ritukalos

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Attestation:	MI·7.1 (ritukaḷos) (1)
Status:	probable
Language:	Celtic
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. sg. masc.
Stem Class:	o
Morphemic Analysis:	rit-u-kal-os or rit-u-gal-os
Phonemic Analysis:	/ritukalos/ or /ritugalos/
Meaning:	'Ritukalos'

Commentary

See the inscription page on issues with the reading.

Masculine compound personal name in the nominative; not otherwise attested, but morphologically plausible. The first element is unambiguously ritu- 'course, race, attack'. The second element is usually considered to be kalo- 'hard', which appears as second element in boiocalus (AcS I: 473, KGP: 160), carrocalus (KGP: 160, Delamarre 2007: 58), thus Lejeune 1971: 57, n. 153, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 150, Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 184 f., no. 28, KGP: 160, 259, Delamarre 2007: 154. Rhŷs 1913: 45 suggests gal- 'power, ability', which makes for convincing semantics ('valorous in attack', cf. Morandi 2001: 15). Compound names with gal- as second element are frequent in Irish (e.g. donngal, fíangal), where they are, in accordance with the lexical base galā, ā-stems which are only transferred to the o-stem class in historical times (Uhlich 1993: 130 f.); a Gaul. ritugalos would be innovative.

Pauli 1885: 72 assumes that the name is formed with the patronymic suffix -alo-; this is also considered by Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 150, 1981: 184 f., no. 28, who compares CIL XII 1714 rituca, but doubtful considering that the name is either attested on its own or at the beginning of a text followed by what may be a discrete name formula (MI·7.2).

;>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.