From: dgkilday57
Message: 69435
Date: 2012-04-27
>I neglected to mention yesterday that the German name of Bormio is also Worms. This agreement with Worms-am-Rhein (Borbe:tomagus etc.) can hardly be fortuitous and indicates that the 5th-c. Longobardi agreed with the Vangiones in rendering Ligurian *Borm-. The Germanic languages have reflexes of *bHer-mo:n- such as Old English <beorma> 'yeast, foam, barm', but they chose not to use them here.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >
> > 2012/4/24, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@>:
> > >
> >
> > >> 2. Bormani, just like Bormio, can better proceed from *bhor-mo- (*bher-
> > >> 'boil')
> > >
> > > Read Kretschmer's paper in KZ 38.
> > >
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > Does it suffice?
> > And now please tell me what's wrong with /bh/ and *bher-w-
>
> There is no basis for naming hot springs *bHor-mo-, and plenty for naming them *gWHor-mo-. Kretschmer's paper explains how Gaulish *borw- (from *bHorw-) was substituted for Ligurian *borm-, since no stem of similar sense occurred in Gaulish.
>
> The variant <Bormitomago> (abl., It. Ant.) very likely shows the original Ligurian stem of the place-name, with Gaul. <magos> 'field' appended, and the same typical Gaul. folk-etymological replacement of *Borm- with *Borw- in the more common <Borb->. The Germanic forms Latinized as <Warmatia>, <Wormacia>, <G(u)ormetia>, etc. indicate that the Germans translated the Lig. stem as 'warm', rather than folk-etymologizing it. In no other principled way can the W- of Worms be explained. Since the Vangiones, a Gmc. tribe, were already there in late antiquity (Ptol.), the W- cannot be a hypercorrection for Lat. B-, as some have suggested.
>