From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 47789
Date: 2007-03-10
>Dear listmembers,I think I agree most with Emilio Peruzzi («è inutile
>
>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? :^)