Cornovii

The etymology of the tribal name is uncertain. Although it is accepted that *corn literally means "horn", there is disagreement over whether or not this refers to the shape of the land. Malcolm Todd, in The South West to AD 1000 (1987), discusses the alternative etymologies that have been put forward. These include the name being a reference to dwellers in promontory forts, and an explanation hypothesised by Ann Ross in 1967 that the tribal names may be totemic cult-names referring to a "horned god" cult followed by the tribes, which Todd says may be cognate with the Gaulish Cernunnos or the unnamed horned god of the Brigantes. ==The Morris thesis==

In an attempt to explain the same name being used by the Midlands and Cornwall tribes, the historian John Morris put forward a theory in his work The Age of Arthur (1973), that a contingent of the Cornovii from the West Midlands was sent to Dumnonia in the mid-fifth century to rule the land there and keep out the invading Irish, seeing that a similar situation had occurred in North Wales.{{cite book Morris's theory is not generally accepted by modern scholarship. Philip Payton, in his book Cornwall: a history, says "...the Morris thesis is not widely accepted by archaeologists and early historians, and we may safely conclude that the Cornovii located west of the Tamar were an indigenous people quite separate from their namesakes in the Midlands and Caithness."{{cite book ==References==