Before the 5th century BC, the city was known as "Argantorati" (in the nominative, "Argantorate" in the locative), a Celtic Gaulish name Latinised first as "Argentorate" (with Gaulish locative ending, as appearing on the first Roman milestones in the 1st century BC) and then as "Argentoratum" (with regular Latin nominative ending, in later Latin texts). That Gaulish name is a compound of "-rati", the Gaulish word for fortified enclosures, cognate to the Old Irish "ráth" (see ringfort) and "arganto(n)-" (cognate to Latin "argentum", which gave modern French "argent"), the Gaulish word for silver, but also any precious metal, particularly gold, suggesting either a fortified enclosure located by a river gold mining site, or hoarding gold mined in the nearby rivers.