from the Latin word . A proposed alternative meaning is "the settlement of (a man named) ," a Celtic personal name spelled variously in different documents as , and : when combined with the Celtic possessive suffix , the word could be used to denote the property of a man with this name. The name became the Anglian in the 7th century: a compound of , from the old name, and , meaning “village,” probably by conflation of the element with a Germanic root ('boar'); by the 7th century, the Old English for 'boar' had become . When the Danish army conquered the city in 866, it was renamed . The Old French and Norman name of the city following the Norman Conquest was recorded as (modern Norman ) in works such as Wace's Roman de Rou. , meanwhile, gradually reduced to York in the centuries after the Conquest, moving from the Middle English in the 14th century through in the 16th century to Yarke in the 17th century. The form York was first recorded in the 13th century. Many company and place names, such as the Ebor race meeting, refer to the Latinised Brittonic, Roman name. The 12th‑century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his fictional account of the prehistoric kings of Britain, , suggests the name derives from that of a pre-Roman city founded by the legendary king Ebraucus. The Archbishop of York uses Ebor as his surname in his signature. History Early history Archaeological evidence suggests that Mesolithic people settled in the region of York between 8000 and 7000 BC, although it is not known whether their settlements were permanent or temporary. By the time of the Roman conquest of Britain, the area was occupied by a tribe known to the Romans as the Brigantes. The Brigantian tribal area initially became a Roman client state, but later its leaders became more hostile and the Roman Ninth Legion was sent north of the Humber into Brigantian territory. The city was founded in 71 AD, when the Ninth Legion conquered the Brigantes and constructed a wooden military fortress on flat ground above the River Ouse close to its confluence with the River Foss. The fortress, whose walls were rebuilt in stone by the VI legion based there subsequent to the IX legion, covered an area of and was inhabited by 6,000 legionary soldiers. The site of the principia (HQ) of