Novitia
Attested: Novitia at position 253 in the Ravenna Cosmography, in the list of harbour estuaries.
Where: The mouth of the river Esk and/or the river Annan into the Solway Firth. Possibly the same as Ptolemy's Νοουιου river mouth. The name Newbie there might preserve a memory of Novitia. See here for a fine map of where the Rockliffe Marshes and river mouths are “constantly changing through accretion and erosion”.
Name Origin: Novitia is a late Latin variant spelling of the feminine (or neuter plural) of the adjective novicius ‘new, newly arrived’, the origin of modern English novice.
Notes: This name has long been identified with the river Nith, leading past Caerlaverock to Dumfries, but there is no obvious linguistic path for Novitia to evolve into Nith, and picking the Nith would make the Cosmography's sequence of harbours dogleg back from a smooth clockwise circuit. It now makes better sense to let Bdora claim the Nith and Anava the Waver+Wampool. See here for a full discussion of all Nith-like river names and here about *Novis, *Navis, etc in river names.
What was new at Novitia, and at Novia in the south? Judging by the many occurrences of Ad Novas across the Empire, newness lay in economic advances made possible by Roman markets and technology, and not in “freshness and verdure of the riverside” (Watson 1926:54-55), nor in arrivals of Gaels (speakers of Irish) already present centuries earlier than usually suggested. Ptolemy's Νοουανται seem to belong well to the west, since they had two πολεις, at Λουκοπιβια, probably near Wigtown, and at Ρεριγονιον, probably near Dunragit, plus the Νοουαντων peninsula and promontory, probably in Galloway.
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Last edited 5 September 2025 To main Menu