Re: Town, Zaun, and Celtic Dun-

At 5:04:01 PM on Thursday, August 20, 2009, neckfil wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:

>> At 12:06:40 PM on Thursday, August 20, 2009, neckfil
>> wrote:

>>> There is a town in Scotland Dumbarton. It was known
>>> toward its early history as dun breatainn,

>> I believe that it still is <Dùn Breatann> in Sc.Gael.
>> (Not, however, <Breatainn>: that's the *nominative*
>> plural, if I'm not mistaken.)

>>> meaning the fort of the Brits. It's from Scottish
>>> Gaelic, a branch of brythonic, just like welsh.

>> No, Irish and Scottish Gaelic are Goidelic, not
>> Brythonic.

> That may be so; there is some confusion with the
> terminology of Celtic People.

This terminology is linguistic, referring to the Celtic
languages of Great Britain, not ethnological. The Goidelic
languages are Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx; the
Brittonic languages are Welsh, Cumbric (extinct), Cornish,
and Breton.

> Goidelic is surly Irish and also Scottish Celtic. I didn't
> know that Gallic equals Goidelic.

It definitely doesn't.

> It obviously should because it is only logical. Anyway,
> what I wanted to say is that Dun Breatann does not come
> from Goidelic but from Brythonic,

The name <Dùn Breatann> *is* Goidelic. And on the whole
it's unlikely to be a Gaelicization of an earlier synonymous
Brittonic name, as the British would have had little reason
to name a place 'fortress of the Britons'.

> and so `dun' root should have been around before the
> Goidelic Celts had arrived, in the case of Scotland from
> Ireland. I don't know how common is the `dun' root in
> Wales, I take, it must be common.

Proto-Celtic *du:no- 'fort, rampart' has among its reflexes
Old Irish <dún>, Middle Welsh <din> and <dinas>, Old and
Middle Breton <din>, Gaulish <dunum> (in Latin authors).
The Brittonic change of *u: to *i: was probably completed
already in the 5th century.

Brian