Re: Names of a few Celtic Deities

Aydan writes:

>1st possibility: In her work "Pagan Celtic Britain", Anne Ross
> proposes the name Nodens to mean "Cloud Maker", and to stem from the
> same root as the name Nuada. Thus both derize from *(s)neudH- "mist,
> cloud"; Latin nu:bes 'nuance'; hence "Cloud Maker".

Probably not correct - both Pokorny and Watkins do not list the root as
having an optional initial s-, reconstructing it instead as *sneudh-. Since
Irish preserves s- and Welsh loses s- in initial clusters like this, the
root *sneudh- should give us OIr *snuad and Old Welsh *nud. Pokorny suggests
that *sneudh- may be a derivative of *sna: "to flow" and in fact we find in
OIr the words snuad "blood" and snuad "stream". I think we still have to
look to a PIE *neu-d[h]-/*neud[h]- to explain OIr Nuadu and Welsh Nud.

> 2nd possibility: Dumezil has attempted to link Nuada to the root
> *nedh-, 'to bind' (Mitra-Varuna pg 99) Also the root of nodus,
> `knot', Sanskrit naddha-, `fastened', Irish naidim, `I bind'. The
> second edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo- European
> Roots expresses the root as *ned to bind, tie. The O-grade form is
> *nod-. and is the root of such words as knot and net.

Seems a little shaky to me - I don't think any o-grade versions of the root
even appear in any Celtic languages (could be wrong, though), and you would
need to propose a lengethened o-grade version of the root at the very
least..

- Chris Gwinn