--- In cybalist@..., alexmoeller@... wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
> thank you Piotr. So there is cebanum and not coebanum.
> That confirms there is a ceban from Ceba cheese and second,
> from ceba cannot be coebanum , but cebanum how I supposed it
> should be right.
Actually, I think I've seen both spellings (though I can't quote the
sources for them off-hand), which would not be strange at all. The
Latin diphthongs <oe> and <ae> varied a great deal after <c->
(<coelum ~ caelum> 'sky'), and already in the time of the Empire they
merged with each other and with long /e:/ (cf. <caenum ~ coenum ~
ce:num> 'filth' or hypercorrect <caeno: ~ coeno:> for older
<ce:no:> 'dine'), in this context as well as in others, first in
rural Latin and then universally (<Phe:bus> for <Phoebus>, etc.).
<Ce:ba> for <Coeba> (or even the other way round) would have been
perfectly all right in Pliny's time. Unfortunately, ancient Ceba was
not a particularly famous place (other than cheesewise) and was only
sporadically mentioned, so the "most correct" form of its name is
hard to determine.
Piotr