The Texandri (also Texuandri; later Toxandri, Toxiandri, Taxandri) were a Germanic people living between the Scheldt and Rhine rivers in the 1st century AD. They are associated with a region mentioned in the late 4th century as Texandria (also Toxiandria; later Toxandria, Taxandria), a name which survived into the 8th–12th centuries. Name Attestations The only inscription that convincingly mentions the tribe is dated 100–225 AD and gives the form Texand(ri). It was found on an altar at Brocolitia (Carrowburgh Fort) near Hadrian's Wall. A more uncertain inscription from Romania dated 102/103 AD reads Texu<...>. They are also mentioned as Texuandri by Pliny (1st c. AD), which may suggest that the two forms Texuandri and Texandri co-existed already in the late-1st–2nd century AD. The variant form Toxiandria is only attested once in a 9th-century manuscript of Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae (ca. 390) to designate the region. The form Taxandria occurs five times in 9th-century sources, and also in later documents. The inconsistencies in spelling may be explained by dittography (errors by copyists), or by the fact that the older form Texandri had fallen out of usage at the time when those manuscripts were redacted. Etymology The ethnonym Texandri, reconstructed in early West Germanic dialects as *tehswandrōz, is generally assumed to derive from the Proto-Germanic stem *tehswō(n)- ('right [hand], south'; cf. Old Saxon tesewa, Gothic taihswa, 'right, south') attached to the contrasting suffix *-dra-. The name can thus be interpreted as meaning 'those of who live south/on the right bank [of the Meuse or Rhine river'], and the region of Texandria as the 'land of the southerners'. Alternatively, J. Mansion has proposed in 1924 an alternative etymology from *texs-wandra-, formed with the West Germanic steù wandra-, which might be related to English wander and Dutch wandelen. It has also been speculated that Texandri may be a Latinized form of the Gaulish tribal name Eburones, since eburos and taxus mean 'yew' in Gaulish and Latin, respectively. The region of Texandria, attested as Toxiandriam ca. 390 (pagus Texandrie in 709), and the city of Tessenderlo, attested as Tessenderlon in 1135, are probably named after the tribe. Geography The Texandri dwelled in a territory situated between the Scheldt and Rhine rivers, alongside other contemporary tribes like the Tungri. Roman writer Pliny (1st c. AD) connected the Texandri to the river Scaldis (modern Scheldt) but the handwritten versions of the sentence a Scaldi incolunt <?> Texuandri