Re: RV: Odp: uxellodunum

Dear Piotr:

 Thank you for your kind and excellent explanation about uxellodunum, that completes my previous information from MacBain`s Eth. Dictionnary. My purpose is finding out the i.e. root of the place-name of my town "vall de uxo" (just "uxo" part), a 30.000 people village located in Spain next to the Mediterranean coast, between Valencia and Castellón, a site considered traditionally beyond Celtiberia area, being the . In my view, Uxo is a cognate of many other antique or modern place-names in Spain (some other uxo, uxama, etc.), in France (not less than ten uxello (ussel, usso), uxellodunum (Issoudun, Issolu)), in England (uxellodunum, uxbridge), in Sweden (Uppsala), in Italy (usellus, uxento,usseau, ussolo, usseglio), in Greece (Ipsela, Thrace), etc. I`d be very glad and thankful for your contribution to extend the list above. I have started a research on this subject, but I'm not conversant enough on i.e. knowledge, although I'm trying to consult as many scholars` essays on i.e. as I can. Of course, I agree that the original root is i.e. up(-s), but let me ask you the question if the i.e. up(-s) derives or not from p.i.e *ukw(s) as a result of the delabialization k´w>kw and later allophony kw>p. As for the p.i.e. words *uks-en and *xweg-s, it is very curious for me the connexion between its two possible meanings "bull" or "grow"/"increase". MacBain includes under the word "uasal" the meanings high, grow, increase…, with derivations in Latin as: augeo, vigeo; to which we may add : augustus, auctor,place-names like auxerre, etc. I think that Mycenaean forms such as anthroq os > anthropos, ikkos>ippos, leiko>leipo (lit. liekú), heqetas>hepetas, quasileus > basileus, and so on, confirm that kw>p, so ukw>up, being k'w and kw more archaic than p. Best regards Vicente ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------

> ----- Original Message ----- > Dear Vicente, As far as I know, the

place-names you mention have nothing to do with PIE *uks-. The Gaulish element ux(-elo)- derives from PIE *up(-s)- 'over', *up-s-elo- 'high, elevated' (cf. Greek hypselos). Related words from English include up and (much less obviously) over. The group *ps yielded Proto-Celtic *fs, which developed regularly into Old Irish ss, Gaulish and Ibero-Celtic chs [xs] (transcribed x), Brythonic ch. Thus, uxelo- is related to Old Irish úasal, Welsh uchel 'high'. Uxellodunum is etymologically 'hill fort'. I'm not sure what you mean by the "root uks-". PIE had the word *uks-en- 'ox, bull' (English ox, oxen [note the archaic plural], German Ochs, Sanskrit uk¹an-). The *uks- part may (or may not) be a zero-grade variant of the "extended" verbal root *xweg-s- [xweks] 'grow, increase' (cf. English wax [of the moon]), in which case *(x)uks-en- would originally have meant 'the big/fat one'. The "ox" word occurs in Celtic, too, though not in Uxellodunum. In Brythonic it retains its old meaning 'bull' (e.g. Welsh ych(-en), but in Goidelic it means 'stag' (Old Irish oss; a male deer is often called "bull" in the hunting slang of many languages, just as the English speak of bull elephants/whales). Hence the Gaelic name Oscar 'fond of deer', as well as its diminutive Oissín, a.k.a. (Scottish) Ossian. Best regards, Piotr