Re: Primitive Irish

At 3:29:31 AM on Saturday, May 3, 2014,
anthonyappleyard@... wrote:

> Sorry if I am off-topic here, but does anyone know the
> Primitive Irish (i.e. as spoken about Julius Caesar's
> time) forms of the Irish surnames Niall and Néill?

The doubled 'l' in the historic spellings seem to point to a double consonant in the Primitive Irish form, "/nēll-/, with a suspicion to me that this may be a result of contraction from a 'w' dropping: "Newillos" or similar? Compare the river name Boyne, Irish Bóinn , which Claudius Ptolemaeus in Roman times recorded as Bουουινδα, i.e. Buwinda.