toutiopouos

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Attestation:	NM·7 (toutiopouos) (1)
Language:	Celtic
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. sg. masc.
Stem Class:	o
Morphemic Analysis:	tou̯t-i̯-o-bou̯-os
Phonemic Analysis:	/tou̯ti̯obou̯os/
Meaning:	'Toutiobouos'

Commentary

The compound personal name toutiopouos features a common first element tou̯ti̯o-, probably tou̯ti̯os 'citizen', derived from tou̯ta 'people, tribe' (DLG: 300; cf. toutiorix, Delamarre 2007: 184), but is not otherwise attested in Continental Celtic onomastics. The second element -pouos has been analysed as -bou̯os (DLG: 79), a derivation in -o (Lejeune 1971: 128) from the root noun *bou̯s 'cow, cattle'.

Assuming a combination of 'citizen' and 'cattle', Delamarre (DLG: 79, 300) translates 'Boeuf-Citoyen', which may make sense with regard to the importance of cattle as a "traditional yard-stick of social status and concomitant legal entitlements in early Ireland" – "the basic propertied commoner, the bó-aire or 'cow-freeman', possessed a dozen to a score of cattle as well as other stock and was so called 'because his free status and honour price derive from cattle'" (McCone 1991: 40). A further association of cattle with the status of citizen is indicated by McCone's analysis (p. 41) of OIr. bue 'man of property/legal capacity, citizen' as *bou̯-i̯o-s 'of/with cattle': tou̯ti̯obou̯os 'having cattle as fitting for a citizen' or 'with cattle indicating citizen status'. The semantic motivation is the same as in bo-marus 'great in cows' and bo-ualos 'powerful in cows'. Doubt is shed upon this interpretation by the unclear morphology of -bou̯os, which lacks comparanda, because bou̯- appears only as first element in compound PNN (see the morpheme page). The meaning of an o-suffix in tou̯ti̯obou̯os is unclear; the alternative – a genitive in -os of a name formed with the root noun itself ('citizen's cow'?) – is semantically unconvincing, since the prestige lies in having cows, not in being one. (The single attestation is on a coin, where we would not expect a genitive in any case; cf. only alkouesi.) The identification of the second element as the 'cattle'-word must be considered uncertain. In light of the unclear semantics, it cannot be excluded that the first element tou̯ti̯o- is not 'citizen', but the homophone 'left, bad, magic' (see tou̯t-).

See also GPN: 268, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 162.

David Stifter, Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

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.