in the Ancient Geography. The ancients denominated those people and places Hyperborean which were to the northward of the Scythians. They had but very little acquaintance with these Hyperborean regions; and all they tell us of them is very precarious, much of it false. Diodorus Siculus says, the Hyperboreans were thus called by reason they dwelt beyond the wind Boreas; ἀνωτέρω, signifying, "above or beyond," and ἀνωτέρω, Boreas, the "north wind." This etymology is very natural and plausible; notwithstanding all that Rudbeck has said against it, who would have the word to be Gothic, and to signify nobility. Herodotus doubts whether or not there were any such nations as the Hyperborean. Strabo, who professes that he believes there are, does not take hyperborean to signify beyond Boreas or the north, as Herodotus understood it: the preposition ἀνωτέρω, in this case, he supposes only to help to form a superlative; so that hyperborean, on his principles, means no more than most northern; by which it appears the ancients scarce knew themselves what the name meant.—Most of our modern geographers, as Hoffman, Cellarius, &c. have placed the Hyperboreans in the northern parts of the European continent, among the Siberians and Samoieds: according to them, the Hyperboreans of the ancients were those in general who lived farther to the north. The Hyperboreans of our days are those Russians who inhabit between the Volga and the White sea. According to Cluver, the name Celtes was synonymous with that of Hyperboreans.