Camelot first appears in Chrétien de Troyes’ late 12th-century French romance Lancelot or The Knight in the Cart.

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Given that this story was very much his creation, the name is likely to have been made up, presumably based on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Camblan’ or Wace’s ‘Camble’, with ‘-lot’ added to fit the rhyme (meaning ‘share’, ‘fate’).

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