Eboracum recognise that the Multangular Tower was Roman in date in a 1683 paper with the Royal Society. John Horsley's 1732 "Britannia Romana", or 'The Roman Antiquities of Britain', included a chapter on Roman York and at least partly informed Francis Drake's 1736 "Eboracum" – the first book of its kind on Roman York. Drake also published accounts in the "Philosophical Transactions" of the Royal Society. The Rev. Charles Wellbeloved was one of the founders of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and a curator of the antiquities in the Yorkshire Museum until his death in 1858. He published a systematic account of
Eboracum "Eburaci", on a wooden stylus tablet from the Roman fortress of Vindolanda in what is now the modern Northumberland. During the Roman period, the name was written both "Eboracum" and "Eburacum" (in nominative form) . The name "Eboracum" comes from the Common Brittonic "Eburākon", which means "yew tree place". The word for "yew" was "*ebura" in Proto-Celtic (cf. Old Irish "ibar" "yew-tree", (older "iobhar"), , "alder buckthorn", "alder buckthorn"), combined with the proprietive suffix "*-āko(n)" "having" (cf. Welsh "-og", Gaelic "-ach") meaning "yew tree place" (cf. "efrog" in Welsh, "eabhrach/iubhrach" in Irish Gaelic and "eabhrach/iobhrach" in Scottish Gaelic, by which