Re: TIROL's etymology

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

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> To my knowledge the name is not attested before the 12th century. The citations I found are <comites Tirolenses> 1141 (and later; this appears to be the learned standard), <vicus Tyral.> 1158, <de Tirale> 1182, <de Tiral> 1190. Some say the region was named after the Schloss Tirol near Meran, which is not implausible, and suggests a possible Gaulish etymology. In Kanton Thurgau we have the river <Dura> 886, <Turia> 1210, <Thur> today. The Gaulish name was adopted by Germans and underwent the High German consonant shift. Perhaps there was a Gaulish settlement *Duria'lom 'Clearing on a Stream', stress on /a/, with the place-name adopted by Germans and becoming *Turja'l, the site of the castle. I must then presume /j/-umlaut, *Tu"rja'l, and unrounding with loss of /j/, *Tira'l, in the local dialect, which agrees with some of the 12th-cent. forms. The counts apparently preferred to say *Tiro'l in their dialect, which is essentially the modern standard form. Unfortunately I have no direct evidence for the /j/-umlaut or unrounding in the dialect of Meran; nevertheless I think Germanized Gaulish is a more plausible explanation than Rhaetic or Rhaeto-Etruscan for this name.

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I neglected to provide the support for the Gaulish protoform I proposed. For the second element we have Gallo-Latin <Maroialum> 'Great Clearing', now <Mareuil>, and <Bonoialum> 'Cliff-Clearing', now <Bonneuil>, and we can infer *Vernoialum 'Alder-Clearing', *Nantoialum 'Valley-Clearing' from <Verneuil> and <Nanteuil> (G. Dottin, La langue gauloise [Paris 1920], pp. 74, 76, 86). The French forms show that the stressed vowel came right before the /l/. In these examples the first element is a thematic noun or adjective, but for *Durialom it is a feminine /i/-stem, Gaul. *duris 'stream', reflected as <la Dour>, tributary of the Guisane, and as <la Dor>, tributary of the Dordogne (J. Hubschmid, Praeromanica [Bern 1949], p. 113).

DGK