eluveitie

edit with form

Attestation:	Pa 0.3 (eluveitie) (1)
Language:	Celtic
adapted to:	Etruscan
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. masc.
Morphemic Analysis:	el-u-eit-(i)i̯-e
Phonemic Analysis:	/eluφei̯t(i)i̯e/ or /eluu̯ei̯t(i)i̯e/
Meaning:	'Eluveitie'

Commentary

Etruscan masculine personal name in -ie, generally accepted to be borrowed from Celtic *elu̯eit(i)i̯os < *pelh₁u-pei̯Ht-(i)i̯o- 'having much land / many pastures' (Thurneysen 1923: 11 f.), as known from the Latinised ethnonym heluetiī < *elu̯ēt(i)i̯ī (Vitali 1998: 262 f., Vitali & Kaenel 2000: 115 f.). The name was borrowed into Etruscan in the vocative *elu̯eit(i)i̯e (Stifter 2013: 49–52, Salomon 2020: 384–386). The Etruscan attestation may be an individual name, cognomen or nomen; it cannot be determined whether the borrowed Celtic form is a nickname literally meaning 'the Helvetian', or an individual name with the same etymology. If the former, the inscription provides the oldest attestation of the ethnonym. For individual names which may be derived from ethnonyms cf. kalatiknos, pelkui and onesi. Villar & Prósper 2005: 307, n. 453 propose the same etymology (minus the suffix) for Ogam CIIC 243 ilvveto. Since the form is likely to belong to the Gaulish rather than the Lepontic stratum, the borrowing probably happened in the 4^th century BC.

The form is notable for its archaic sound form, viz. /ei̯/ not yet monophthongised to /ē/, and possibly a reflex of */p/. The latter depends on the interpretation of the spelling ⟨uv⟩:
1. */p/ is lost completely; ⟨v⟩ reflects the desyllabified stem vowel /u/, while ⟨u⟩ reflects an intrusive vowel in the sequence /lu̯/ (Eska 2013b: 38 f.).
2. */p/ is lost completely, ⟨uv⟩ is a digraph reflecting /u̯/ (Stifter 2011: 3, and cf. the discussion on uvamokozis in the Prestino inscription).
3. */p/ is lost completely, but ⟨v⟩ reflects /u̯/ in hiatus between the still syllabic stem vowel /u/ and /e/ (elu.eit(i)i̯e, cf. again Prestino – the counterargument concerning the development of /uu̯/ in Celtic does not apply if ⟨v⟩ as the hiatus marker is an Etruscan strategy).
4. */p/ is not completely lost in the inlaut after [u], but reflected by ⟨v⟩ = *[φ] (Villar & Prósper 2005: 307, n. 453). Whether ⟨v⟩ in this attestation would be used as it is thought to be used in the Lepontic alphabet in the Prestino inscription, viz. for [φ], or would represent [u̯], as it does regularly in the Etruscan alphabet, after Etruscan sound substitution, cannot be decided.
Being a loan and attested in the Etruscan alphabet, the form is not particularly useful in informing the discussion about the function of waw in the Lepontic alphabet and the Prestino inscription. It certainly shows loss of word-initial */p/, as Etruscan had initial /f/, /h/ and /u̯/ available to denote any segmental reflex. Initial /h/ in Lat. heluetiī, which was hardly borrowed before 300 BC, thus cannot reflect /h/ < */p/ in the Celtic form; see Stifter 2012c: 530 f. on "exotic h" in Latin ethnonyms.

An alternative etymology is proposed by De Bernardo Stempel (in a letter to Stefan Zimmer, recorded in Villar & Prósper 2005: 307, n. 453), who analyses the second element as u̯ēd- < *u̯ei̯d- (→ 'much-knowing', cf. u̯id-).

David Stifter, Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

CIIC	R[obert] A[lexander] S[tewart] Macalister, Corpus inscriptionum insularum Celticarum, Dublin: Stationery Office 1945–1949.
Eska 2013b	Joseph F. Eska, "In defense of Celtic /φ/", in: Adam I. Cooper, Jeremy Rau, Michael Weiss, Multi nominis grammaticus. Studies in classical and Indo-European linguistics in honor of Alan J. Nussbaum on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, Ann Arbor: Beech Stave Press 2013, 32–43.