atbiti

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Attestation:	VB·29 (ueca/atbiti/f) (1)
Language:	Celtic
adapted to:	Latin
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	patronymic
Grammatical Categories:	gen. sg. masc.
Stem Class:	o, i̯o
Morphemic Analysis:	ate-bīt-ī or ate-bit(-(i)i̯)-ī
Phonemic Analysis:	/atbī/itī/
Meaning:	'of Atbit(i)us'

Commentary

o-stem personal name in the genitive; the inflection is Latin, but the name is etymologically Celtic. The comparandum usually cited (Ferrero 1897: 60, Rhŷs 1913: 55, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 154, Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 173, Morandi 2004: 568) is CIL XII 1386 ]adbitus; the attestation is incomplete, but listed in AcS I: 38, KGP: 111, GPN: 129 and Delamarre 2007: 11, and apparently widely considered to be ad-bitu-. It is not clear, however, why */d/ should have become /t/ or otherwise be spelled with tau in the present attestation (in the Latin alphabet); KGP: 111, 61 appears to assume influence from ate-formations on ad-formations, but this is ad hoc. Formally more likely is an analysis with ate-; such a name finds no comparanda, but ate-bīto- 'beaten again' would parallel formations such as ate-u̯rīto- 'found again', ate-gnāto- 'born/known again' (see ateknati), though the semantic appropriateness of 'struck/beaten again' for a personal name is a bit surprising. Alternatively, ate-bit(i)i̯o- could be hypocoristic from a compound with first element bitu- expanded with the preverb in intensifying function.

See also Ponti 1896: 158.

David Stifter, Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

AcS	Alfred Holder, Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, Leipzig: Teubner 1896–1907.
CIL	Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. (17 volumes, various supplements)
Delamarre 2007	Xavier Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques dans l'épigraphie classique. Nomina Celtica Antiqua Selecta Inscriptionum, Paris: Errance 2007.
Ferrero 1897	Ermanno Ferrero, "Iscrizioni di Chignolo Verbano", Atti della Società di Archeologia e Belle Arti per la provincia di Torino 7 (1897), 56–60.