On 2008-05-13 21:15, tgpedersen wrote:
> Well, that's what Wiki says, so it's received wisdom. The question I'd
> like to know the answer of is: Do the British and Continental
> Derwent-'s have the same etymology? Because if they do, chances are
> they are Venetic, not Celtic.
The *e looks misplaced for *dr(e)w-n.t- 'running', so *derw-ent-
("Oaking"?) or *der(u)-went- 'rich in oaks' is usually accepted for the
Derwent, but e.g. Peter Kitson (1996, "British and European
River-Names", Transactions of the Philological Society 94/2: 73-118)
offers a compromise solution:
"That there is no significant connection between the British group [four
different rivers Derwent plus a handful of similar names -- Piotr] and
those so similarly formed from a root so productive of river-names on
the Continent, and most productive in that land of it just across the
Channel also inhabited by Celts, is more than I for one am prepared to
believe. I am not saying Ekwall's link with <derw> is completely wrong.
It is still needed to explain the metathesis and vowel of the first
syllable of the British names and the single Gaulish <Derventum>. What I
am suggesting is that the <derw-> formation is but a reshaping, by
popular etymology, of a name-form or of names already existing in the
["Old European"] root <Drav-> which were no longer intelligible in the
Celtic language."
[Of *der(u)-went-:] "To return to Derwent, I do not think the derivation
offered above would do better than Ekwall's as an _original_ etymology.
Rivers may properly be called rich in fish or otters, or in alluvial
minerals, not trees. Yet as folk-etymology it is close enough for a
decent sense to keep the logical faculties quiet and sound right. There
may even have been an element of regional idiom in it, since as Ekwall
(1928:10-11) notes the rivers Allen and Alwin (Northumberland), Alwent
Beck (Durham), and Allan Water (Roxburgh) are all <Alewent> in the
earliest (twelfth- and thirteenth-century) sources, in contradistinction
to other rivers Allen, Allow, etc., with which he connects them. Ekwall
describes these as 'mountain streams with a swift current'. His account
of the names as quasi-participial formations on the etymon of Welsh
<alaw> ... is not very satisfactory. *Al(u)-went- meaning 'full of flow'
looks a better try, whether some Celtic variety had borrowed from
neighbouring north European dialects a word corresponding to Lithuanian
aluo~ts 'spring' and/or OE ealu 'ale' ... or whether the nominal base
was hypostatized from river-names in much the same way as the <derw-> of
Derwent."
Piotr