Bygone
Is
The
name of the town
Is
may be a derivative:
•
of a Celtic word meaning water or river;
• of a Latin name, Icius;
• of the name of the Egyptian goddess, Isis, who was widely
worshipped in Gallo-Roman times.
The
last hypothesis is generally considered less likely than the other two.
The
Tille, the river which is synonymous with the town, also poses a
problem, given that the town grew up around the Ignon, a
tributary of the Tille. How can this anomaly be explained?
· A
common misunderstanding at that time didn’t differentiate between
the Tille and the Ignon, which flows into the Tille five kilometres
south of the town. So the whole district was sometimes known as
“Pays des Tilles” (Tille District). This led to the idea that the
word “Tille” was understood locally to mean any river.
· The
word “Tille” may come from a pre-Latin root “Til”, meaning
river, a word which can be found today in “Tilchâtel” (the
village near the exit of the A31 motorway)