Editing Gloucester (section)

==Toponymy==
From the city's Roman name, ''[[Glevum]]'', [[Anglo-Saxon]] migrants after 410, with their fledgling feudal structure, the [[Kingdom of Wessex]], replaced the area's Romano-Celtic society and changed the city's name to ''Caerloyw'' ({{IPA|cy|kaɨrˈlɔɨʊ, kairˈlɔiʊ|IPA}}),<ref>{{cite web |title=History of Gloucester |url=http://www.corse.org.uk/history-of-gloucester/ |publisher=CORSE |access-date=3 May 2021 |archive-date=3 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210503115723/http://www.corse.org.uk/history-of-gloucester/ |url-status=unfit}}</ref> Gloucester's name in modern [[Welsh Language|Welsh]], while recognising the presence of the Roman fort. ''Caerloyw'' is a compound of ''caer'', meaning 'fort, stronghold, castle', and ''loyw'', a [[Colloquial Welsh morphology#Soft mutation|lenition]] of ''gloyw'' as it would have been pronounced by many speakers, meaning 'bright, shiny, glowy'.

A variant of the term ''[[Chester (placename element)|-cester/chester/caster]]'' instead of the Welsh ''[[caer]]'' was eventually adopted. The name Gloucester thus means roughly "bright fort". Mediaeval orthographies include ''Caer Glow'', ''Gleawecastre'' and ''Gleucestre''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ekwall |first=Eilert |author-link=Eilert Ekwall |title=The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names |year=1960 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-869103-7 |page=199}}</ref>

This etymology was first suggested by the Austrian philologist, Alfred Holder, in 1896. An alternative etymology has been proposed, which argues that the first element of the place-name is related to a Welsh word signifying 'valiant', rendering 'Gloucester' to mean 'fortress of the valiant'.<ref>John Walter Taylor, [https://archive.org/details/dumbleton-and-the-celtic-substrate//page/23/mode/2up "Dumbleton and the Celtic Substrate"] (Dublin, 2022)</ref>