eluveitie

edit with form

Attestation:	Pa 0.3 (eluveitie) (1)
Language:	Etruscan
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. masc.
Morphemic Analysis:	el-u-eit-ii̯-e
Phonemic Analysis:	/eluφei̯ti(i̯)e/ or /eluu̯ei̯ti(i̯)e/
Meaning:	'Eluveitie'

Commentary

Etruscan masculine personal name in -ie, borrowed from Celtic. The generally accepted analysis of the Celtic base is *elu̯eitii̯os or *eluφeitii̯os 'Helvetian' (Vitali 1998: 262 f., Vitali & Kaenel 2000: 115 f.). The name was borrowed into Etruscan in the vocative *elu̯/u(φ)eitii̯e (Stifter 2013: 49–52, Salomon 2020: 384–386). It is the oldest attestation of the ethnonym *elu̯ētii̯ī < *pelh₁u-pei̯Ht-ii̯o- 'those of much land' or 'many pastures' (Thurneysen 1923: 11 f.), Latinised heluetiī. The form provides evidence for the dating of the monophthongisation of /ei/ > /ē/ in the second element, and possibly of the loss of /p/: ‹v› could theoretically be merely a hiatus marker, but may well reflect the etymological /p/ of *pei̯Htu- weakened to [φ] in the inlaut after [u] (cf. uvamokozis; Villar & Prósper 2005: 307, n. 453). Whether ‹v› in this attestation is a spelling approximation for genuine Celtic [φ], or [u̯] through Etruscan sound substitution, is unclear. As Etruscan had anlauting /f/, /h/ and /u̯/, the lack of any reflection of a weakened /p/ in the first element < *pelh₁u- shows that initial /h/ in Lat. heluetiī, which was hardly borrowed before 300 BC, cannot reflect /h/ < /p/ in the Celtic form; see Stifter 2012c: 530 f. on "exotic h" in Latin ethnonyms.

It cannot be securely determined whether the Etruscan attestation is a cognomen/nickname literally meaning 'the Helvetian', an individual name, or a nomen. For individual names derived from ethnonyms cf. kalatiknos. Villar & Prósper 2005: 307, n. 453 propose the same etymology (minus the suffix) for Ogam. ILVVETO.

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 *u̯ei̯d- (→ 'much-knowing').

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.