Dear listmembers,
As a layman in IE linguistics, I am observing with great interest
your efforts to provide an IE etymology to the ancient Latin city-
name Roma; yet, as an Italian national, I must alert you that some
Italian scholars who have been studying this question thoroughly
have, based on the work of earlier scholars as well as on their
fresh reinterpretation of the available linguistic and
archaeological data, recently come to the conclusion that the name
Roma is a loan from Etruscan and that its original meaning, as I
have already pointed out in my post archived at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/47724 ,
was `dug, teat'.
Let me briefly summarize the argumentations produced by these
Italian scholars.
According to Prof. Carlo de Simone, a comparative linguist, the
names Roma and Romulus would be connected, both having been derived
from the archaic Lat. term ruma, -ae (variant form: rumis, -
is), `dug, pap, teat'. The latter term would be of Etruscan origin
because it has no IE etymology, and the only non-IE language spoken
in Latium in the archaic period of the history of Rome was Etruscan.
The Etr. term *ruma would have been borrowed into archaic Latin both
as a toponym, *Ruma (the likely name of Rome already in Etruscan,
which was later on changed to the attested Lat. form Roma) and as a
first name, *Rume (later on changed to the unattested Lat. form
*Romus). From *Rume, through the addition of the Etr. diminutive
suffix /-le/, the first name *Rumele was derived. The corresponding
Lat. first name must have been *Romelos, which is, however, only
attested as... Romulus! From the Etr. first name *Rumele, the Etr.
gentilic name *Rumelena (attested as RUMELNA in 6th century BCE
inscriptions) was derived. The corresponding Lat. gentilic name was
Romilius (or also Romulius). The interchangeability between the two
languages was due to "multiple onomastic competence". The first name
Romulus is, therefore, a perfectly regular form in the Etruscan-
Italic linguistic context, for which reason it is not necessary to
presuppose its *direct* derivation from the toponym *Ruma. For this
discussion, see C. de Simone. "Considerazioni sul nome di Romolo",
in _Bollettino di Archeologia_, Nos. 31-33 (1995).
Prof. Andrea Carandini, an Italian archaeologist, further expands
this hypothesis in his book _La nascita di Roma_ (Torino, Einaudi,
2003). He bases his analysis of the city-name Roma on the idea of a
semantic identity, as posited by linguist Massimo Pittau in the
article I have summarized in my post linked to above, of the words
for `dug' and `sinuosity (in a river's course)' in both Etruscan (as
would be the case with the unattested word *ruma) and archaic Latin
(as would be the case with the attested word ruma). Also, there
seems to be a strong linguistic connection between the toponym Roma
and the hydronym Rumon -- according to Servius, as an archaic name
of the river Tiber, but more probably, a name indicating the sinuous
tract of the course of that river in the area of Rome. If the Etr.
word *ruma perhaps meant `a (dug-shaped) sinuosity (in the course of
a river)', its accretive form *rumon -- /-on/ is a known Etr.
accretive suffix -- probably meant `a great sinuosity' (as per
Pittau) or also `(river) forming meanders'.
Carandini also hypothesizes that another semantic meaning of Etr.
*ruma and Lat. ruma, namely, that of `animal's teat', may have been
involved in the choice of the name *Ruma for the early site of the
future city of Rome. The inlet (*ruma?) on the Tiber closest to the
Palatine Hill was the seat of a goddess called Rumina (`she-of-
teats', or `she-that-offers-her-breasts', from archaic Lat.
ruma `teat, breast'), who was the patroness of nursing mothers and
suckling infants (both human and animal). There also stood the so-
called Ficus Ruminalis (`Rumina's fig', or also `suckling's fig'),
the sacred fig-tree near the Lupercal Cave at the foot of the
Cermalus (one of the two summits of the Palatine Hill), where
Romulus and Remus, according to the legend, had been suckled by the
she-wolf before they were found by a shepherd. This tree (which
produced fruits having a *milk*-like sap) was sacred to Rumina,
described by Carandini as a she-wolf/she-goat/female-fig-tree
goddess, and the association of the site with this deity may have
been at the origin of the suckling incident being related to in the
legend. The resemblance between the name Romulus and the term
ruminalis led to the fig tree and the founder of the city of Rome
being subsequently connected by the Roman antiquarians.
According to this interpretation, Romulus had, therefore, been saved
from drowning by the *ruma (`sinuosity') of the Tiber, and had been
nurtured by the rumae (`teats') of the she-wolf -- actually, a
theriomorphic form of the goddess Rumina. The fact that the toponym
*Ruma originally designated the bend of the Tiber closest to the
Palatine Hill is probably also indicated by the fact that the
northwestern gate of the `Roma Quadrata' (the city founded by
Romulus), leading to the said bend of the river, was called Porta
Romana, viz., `the gate of Roma': it is a well-known fact, indeed,
that city gates were invariably named, in all places an in all
times, after the principal external locality they led to -- in this
case, as it seems, after the *ruma (`sinuosity') of the Tiber
closest to `Roma Quadrata'.
Any comments, now that I've said it all? :^)
Best,
Francesco