The Old Irish cochaIl ('monk's hood'), Cornish cugol, Breton cougoul, and Welsh kwcwIl are loanwords from Latin.
The hooded health god was known as Telesphorus specifically and may have originated as a Greco-Gallic syncretism with the Galatians in Anatolia in the 3rd century BC.
[citation needed] The religious significance of these figures is still somewhat unclear, since no inscriptions have been found with them in this British context.
Ronald Hutton argues that in some cases they are carrying shapes that can be seen as eggs, symbolizing life and rebirth,[4] while Graham Webster has argued that the curved hoods are similar in many ways to contemporary Roman curved phallus stones.
[5] However, several of these figures also seem to carry swords or daggers, and Henig discusses them in the context of warrior cults.