Re: Basque mendi 'mountain'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

>
> > This is an old substrate root *pant-/*pent- also found in
> > toponymy as *pend-/*penn- (e.g. Pennines, Apennines),
>
> The British Pennines only got their name around 1747, from
> Charles Julius Bertram, the compiler of the forgery _De Situ
> Britanniae_ attributed to Richard of Cirencester. The Alpes
> Pennines in Switzerland, on the other hand, really do derive
> from Celtic *penno- 'a mountain summit; a head; a hill; an
> end', PCelt. *kWendo- 'head' (cf. OIr <cenn> 'head').
>

Matasovic reconstructs *kWenno-.

> > as well as in Celtic *bendo- 'peak, top'
>
> PCelt. *benno- 'peak, top', actually, from PIE *bend-.
>

Matasovic reconstructs PCeltic *bando-, because of Brythonic forms with /a/. But this can't a PIE word, so *bend- is actually a pseudo-PIE root.

> Clearly unrelated to the 'head' word.
>

This looks like a substrate loanword, probably Vasco-Caucasian (Celtic has quite a bunch of them).

> Trask though Celtic *bendo- was a possible source of Basque mendi, etc. I don't know that he fully embraced it, though.
>

IMHO both Basque and Celtic would derive from a common source.

> > and Germanic *pint-/*pinn- 'point'.
>
> This, however, assuming that you're thinking of the <pintel>
> family, does seem go with with *benno-, though not with *penno-.
>

Yes, that's right. However, there's plenty of substrate toponymy items *pant-/*pand-/*pent-/*penn- which point to a non-IE source. The original meaning could have been 'rock, crag' (e.g. Spanish peña < *penna) and also 'ravine' (e.g. South Italian pentuma), then 'mountain'.