Random research trivia - Canterlot · 3:26pm Aug 8th, 2018

So I was reading a one-shot (I'm trying to use my free time at work to burn through my stack of unread one-shots, which I realized last week was over 200; I only just got the count under 200 yesterday) where the author substituted "Canterlot" with "Canterville" in their EQG fanfic, based on the understandable premise that a human city in a region damn similar to 20th century America would be unlikely to have a city named "Canterlot."

We'll ignore real-world city names like Albuquerque, Walla Walla, and Gaylordsville.

My amateur inner etymologist immediately balked, "That's not the proper humanizing of a pony-pun name!" Then I realized what I thought, and said to myself, "Wait, what, exactly, does 'Camelot,' the real-world origin of 'Canterlot', actually mean?"

A little research unveils the following:

"Camelot" is most likely derived from the town name of Camuladonum, itself a real-world location
Camuladonum transliterates to "Stronghold of Camulos"
From that point, we can derive that "Camelot" can be broken down to "Camel-", referring to a shortening of the name Camulos, and "-lot"
"Lot" in old/ancient English comes from the Proto-Germanic of either "hlutą" or "hlautiz." both of which can mean either the modern equivelant to lot (as in parcel or share, usually referring to land), or "Fate"
Given the way authors, especially those who dabble in the fantastic like the original Arthurian tales, like their word-play, it's likely that "Camelot" means both "Land of Camulos," and "Fate of Camulos"
This begs the question: Who is Camulos? Well, fans of Stargate SG-1 will recognize the name, at least somewhat. He's an old Germanic/Celtic god of combat and war.
Given the pony propensity for naming conventions built around everyday nouns and verbs (historically FAR more common than our modern abstracted names, by the way), we can presume that Canter (short for a longer name? 'Cantering [noun]' perhaps?) was either a mythical figure in one of the ancient pony tribes or a real figure who was a great military general of some repute at the time of Canterlot's founding. While it's possible the name references a historical non-fictional (heh) individual, given the likelihood that the name is a direct parallel to human world names (quantum entanglement and all that), we'll presume that Canter was a legendary character used by the city's founders.

So while it's possible, even likely, that there's an Equestrian town or small city named "Canterville," (side note: Possible rename for Ponyville for some far future setting where Canterlot grew to envelope Ponyville), the human/mirror universe alternate name for Canterlot would be Camelot, presuming the mirror world didn't simply also name Camulos "Canter...[something-or-other]".

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