Re: River-names and Celtic Homeland (was: Cremona; was: Ligurian Bar

2012/6/22, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:

>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:
>>
>> 2012/6/20, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:
>> >> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
>> >> > <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
>> >> (...) What matters
>> >> is that both the Po (as everybody knows: Bodincus, Padus, Eridanus)
>> >> and the Adda (Lexua) did have more than one name (still in the Middle
>> >> Age) and accordingly a different name for every stretch from an
>> >> important confluence to another one, not to speak of the names of
>> >> different branches.
>> >> Anyway, I recall the point of departure of our discussion: If You
>> >> dislike the garlic-etymology You can choose the rock one or anything
>> >> Pre-Latin You prefer, the point is anyway on the origin of -o:na.
>>
>> > DGK:
>> > First, regarding the Po, I know of no evidence that natives ever called
>> > it
>> > Eridanus. That was the poetic name of a mythical river.
>>
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>>
>> It was the name of river in Athens as well. You are assuming the
>> Greeks simply gave a mythical name to the river near Adria; but they
>> ordinarily kept quite well local river-names wherever they settled,
>> or, at least, preferred transparent names (maybe direct translations,
>> maybe not), but quite rarely purely myhical names like e.g. Styx.
>> Of course, there are instances like Akh'ero:n, but these - like Styx
>> - end up as normal PIE river-names (maybe at least partially with
>> adstrate phonology, e.g. *h1g'heront-). If this were the case with
>> Adriatic Eridanos, we would come back to the same question: where did
>> it come from?

> DGK:
> It could have been formed within Greek using the prefix eri-, and meaning
> 'much-flowing' (i.e. year-round) or 'great river', hence applied to a poorly
> known great river of the Northwest, then applied directly when settlement
> occurred nearby, without bothering to consult the natives.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

At last You use lengthened grades too: Greek eri- has epsilon
(whatever its initial laryngeal may have been), E:ridan'os - e:ta

>
>> I, as expected, find the Celtic etymology of Eridanos
>> (*h'eperi-dh2no-s 'East River') convincing; nevertheless, as per
>> above, this is irrelevant to our question, because this latter raises
>> anyway with just two ancient local names for the Po, Bodincus and
>> Padus.

> DGK:
> Holy hydronyms, Batman! The East River is in Gotham City.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

*Newom H1ebhurah2kom wasn't the name of a territory in
*Koimi-h2re:ig'ah2 at the time Batman's forefather
*Bhodn'o-[dhg'h]mon[H]no(:n)- belonged to a clan in the
großindogermanischen Reich, but although Gotham, Nottinghamshire lays
in a to-become Coritanian section of the Celtic part of
Urindogermania, a *Gaita-haimaz parallel to Gjedhem (Norway) and
Geißheim (Germany) may well have existed in the Anglian Urheimat and
anyway the former two assure a *G'haido-koimos that must have had an
Old European *Ausrawa: < *H2ausrowah2 to its East.

> DGK:
> And holy Harold,
> Batman! You now have a Celtic etymology for a river of Athens.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

>
>> > DGK:
>> > What we do know is
>> > that Ligurians called the upper part of it Bodegkos/Bodincus, and the
>> > lower
>> > part was called Padus. What this means is that Ligurians reached the
>> > river
>> > from the west and named it, and some non-Ligurian group reached the
>> > river
>> > from the east and named it something else, and subsequent groups used
>> > the
>> > existing non-Ligurian name.
>>
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>> Any Ligurian etymology of Bodincus (be it from PIE *bheudh- 'bottom'
>> or *bhedh- 'dig') is indistinguishable from a Celtic one (please don't
>> reply that the first of these roots is scarcely represented in Insular
>> Celtic lexicon, because the same holds true for a great part of
>> river-names all over Celtic lands, whereas another great part of
>> river-names in the same areas does exhibit Celtic lexical material, so
>> every conclusion can be drawn: stratification of Celtic and non-Celtic
>> but also, conversely, loss of lexical items in the subsequent history
>> of Insular Celtic).

