> The Parisii are a problem, if Kuhn is right that the names should
> be etymologized as *par- + *i:s- "those at the Oise river", which
> river joins the Seine few tens of kilometer up river from the
> capital of the Parisii,
That's an odd suggestion - does Kuhn have any backround in Celtic
linguistics? The suffix -iso- is found in a number of Celtic
words/names, and has nothing to do with any hydronym. The first
element *pari- may either come from the Gallo-Brittonic word
for "cauldron" *pario- or from an a-grade form of the verbal root
per- "to make, to do" (< PIE *kWer-, making the Parisii "the
Machers" - a suitable tribal name - note that Welsh has a noun peryf
meaning "lord" which John Koch suggests is derived from Brittonic
*parisos). There is no survival of a PIE -p- in this name.
> Cf. Aremorica < *(p)ar- + *mor-
> "land at the sea" (cf. Polish Pomorze), in which the /p/ has been
> properly done away with.
Properly "(The Land) Before/In Front the Sea" (Celtic are < PIE *pri-
"before/in front of")
> Kuhn speculates that the Belgae had expanded
> shortly before Caesar's time, all the way to the Seine (and
> Sequana is also a problem, unreformed /kW/!).
Not really a problem (we have discussed this before on the
Continental Celtic mailing list) the use of -qu- in Gaulish
words/names may be explained as a simple orthographic preference for
what might otherwise be spelled -cu-. Sequana may stand for an
original *Secuana (in fact, we find a masculine name Secuanus in
Whatmough's DAG), which might be analyzed as *Seco-uana, *Secu-uana
(where the second element is uano "slay" < PIE *gWhen-), or *Secu-
ana. The first element may be (m/f) *secos/*seca, or a u-stem
*secus/*secua, which can be etymologized a number of different ways
(through the various PIE *sek- roots), but none of them involving
the PIE cluster *-kW-.
- Chris Gwinn