tal-

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Type:	lexical
Meaning:	'front, forehead'
Language:	Celtic
Phonemic analysis:	/tal/-
From PIE:	*tl̥H-u- '?'
From Proto-Celtic:	*talu- 'front, forehead'
Attestation:	talu, tanotaliknoi, tanotalos

Commentary

Attested lexically in OIr. taul, tul 'protuberance, boss, forehead', OW, MBret. tal 'forehead', OCorn. tal gl. frons (Matasović 2009: , and possibly Gallo-Lat. talus, talūtum 'embankment, slope' (FEW: 68–70). Onomastically in numerous personal names – in Gaulish names predominantly as second element in compounds (e.g. carotalus, cassitalos, dumnotalus, samotalus), but also as first element in derivations (e.g. talussa, talutius, talanius), see KGP: 274, GPN: 259–261, DLG: 288 f., Meid 2005: 153, Delamarre 2007: 233 et passim, as first element also in Insular Celtic (e.g. taliesin, talhouarn, LEIA: T-182, Sims-Williams 2003: 123 f.). PIE etymology under discussion – Delamarre DLG: 289 connects it with a PIE root *(s)telH- 'spread out, lie flat' (IEW: 1061), but the semantics of the Irish word seem to indicate a development from 'front' rather than from 'flat surface' (but cf. also LEIA: T-180–182, De Bernardo Stempel 1987: 146).

Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

De Bernardo Stempel 1987	Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel, Die Vertretung der indogermanischen liquiden und nasalen Sonanten im Keltischen, Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck 1987.
Delamarre 2007	Xavier Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques dans l'épigraphie classique. Nomina Celtica Antiqua Selecta Inscriptionum, Paris: Errance 2007.
DLG	Xavier Delamarre, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise. Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental, 2nd, revised edition, Paris: Errance 2003.
FEW	Walther von Wartburg, Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bâle: 1922–2002.