Re: [tied] Celtic and Baltic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 05-11-03 17:13, Egijus wrote:
>
> > One of the leader of Gallas in Aquintania is noted by Cesar as

being

> > Calesd "Litavicus". On the gallic coins before Roman conquest

there

> > are coins inscripted with "LITA" and "LITAV" etc.etc.etc
>
> PIE *pl.t&2-w-i(a)h2 'something flat, earth' (cf. Skt. pr.tHivi:)

gave

> Celtic *litawia: 'coastland' (cf. Welsh Llydaw 'Brittany', Gaulish
> Letauia). The Celtic name is of course derived from that of the

country

> and means '(a person) from the coast'. I've seen it claimed that

the

> name of Lithuania (Lietuva < *leituva:) might be of Celtic origin,

but

> an "etymology" like that, based only on superficial similarity and
> unsupported by any historical arguments, is bogus. The Baltic name

is

> quite obviously a collective derivative of the rivername *leita:

(from

> *leih- 'pour', with numerous Baltic cognates

meaning 'pour', 'rain',

> etc., see Pokorny #1136). This particulatr correspondence between

Celtic

> and Baltic is false.

The main difficulty in the matchup of Celtic *Litawia: with
Lithuanian Lietuva is vocalism: Celtic has a short -i- quite
regularly derived from the development of /l./, while Lithuanian has
a /ie/ regularly derived from a diphthong /ei/. Similarity are often
bogus, if we don't consider at all regular phonetic correspondence.

Regards

Marco