> I find it easier to believe that those names would be Nordwestblock names rather than Illyrian or Etruscan. Why would Illyrians and Etruscans be found so far away from their homelands? Is there other evidence for these ethnic groups in Germania and Britain besides several possible names (which could be of other origin, e.g. Nordwestblock) ? Latin perhaps survived to some extent after the Romans left Britain, so the Anglo-Saxons may have subjugated a people that spoke Latin or a descendant of it (and Latin names may have permeated the Celts in Britain), I don't know what history has to say about this.
> About Venetic, well, despite your many messages on this topic over the past couple of years, I never really learned the details about this people's distribution that you offered, or what current scholarly opinion is in this area. I only remember what Wiki says about it, that it was spoken in the eastern Italy and Slovenia area. To me it seems as likely a candidate for a Germanic substrate as Illyrian or Etruscan. If you are right, Torsten, about your idea of these names representing a Germanic substrate, then I would vote for them being Nordwestblock names, with Latin a close second.
Meditate on this:
http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ cybalist/ message/64648
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Urnfield
Note that neither here
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ File:UrnfieldCul ture.jpg
nor here
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ File:Hallstatt_ culture.png
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ File:Hallstatt_ LaTene.png
(from
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Hallstatt_ culture
)
in the area of Insular Celtic languages included.
This means (Stephen Oppenheimer pointed this out) that either
1) the Insular Celtic languages are not Celtic, or
2) Hallstatt and La Tène cultures are not Celtic cultures.
Chew on that. There's no way around it, I'm afraid.
Note that NWBlock (the southern part) is within the La Tène area, so is Southern England, so is Illyria (Dardani on the map) and so is the Po River plain (NE Italy), the old haunts of the Etruscans (between the Raetians
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Rhaetians
and the Etruscans proper).
Torsten
So, if you're looking for /p/, you have 4 Rhaetian placenames to look at:
Apodiacum looks superficially Celtic. The /p/ in Passau is probably due to Swiss-German devoicing but Batava looks just like Batavia. I'll you duke it out over the other 2.