Lexovii

The Lexovii (Gaulish: *Lexsouioi, 'the leaning ones', possibly 'the lame') were a Gallic people who lived on the Channel coast, west of the mouth of the Seine, during the Iron Age and the Roman period. Their name survives in that of Lisieux, the capital of their civitas, and in the Lieuvin region. They took part in the Gallic Wars, and after the conquest they struck an unusual civic coinage in bronze, the only one of its kind known in Gaul. They are mentioned as Lexovii (variant Lexobii) and Lexovios by Caesar (mid-1st century BC), as Lēxobíous (Ληξοβίους) and Lēxooúioi (Ληξοούιοι) by Strabo (early 1st century AD), as Lexovios (variants lexobios, lixouios) by Pliny (1st century AD), and as Lēxoubíōn (Ληξουβίων, variant Λειξουβίων) and Lēxoúbioi (Ληξούβιοι, variant Λιξούβιοι) by Ptolemy (2nd century AD). The ethnonym Lexovii is a Latinized form of the Gaulish Lexsouioi (singular Lexsouios), interpreted as 'the leaning ones', possibly 'the lame', a derivative of the adjective leksu- ('oblique'; cf. Old Irish losc 'lame' and Welsh llesg 'feeble', 'crippled'). An exact parallel has been highlighted in the Welsh llechwedd ('slope'), from an earlier *lexsouíiā. Xavier Delamarre takes Lexovii to be an exonym, a nickname given to the people by their neighbours, on the ground that a people would not call itself 'the lame'. Bernard Sergent has questioned this. He notes that most Gaulish ethnonyms are generally self-designations, and that lameness carried positive associations in Celtic and wider Indo-European tradition, linked to royal and warrior figures, so that 'the lame' could as easily be a self-designation. The city of Lisieux, attested ca. 400 AD as civitas Lexoviorum ('civitas of the Lexovii', Loxovias in 614, Lisiue in 1024), and the region of Lieuvin, attested in the 6th c. as Luxoviensis (pagus Lisvinus in 802, Liévin in 1155), are named after the Gallic tribe.