sufficient value as trading centers that they more or less continued on under new management and under their old names.  Londinium to London for instance.

But most places in Britannia, and quite a few on the Continent, just became fortresses where post Roman war lords patched together earlier buildings and declared themselves rulers of all that they could see.  And perhaps a few hills beyond that.

If the fortifications they occupied were definitively Roman, and some measure of literacy lingered on a while, many of these communities were named after the Latin word for fort: castrum.  It has many varients, - chester being a common one.  Manchester, Lancaster and so forth.

In theory place names ending in - burg could also be considered to be from the Latin "burgus" meaning castle.  But this seems to be a borrowed word from Germanic sources. Certainly when the motley crew of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, various batches of Goths and Burgundians started stomping about they called their fortified places "burgs" whether or not they had Roman stones in the foundations.  Examples of places ending in -burg or its variant -borough are too numerous to bother listing.  The word can also mean mountain or high place.  You want to build your fortress up on high ground after all.

No doubt these were desperate times.  I'm sure more than a few of the surviving populace of the former Empire were reduced to poverty and were not bothered by whatever petty criminality they could get away with.

And what would you call somebody who stole from a "burg"?

Why, a burglar of course.*
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*Late Latin "burgare" to break open in the sense of breaking and entering a property. The l in burglar may be borrowed from "latro" Latin for thief.  From which we also get "larceny".