Re: Gaelic "fang" Indo-European cognates?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dubnovalos <andy.phillpotts@...>"
<andy.phillpotts@...> wrote:

> I was wondering about actual or hypothetical cognates
> (Germanic or Celtic or other languages) for this word:
>
> Scottish Gaelic "fang"
> Irish "faing" (fem.); genitive singular fainge; nominative plural
> faingeaca (the c in the latter case is aspirated like "ch" as in
> loch)
>
> In Irish and Scottish Gaelic it refers to a raven or buzzard. I was
> wondering what Indo-European root (if any) it is related to, and if
> there were any possible continental cognates.
>
> For example, in Gaul there was a river called "Vangius" (modern
> Vignory) and occasionally in Gaul one sees names like Vangio
> (or possibly this is a Germanic name-- for example Vangio, one
> of the nephews of Vannius, ruler of the Suevi, in Tacitus: Annales
> 12.29).
>
> ***
>
> There is also the tribal name of the Vangiones of Germania
> Superior, although for this name plenty of alternate explanations
> are proposed:
>
> Old Norse vangr: "field"
> (Is this word related to Old High German angar "grass land"--
> like the Angrivarii "men of the field"?)
>
> a similar Celtic etymology is possible:
> *wag-na- heath (both vowels are long)
> *wagno- slope, field
>
> (This is from the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh
> & Celtic Studies Proto-Celtic--English wordlist.)
>
> West Germanic "wagnijo" (nominative masculine?) found on 3
> lance heads at Illerup in Jutland and the Vimose bog (about 200
> AD); possibly related to Old Norse vagn "wagon"
>
> There is a late Latin word that is possibly a borrowing from
> Gaulish or another indigenous language (at least according to J.
> Whatmough's "The Dialects of Ancient Gaul"):
>
> vanga "spade, shovel" (mentioned by the Roman author
> Palladius Rutilius Taurus 1, 43, 3)
>
> Finally, there is another word in Gaelic that may or may not be
> related (I can see it being related to a place name, but I cannot
> see its connection to a bird):
>
> Scottish Gaelic fang or fanc, irish fanca "sheep pen, enclosure"
> panc (genitive painc) "cow market"
>
> ***
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts on the etymologies of fang
> "raven" or any of the other words mentioned?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andy

I speculated at a time (but the the postings are now beyond the reach
of the amputated search facility of cybalist, anyone still have a
reference) that Snorri's account of Aesir and Vanir leaving the
Pontic area for Saxland(me: Thuringia) and Fyn were true and that the
latter designation stood for people of the kingdom of Vani in present-
day Georgia. I assumed they might have worshipped a God equivalent to
the Armenian god Vahagn (< Iranian V&r&Tragna).

Torsten