Etymology of London
[1][2] Richard Coates, in the 1998 article where he published his own theory of the etymology, lists all the known occurrences of the name up to around the year 900, in Greek, Latin, British and Anglo-Saxon.
He observes that the modern spelling with
Following regular sound changes in the two languages, the Welsh name would have been *Lunnen or similar, and Old English would be *Lynden via i-mutation.
Peter Schrijver (2013) by way of explaining the medieval forms Lunden and Llundein considers two possibilities: Schrijver therefore concludes that the name of Londinium underwent phonological changes in a local dialect (either British Celtic or British Latin) and that the recorded medieval forms in Welsh and Anglo-Saxon would have been derived from that dialectal pronunciation.
Coates says (p. 211) that "The earliest non-mythic speculation ... centred on the possibility of deriving London from Welsh Llyn din, supposedly 'lake fort'.
[3] Another suggestion, published in The Geographical Journal in 1899, is that the area of London was previously settled by Belgae who named their outposts after townships in Gallia Belgica.
[11] But Coates argues that there is no such personal name recorded, and that D'Arbois' suggested etymology for it (from Celtic *londo-, 'fierce') would have a short vowel.
The etymology of this *Lōondonjon would however lie in pre-Celtic Old European hydronymy, from a hydronym *Plowonida, which would have been applied to the Thames where it becomes too wide to ford, in the vicinity of London.
Jean-Gabriel Gigot in a 1974 article discusses the toponym of Saint-Martin-de-Londres, a commune in the French Hérault département.
In Historia Regum Britanniae, the name is described as originating from King Lud, who seized the city Trinovantum and ordered it to be renamed in his honour as Kaerlud.