> DGK:
> I never bought into the 'fundo carens' explanation, a mere guess by the
> ancients, and digging is not obviously involved. I consider it more
> plausible that Bodincus meant 'Muddy', agreeing with "acque melmose del Po",
> that the same stem occurs in the Bodensee, and that Celt. *bodjo- 'yellow'
> originally meant 'mud-colored'; likewise Japygian or Messapic *badja-
> borrowed into Latin as <badius> 'chestnut-colored, bay'. Of course, if you
> dig mud, you could derive *bHodHo- 'something dug' from *bHedH-.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Celtic *bodjo- 'yellow' was Hubschmied's etymology too (do You accept
Hubschmied's Celtic hypothesis for Bodincus and not for Padus?)

>
>> A good Celtic etymology for Padus is Hubschmied's one (: Old Norse
>> hvatr 'swift', Pokorny 636), in my opinion the best one among many
>> proposals that have been made. Quite surely we don't agree on any of
>> these etymologies, but this can be another thread, the point is again
>> on the very existence of more than one name for the same river.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

> DGK:
> "Good"? Semantically inappropriate and anachronistic. The lower Po is
> broad and slow. Moreover, Lat. Patavium 'Padua' with its -t- must have come
> through archaic Etruscan, and the Etruscans had colonized this area BEFORE
> the Gauls swept through the passes and drove them out. No etymology for
> Padus is better than a forced one.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Pace Battisti and Alessio, Padua has nothing to do with Po (its
rivers don't flow into the Po nor did they flow into it even in
Antiquity) and therefore no privilege on its etymology.
I frankly don't understand Your argument. In Your opinion, Padua's
name has come to Latin through Etruscans (possible), Etruscans
colonized the lower basin of the Po before than the Transalpine Gauls
Boians and Lingones (sure), and then? What has that to do with Padus?
Following Your argument, one should think that the Etruscans have
taught their Celtic followers a pronounciation */phate/ or the like,
and since no other form than Padus (or anything that would have been
latinized as such) seems to be attested in Cisalpine Gaul for the
river the Romans called Padus, this would imply (in Your scheme) that
the Gaulish invaders learnt its name from a non-Etruscan source, most
probably their predecessors, the Insubrians. Where's the difference
with Hubschmied's proposal? I suppose You mean Padus was a Venetic
name, but there's no difference in chronology, unless You once again
take as a fact what's still simply a conjecture of Yours - that the
Insubrians came after the Etruscans.
Sure, You say: "We know the Boians and the Lingones came after the
Etruscans; therefore all the other Celts probably came after the
Etruscans". This is denied by Livius (maybe Cato behind him), but in
no case it's a fact. "We don't have any mention of Celts before the
Etruscans" - but we don't have any mention of anyone, not even of
Ligurians or, if all, of their non-Celticity. Since we don't have
anything, we must rely on place-names and things like that. Therefore,
anachronism is just the relationships between my hypothesis and Your
model, so nothing strange and nothing new, we already knew this.
As for semantics, I argue You have never had a bath in the Po during
a flood (otherwise You wouldn't be discussing here). Please don't try
to verify whether its waters are so slow as they are broad...

>
>> > DGK:
>> > There is ABSOLUTELY NO GROUND for asserting that every stretch of a
>> > river
>> > had a different name. In fact, such an assumption flies in the face of
>> > your
>> > homogenist model. You envision uniform PIE-speakers settling (or being
>> > divinely created) over a very large area, and since rivers serve as
>> > routes
>> > for travel, there is no basis whatever for a uniform stratum of speakers
>> > to
>> > assign multiple names. The only reason for multiple naming is
>> > ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, which your model denies for pre-Roman
>> > times,
>> > although you are willing to admit enclaves of conservatism to explain
>> > Porcobera and the Plinii. Thus your model should yield only such
>> > variants
>> > as the Duero/Douro. It cannot account for Bodincus/Padus and the like.
>> >
>>
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>>
>> You are mixing two arguments. If we discuss of multiple naming of
>> different stretches, a very good reason for it is the need of
>> distinguishing such stretches, just like different stretches of one
>> and the same street bear different names (even at one or two km
>> distance) according to the people who dwell or work along it or to
>> other features.

> DGK:
> That is not how streets (or rivers) acquire multiple names.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

Simply drive along the Via Aemilia, vilage after village, and then
tell me how many names it has. Same for the Aurelia and so on.

