"Our own honour, Voadicea, or Boodicea; By some Bunduica, and Bunduca: Queen of the Iceni."
Ben Jonson, The Masque of Queens (1609)
"Boudicca" is the form given by Tacitus (Agricola, XVI) and is the only contemporary rendering of the name (in Dio, LXII.2, the name is transliterated as "Buduica"). Gildas (De Excidio Britanniae, I.6) possibly may refer to the queen when he mentions "the treacherous lioness" who killed the rulers left behind by Rome. In the Anglica Historia (1534) of Polydore Vergil, who introduced the queen to English readers, the name is rendered as "Boadicia" (II.5-6).
On philological evidence, the spelling probably should be "Boudica," a variation of "victory" in Celtic and the equivalent of the modern "Victoria." "Boadicea" is incorrect and the result of several errors in transcription.
This stained glass portrait of the queen is in the Colchester Town Hall, which is on the site of the original Roman forum. The same spelling identifies the monumental bronze statue of Boudica and her daughters on the embankment of the Thames, which dates from about the same time (1902).
