Abandinus was a theonym used to refer to a Celtic god or male spirit worshipped in Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire during the Romano-Celtic period.[1]
Abandinus is represented in Britain on a single altarstone. He is unknown throughout the rest of the Roman Empire and is therefore thought to have been a local god of the Roman fort at Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire, possibly associated with either a natural spring or a stream in the neighbourhood.[2]
The Roman fort at Godmanchester, a strategic site on Ermine Street at the crossing of the River Great Ouse, is thought to have been called Durovigutum.[3] The god is known only from an inscribed bronze feather, very likely some sort of votive object, dedicated to him.[3] The inscription on the bronze feather reads:
"DEO ABANDINO VATIAVCVS D S D"
- ‘To the god Abandinus, Vatiacus dedicates this out of his own funds’.[3]
The semantics of the theonym are unknown. All the same, linguistic knowledge of Proto-Celtic lexis permits a narrowing of the likely possibilities of the theonym's semantics. The name could be interpreted as an extended form of a stem composed of Proto-Celtic elements deriving from Proto-Indo-European roots *ad- ‘to’[4] + either *bʰend- ‘sing, rejoice’[5] or *bʰendʰ- ‘bind’.[6] Along these lines, the name would mean ‘(the god) who sings to (something/someone)’ or ‘(the god) who binds (something/someone) to (something/someone).’
However, it is also possible to see the name as an extended form of a variant form of the Proto-Celtic word *abon- ‘river,’ derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *ab-, *h₂eb- ‘water, river’.[7] The shorter element *abo- likely existed in the Proto-Celtic hydronomy as a word for ‘river’ or ‘water.’ It is evident in Romano-Celtic as an unspecific variant name for the rivers flowing into the Humber, documented as Abus. This element developed in Modern Welsh as aber- meaning ‘river estuary’. This *abo- element could have been the source of the Ab-- element in the theonym Abandinus. So the name can also be analysed as *Ab-Andinus ‘Andinus of the River,’ Andinus being a theonym attested elsewhere in the ancient Roman Empire.