Re: uxellodunum

----- Original Message -----

From: Vicente Centelles Moya

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Sunday, November 07, 1999 5:41 PM

Subject: [cybalist] 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.

 

You can add any Slavic name containing the element vys- 'high', which seems to be identical with *ups-. Typical examples: Wyszogród (Poland), Vyšehrad (Czech Republic), Vyshhorod (Ukraine), Višegrad (Bosnia and Herzegovina) -- all meaning 'upper town' = Uxellodunum.

 

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

 

This is normal in Greek, but would have been much less likely in PIE. 

• First, I can't think of a good parallel example, except perhaps in river names with *akw-/*ap(s)- 'flowing water, river', which seem to occur in complementary geographical distribution. But these roots are so short that it's difficult to prove they are variants of the same morpheme. 
• Secondly, *xweg- contains a non-labialised *g (palatalised in satem languages), so if you believe that *uksen- is derived from *xug-s-, you can't reconstruct it with *kw.
• Thirdly, Hittite has uptsi 'rises' (of the sun), which suggests that at a very early date the form of the root was *(h)eup- and that it was a verb meaning 'rise, go up'. This is perhaps confirmed by Gothic iup 'upwards, iupa 'above'.
• Finally, *up(s)- often occurs with "s-mobile" (as in *s-up-er-, Gk. huper-), while *s-ukw- is completely unattested. On the whole it seems that the roots you'd like to connect cannot be connected.

The name Vall de Uxó suggests that Uxó may be some kind of hydronym. Are you sure that there isn't (or hasn't been) a brook called Uxó in the neighbourhood?

 

Piotr