From: dgkilday57
Message: 70601
Date: 2012-12-14
>Note however Ford in Northumberland, Ford in Shropshire, Ford in West Sussex, and Forde in Dorset; also Fuerth near Nuremberg. For those living near the great ford of the Tiber in pre-urban times, it was THE ford, and applying such a name as *Rowema: to the place would have made sense. This ford acquired considerable importance when the archaic Etruscans established their trade-route with Campania across it. There could hardly have been a city to speak of before then. Nevertheless I cannot agree with Wilhelm Schulze that the origin of the name Ro:ma should be sought within Etruscan, or as an Etruscan family-name. It could just as well be an obsolete Italic word (or perhaps pre-Italic, but still IE, which more or less agrees with your suspicion).
> Most cities named after geographical features in their own languages include a modifier, e.g. Frankfurt, Rutherford, etc. It's when new speakers come in that we see such basic names as Forest, Lake, etc. --as seen in some Celtic names in England and Spanish names in central and central Texas such Llano, Plano, etc. And when the previous language becomes completely unknown, we get tautological absurdities such as English Brill "hill-hill" (Welsh bryn) and Cheatwood, Chitwood, Chetwood "forest-forest" (Welsh coed). See the Oxford book on Toponyms.
> So I'd suspect that Roma is not from Latin but from a pre-Roman language that was still fresh in people's memories.
>