As someone who studied Irish for many years, I recognised the CAM element right away. It is very common in personal names - ie. Cameron < Cam-shrón "Crooked Nose", or Campbell < Cam-béal "Crooked Mouth", etc. The BAN element was rather obscure, and I thought that the most likely candidates were CAM-BEANN "(crooked) horn, antler, prong" or CAM-MHUIN "wry-neck". The other possibility, the name Cammán, may be right, but I must say I've never come across this name before.
Regarding BH, as with MH, in Ulster dialect it is pronounced as "w", but in the rest of Ireland as "v". Thus, CAM-MHUIN, if pronounced as a "v", might have been heard as "b" (especially since in Old Irish, it was a bilabial "v").
I admit it is a tricky problem, though, with no easy answer.
Also, other interesting examples of P/B > C in Irish are Cáisc < Lat. Pascha- "Easter", Corcra < Lat. Purpura "purple" or Cruithne, which is cognate with Briton. However, later borrowings didn't do this, thus Páiste "child" < Anglo-Norman 'Page'. This gives a rough guide to when certain words were borrowed
Germanic languages similarly have "p" as a relatively rare sound. Some are inherited from PIE "b", which was also a very rare sound (ie. djúpr "deep" < PIE "b"), but the vast majority of "p" words are borrowed (ie. prestr "priest").
Vertu heill!
Dan
simonfittonbrown@... wrote:
KAMBAN AND THE CELTIC LANGUAGESHi everyone!
As a Welsh speaker with some knowledge of Irish, I can assure everyone that the word CAM definitely means CROOKED in both languages. It is a common word, in use today. In both languages the word has a secondary meaning of wrong/bad. Incidentally, in spite of the fact that Welsh and Irish are both Celtic languages, they are surprisingly different from one another, and it is uncommon to find a word which is the same in both languages. DU (black) is another, incidentally.
The BAN part of the word is more obscure. The common word for WHITE in Irish is BÁN, but somehow the idea of his being known as "crooked (and) white" seems far-fetched to me.
I suppose one possibility might be to leave behind the idea of CAM referring to the shape of the man's back, which on the face of it would seem the most obvious explanation, and think instead about the kind of settlement he erected. This might shed light on the BAN element. Maybe he wasn't a good fence builder! I say this because Irish has a now rather obscure word, BÁBHÚN (I do not think that the bh would not be pronounced here, or if pronounced would sound like a weak W), which has come into the English language as BAWN. Whereas the Irish denotes a walled enclosure, the English quickly began to denote the land enclosed (a very common linguistic phenomenon). BÁBHÚN also has an alternative form, BÁN. The BAN in the place-name BANGOR (my home town) may also be related with this BÁBHÚN/BÁN, incidentally.
Here is a link for BANGOR, which also mentions the question of the origin of the name.
http://www.tourwales.com/towns_and_villages/bangor.htmWell, I hope this sheds some light. I think we can at least be pretty sure that the CAM part means crooked, whether this refers to his back or his fence!
Cheers,
Simon
PS Celtic adjectives have an extremely strong tendency to follow the noun, but there are nevertheless plenty of compounds made up of adjective plus noun. One off the top of my head is GLASWELLT: glas = green/blue and (G)WELLT = GRASS/STRAW. GLASWELLT = GREEN GRASS. A little tidbit I can't resist: Cinderella's "glass" slipper was probably a "glas (i.e. green/blue)" slipper!
PPS For those who are interested in Celtic languages for their own sake:
There are 6 Celtic languages, divided into 2 branches:
Q-CELTIC: Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic. The last two are descended from Irish.
P-CELTIC: Welsh, Cornish, BretonThe name comes from the fact that the first three tend to prefer a K/Q where the last three prefer a P.
PEN is Welsh for HEAD (in various senses). This becomes CEANN in Irish. The Irish used to have such a great preference for K/Q (the writing of this sound always involves the letter C in the Celtic languages) that they even changed the borrowed word PULSUS (originally meaning beating, but later referring specifically to the pulse in the human body) and changed it into CUISLE, changing the places of the L and S in the process. Many non-Irish speakers know the expression CUISLE MO CHROÍ, PULSE OF MY HEART, as a lovers' expression.
Notwithstanding, Modern Irish has a large number of words with the letter P.Sumir hafa kvæði...
...aðrir spakmæli.- Keth
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--
Daniel Bray
dbray@...
School of Studies in Religion A20
University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia"Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source." Ron Nesen