Re: Gaelic and Sanskrit - and Nuada

> MacKillop's Dictionary mentions such connections and cognates under
> his entries for Nechtan, Nodons, Nuadu Airgetlam, and Nudd.
> Green does likewise under Nodens and Nuadu in her Dictionary; Gods

of

> the Celts mentions it on pgs 17 and 147.
> I cannot speak for their skill in linguistics, only that they do
> mention the associations.

Well, from your original message it looked like you were saying that
Green and MacKillop suggested there was a _linguistic_ connection
between these names (which I never noticed in their respective
works) - I don't doubt that there are _mythological_ connections
between these various Celtic war gods.

> > I don't know where you are getting the word/name "Nod" from - do
> you mean Nudd? There are no rules which would allow Irish Neit to
> become Nod.
>
> My bad, I was thinking of removing the suffix from the name.
> So there is no linguistic way such a shift could occur to or from

Net

> to Nod(ens)? Net to Nechtan? Nodens to Nuada?

Net to Nechtain? No. Nodens to Nuadu - well, sort of. A Common Celtic
*Noudonts would have given Proto-Irish *Noudonts (or maybe *No:donts -
I am forgetting at the moment if the CC diphthong -ou- was reduced
to long -o- in Proto-Irish), which would produce Old Irish Nuadu -
the same Common Celtic name would give early Brittonic *Noudonts, but
later Brittonic *No:donts (with reduced diphthong; this form was
Latinized as Nodens), giving way to Archaic/Old Welsh Nud, Modern
Welsh Nudd.

> > That's impossible, at least as far as Brittonic and Proto-Irish
> > *Noudonts is concerned - the name must come from a Proto-Indo-
> > European root containing the diphthong -eu-.
>
> So *noudonts is the proto-Celtic term from which Old Irish and

Welsh,

> etc terms such as naidim derive??
> Could you please explain the reasoning behind this impossibility?

Why are you bringing naidm into this? This word is not related at all
to *Noudonts. The reasoning behind the impossibility is that your
proposal does not follow the known rules of sound shift from Common
Celtic to Old Irish. See Rudolf Thurneysen's "Grammar of Old Irish"
if you want to leanr more about this subject - it's too involved for
me to type up all the necessay details for you 0 especially if you
are not very familiar with linguistics anyway.

> As I am not particularly fluent in linguistics, I can only say that

I

> was struck by the similarity of 'nacht' to Nechtan and noddi to
> Nodens and Nuadu/Nuada.

Nechtain is likely derived from Old Irish necht "pure, clean" - it is
not impossible that he name is cognate with Latin Neptunus.

- Chris Gwinn