>
>> When You refer to ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, You are indeed
>> recalling instances like Duero/Douro (different phonological outputs
>> from the same name), although in any case inside a common genealogical
>> origin (like the Porcoberans and the Plinys on one side and the [rest
>> of] Cisalpine Celts on the other side), while - as You have written -
>> a name for the upper course and another one for the lower course of
>> the same river are exactly what is needed in order to refer, in one
>> and the same community, to such different parts.

> DGK:
> Wrong. Adjectives fulfill this need.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Your mind is a very exclusive one. If a Celtic tribe invaded
Cisalpine Gaul in the 4th c. BC(E), then no other Celts can have lived
there before; if an ablaut grade of a specific root is attested in a
language class, no other grades can survive in it for the same root;
if adjectives fulfill the need of naming different parts, substantives
have no place left. And You are so persuaded that find me wrong...
Your argument: "if there's a hyperonymic word, its parts can only be
named with hyponymic adjectives; if a substantive pops up, it must
belong to another ethnic community". Do You really mean that?

>
>> Usually people colonize rivers' valleys upwards and they need a name
>> for the lower part of the valley and another one for the upper part.
>> Should You seriously argue that everything that has a hyperonymic name
>> cannot have different hyponymic names for each part of it (unless by
>> different ethnolinguistic communities), Your argument would be
>> patently absurd, since the lowest limit for naming differentiation is
>> at microscopical scale, not at a miles' size (otherwise one and the
>> same family couldn't a have a name for the first floor of its home and
>> a different one for the second floor - they should call everything
>> simply "home"). I cannot believe You really mean that, I think You are
>> joking.

> DGK:
> I think you sound like Heraclitus would, if practical jokers had forced him
> into the cannabis tent with the Scythians. Abstruse philosophical
> considerations of potential naming have no relevance to actual practice.
> And again, adjectives (or prepositional phrases) easily satisfy the need for
> subdividing 'home'.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

So You weren't joking. What's, then, "Europe" other than Western
Eurasia? Why should we keep calling "Asia" with its name instead of
"Eastern Eurasia"? Wouldn't "Europe's Transgression" be an easier name
for America, according to Your "actual practice"? And what about
Australia? "South-East New Britain" would fit much better Your rule.

But finally: this far-reaching discussion has started from an
observation of mine regarding the presence of place-names with
possible Celtic p-drop (like Cremona < *KremHo-ponah2) breaking any
theoretical continuum between Ligurian and Orobian names with retained
PIE /p/; this implied that rivers can have more than one name (and
this is undeniably a fact, like Bodincus and Padus prove, so no more
discussion is worthy on this point) and that, specifically, Cremona's
river (possibly not yet the Po in Early Antiquity) was the original
locus of the name *KremHo-ponah2: this is only a hypothesis just like
Your opposite one - that Cremona is a secondary formation with
retained PIE long /o:/ - and therefore I keep Your interpretation
(which, anyway, was the traditional one and I already knew) as an
alternative scenario, admittedly uncomfortable (like Co:mum < PIE
*k'o:imo-m 'village(s)' or Krahe's and Pokorny's Arona = Lettish
Aruona) to a pan-Celtic approach (instead of Celtic *kop-o-mo-m
'enclosure' // *bherg'h-o-mo-m 'defended high place' and respectively
*h2arh3o-ponah2 'fields' water').
This doesn't modify our discussion, because there are plenty of other
Celtic names between Proper Liguria and the Orobian Alps and, on the
other side, You inevitably label them as latecomers, just because the
only invaders' affiliation we know from history is a Celtic one (and
You would never admit that History could repeat herself).
Our discussion has come to an impasse, because - this time it's
primarily Your responsibility - You can't accept that the Celts had
any other Urheimat than Asturias (although Your demonstration - which,
as You well know, I completely accept - is at best of the same force
as my own one regarding Cisalpine Gaul) and that they already dwelt
South of the Alps before the 4th c. BC(E).
Please note that we wouldn't agree even if I accepted the
stratification approach, because the crucial point is the continuity
of Cisalpine Celts from local PIE: if this were true (as I maintain),
any other stratum could be equally old (Venetic; in my opinion
Ligurian and Orobian) or - maybe more probably - younger (hypothetical
non-Celtic innovations); only if it weren't true You could be right.