The name of London is derived from a word first attested, in Latinised form, as Londinium. By the first century CE, this was a commercial centre in Roman Britain.
The etymology of the name is uncertain. There is a long history of mythicising etymologies, such as the twelfth-century Historia Regum Britanniae asserting that the city's name is derived from the name of King Lud who once controlled the city. However, in recent times a series of alternative theories have also been proposed. As of 2017, the trend in scholarly publications supports derivation from a Brittonic form *Londonjon.[1][2]
- ^ Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages, Routledge Studies in Linguistics, 13 (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 57.
- ^ Theodora Bynon, 'London's Name', Transactions of the Philological Society, 114:3 (2016), 281–97, doi: 10.1111/1467-968X.12064.
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