From: Tavi
Message: 68047
Date: 2011-09-16
>Oops! I missed Proto-Celtic *warra: 'post, prop' (MatasoviÄ), which can hardly be from *wers- 'top, peak' as commonly thought. This means Romance barra 'bar; pole, stick' was probably borrowed through a non-IE language where /w/ was rendered as /b/.
> For Romance barra, the traditional proposed etymology is from Celtic
> *barro- 'point, top' < PIE *bhars- 'point', but this is hardly
> convincing, as it's usually the case with substrate loanwords.
>
MatasoviÄ also mentions French garenne 'rabbit-warren, fishing
preserve', dialectal varenne 'wilderness' < Med. Lat. warenna
(a feudal law term which designated a hunting preserve), as a possible loanword
from Gaulish *war(r)enna:, as a derivated from the above root.
Although he sees this etymology as "doubtful", he missed Old Irish ferann,
ferenn 'field or grave surrrounded by a hedge or a stone wall' (Coromines),
which secures it.
IMHO we can link the Celtic word (with assimilation *nd > *nn) to
West Romance *waranda 'fence around a staircase, terrace, balcony;
corridor; field or animal's enclosure' (Portuguese varanda, Spanish baranda),
a Wanderwort also found in Indic varán.d.ah 'partition wall' (hence
Anglo-English verandah) and even dialectal Lithuanian varanda
'wickerwork', and whose structure is parallel to Mongolian *(h)aran-ga
'balcony, verandah', Literary Manchu faraNga 'lattice(d)', if only with
a dental instead of a velar stop.
Thus we've got a Paleo-European loanword/Wanderwort *war(r)- ~ *(s)par(r)- with
various suffixes and related to the Proto-Altaic root *p`árà 'cross-beam, constructing piece'.