--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> BTW The authors of "Unsere Vorfahren die Veneter" insist that
> placenames derived from *Brigant- are characteristic for the
> Veneti. Is your last name [i.e. 'Brighenti'] something local from
> Veneto?
My surname is typical of the Italian regions of Lombardy, Veneto and
Emilia-Romagna, with the strongest concentration of its bearers
being in the Lake Garda area (from where my paternal grandfather
moved to my hometown, Venice, in the 1920's)-- see map at
http://tinyurl.com/6ld8lc
These are areas of ancient Celtic settlement, and at least one of
the etymologies I am going to give you for my surname (sorry for
this self-centered digression!) is consistent with its Celtic
origin, although I would like to hear more from you about place-
names derived for *Brigant- and characteristic for the ancient
Veneti (of N.E. Italian Veneti as well?).
ETYMOLOGY #1: 'Brighenti' directly derives from a Celtic personal
name based on the name of goddess Brigantia (< PIE *bhr.g^hént-
'high', *bhr.g^hn.tih(a)- 'high one') -- see Mallory & Adams' _Enc.
of I.E. Culture_ at
http://tinyurl.com/5bwed6
In spite of this attractiveness, this hypothesis looks quite
implausible to me. Indeed, to Italian ears the surname 'Brighenti'
(where the It. spelling /gh/ stands for the voiced velar plosive -g-
before -e- or -i-) sounds like a dialectal variant of the common
noun briganti, pl. of brigante 'brigand'. For instance, in Emilia-
Romagna dialects the It. word brigante becomes brighént. Whence
ETYMOLOGY #2: 'Brighenti' derives from Mediev. It. brigante, a term
that originally designated companies of mercenaries (> Eng.
brigade). In fact, a variant form of the surname 'Brighenti'
is 'Briganti'. The term brigante is the present participle of the
verb brigare 'to brawl, fight', in turn derived from briga 'strife,
contention, quarrel'. This Vulgar Latin word, briga, can be either a
Celtic or a Germanic loan:
1. Celtic: according to Watkins, a Proto-Celtic lemma *bri:ga:-
would mean 'strife' and would derive from Proto-Celtic *bri:go-
'strength', in turn derived from the suffixed extended form
*gWri:g- of the PIE root *gWer@- 'heavy' -- see at
http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE183.html
2. Germanic: according, e.g., to the _Concise Oxford Dictionary of
English Etymology_ (1996 edn.), Vulgar Latin briga would derive from
Gothic brikan- 'to break' (< PIE *bhreg-).
I have also seen an etymological attempt at connecting the It. term
brigante with Proto-Celtic *brig- 'hill' (from the same root of the
goddess-name Brigantia, see above), which would make of the original
briganti a troop of highlanders, but I think this is the weakest
among the hypotheses I have taken notice of.
Can anyone here help me understand the real origin of my surname? :^)
Thanks and best regards,
Francesco