From: andythewiros
Message: 64896
Date: 2009-08-21
>Just letting you know that I did divide this block of text into paragraphs, but when I sent it to the group, the paragraph divisions disappeared.
> OK, early and heroic Germanic literature would not have many names beginning with [p], since this ethnic group did not have frequent initial [p], but by the time of most Old English literature [p] had become significantly more common through borrowing (and perhaps innovation), so names beginning with [p] would probably not have been felt to be ethnically foreign, as in earlier periods, and therefore new names with initial [p] might have been invented at a later period. That is, if I understand your point correctly. How many names with consonants other than [p] look to be of Illyrian/Venetic/Etruscan origin? Do any of them? I'm sure they all look sufficiently Anglo-Saxon that scholars would not wonder whether they are of foreign origin, though they could be. But because of the status of [p] in Germanic, names beginning with this phoneme are probably the only ones questioned as being of foreign origin, as though only names with initial [p] were borrowed, the rest being native. If names without initial [p] are not questioned and considered native, I see no reason why names with initial [p] must be questioned, since [p] was an initial phoneme in OE. I'm sure many of the names without initial [p], considered native, might also be innovations like Lakeesha or Jawanda, only they don't have this controversial initial [p].
> Of course, the names without initial [p] might also be of foreign substrate origin, if the names with initial [p] prove that some OE names are of foreign substrate origin. I'm just saying that although this may be true, my explanation might also be true. I just don't find names with initial [p] all that controversial in OE or any other Gmc language. Also, if the Gmc and Anglo-Saxon tribes did borrow these and other names from the substrate people, I think it would show that they had a lot of respect and esteem for these substrate people, yet the lack of any mention of these peoples in any Gmc literature (am I wrong on this point?) seems to imply the opposite, that the substrate people were of little value to the Gmc and Anglo-Saxon tribes. Hence I would think the Anglo-Saxons would be quite unlikely to name their sons and daughters after these insignificant people.
> > Ah, thought you'd never ask. Voilà:OK, I've been able to open it, and upon perusing some of the 35 roots presented, I found that some of the Celtic words given can easily be explained as being of Latin origin (e.g. palm- and par-), while for 'pleht-' there is no correspondence of meaning between the Germanic words and the Celtic words (the latter all having a meaning related to 'fold', and thus quite conceivably loans from Latin <plicare> and <plectere>). I'll probably check out the other words sometime later.
> > http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/KuhnText/list.html
> > Cleaning it up has been on my to-do list for some time since I discovered that many of these have cognates in Uralic and Finno-Ugric, so I think I'll use a couple of days for that.
> >
>
> Unfortunately I am unable to open the link you have provided. I don't know what's wrong.
>
> > Now, if you want to defend you theory of ideophone or imitative origin of English or Old English names in p-, you'd have to come up with similar explanation for all 35 of this list too.
> >
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> See above.
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> Andrew
>