From: tgpedersen
Message: 58476
Date: 2008-05-14
>I'm not sure that's significant. Cf. Udolph, p. 10
> 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 describescf. Ålborg < Alabu, the major crossing on the Limfjord
> 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 inThat is all sound reasoning, and I think it should be applied to the
> much the same way as the <derw-> of Derwent."