There are various accounts relating how England (and Caledonia) for a while came to be called Albion. The two most prominent date to Roman times: that on a clear day from northern Gaul the sight of the white cliffs of Dover gave rise to the belief that this country was entirely white; or that this was the name given to the country by Julius Caesar following his first attempt to invade our shores and upon espying these cliffs for the first time. Both of these accounts cite that the word ‘Albion’, also originally favoured by the Greeks as the name for our island, came from the root ‘alb’ in both Greek and Latin meaning ‘white’, hence also: albatross, albedo, albino, album, albumen etc… and would have therefore been appropriate as a simple description.

Personally I like this theory, one that I’ve known about, and believed, for a long time. I can imagine Caesar at the prow of his trireme espying the cliffs of Dover (or whatever they were called then) for the first time, his cape billowing in the wind, exclaiming: “Blimey, they’re white!” and several people who I have talked to about this have cited accounts by Tacitus and Pliny the Elder, which they claim back up these theories.

However, in researching today’s entry, not only have I found no evidence that either of these Roman historians used the word when relating the story about Caesar, but also I’ve found out its all a bit more complicated linguistically too. Here’s the etymology according to Wikipedia:

“The Brittonic name for the island, Hellenized as Albíōn (Ἀλβίων) and Latinized as Albio (genitive Albionis), derives from the Proto-Celtic nasal stem *Albi̯iū (oblique *Albiion-) and survived in Old Irish as Albu (genitive Albann). The name originally referred to Britain as a whole, but was later restricted to Caledonia (giving the modern Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland, Alba). The root *albiio- is also found in Gaulish and Galatian albio- (“world”) and Welsh elfydd (elbid, “earth, world, land, country, district”). It may be related to other European and Mediterranean toponyms such as Alpes and Albania. It has two possible etymologies: either *albho-, a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “white” (perhaps in reference to the white southern shores of the island, though Celtic linguist Xavier Delamarre argued that it originally meant “the world above, the visible world”, in opposition to “the world below”, i.e., the underworld), or *alb-, Proto-Indo-European for “hill”.”

So now I’m left only able to say that maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t anything to do with the chalk cliffs, or Caesar. This is a bit irritating. On the other hand it’s an ill wind… I can now see many happy hours ahead of me trying to find out what a ‘Proto-Celtic nasal stem’ is instead.