From: dgkilday57
Message: 69876
Date: 2012-06-26
>All right, I see where I was wrong. The Bergant-forms do continue the Celtic zero-grade *Brigant-, corresponding to Gmc. *Burgund-, not *Bergund-. And as a working hypothesis I should take coastal Galicia and the Ulla valley as the Celtic homeland, retaining Aquitania as the secondary P-Celtic homeland, unless someone points out a problem with that.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > The place-name Berganza (Prov. Lugo, Prov. A'lava), with the steep coastal region Bergantin~os (Prov. La Corun~a), corresponds to the Norwegian river-name Bergunda, continuing *bHe'rg^H-n.t-ih2 'protecting, elevated, difficult' vel sim. River- and place-names of the form *Brigantia (Bregenz, Brienz, Brent, Braint) in my opinion are based on the root *wreigH- 'to turn, twist, wriggle' (cf. Gallo-Latin <brigantes> 'parasitic worms', Marc. Burd.), not *bHerg^H-.
>
> Just a remark on the mentioned Galician toponyms and their evolution; actually, the 9th-10th-11th centuries form of "Bergantiños" was one of 'Bregantinos/Bragantinos/Bracantinos/Bricantinos', where <c> is there most probably as a guess of the scribe, knowing that intervocalic Latin stops usually produced locally lenited variants. The metathesis -rV- < > -Vr-, common in Galician, is in this particular case recent, of the 14th century. East of "Bergantiños" there is the city of Coruña, ancient Brigantium, which territory was known in the 10th century as 'Faro Bregancio'. A rather similar evolution was that of the northern Portuguese town of Bragança, which was known in the Middle Ages as 'Bregancia', and as 'Brigantia' in a 6th century document preserved in medieval copies. Anyone of these (the last one in my opinion) was the Visigothic mint (7th century) of 'Bergancia'.
>
> On the other hand, Bergantiños ( < *Brigantînos, IMHO either a Latin derivative of Brigantium or Celtic *brigantîno- 'prince', hence 'The Princes') was actually (in the High Middle Ages) the valley of the Anllóns river (known as Esso/Discessu back there), whilst the coastal areas were known as Salagia ( < *Sâlawyâ/*Sâlâwyâ, to *Seh2l- 'salt', MIr sál 'sea, ocean'). The highest point here is mount "Neme" (IMHO < Celtic *nemos- 'sky' < *nebh- 'cloud', as Latin nimium 'excessive' was probably not used in the formation of place names). East of 'Bregantinos' and 'Salagia' there were the lands of 'Faro Bregancio' (as a reference to the Roman lighthouse built at Brigantium, now known as "Tower of Hercules") and 'Nemitos' (now "Nendos" < Celtic *nemeto- 'sanctuary', but maybe also 'strong', and so 'The Strong (Sacred) ones'). To the west there were the lands of 'Somnaria' or 'Subnaria', now "Soneira", < *'Sub Neria' = "next to Neria", maybe as a reference to the lands of the Celtici Neri ( < Celtic *nero- 'hero', hence 'The heroes'); and the lands of 'Celticos', now "Celtigos", in references to the Celtici Supertamarici. All these regions -the coastal areas of Galicia in general, together with the valley of the Ulla river- hold the largest number of Celtic or Celtic looking place names in the Iberian Peninsula.