pirakos

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Attestation:	NM·4 (pirakos) (1)
Language:	Celtic
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. sg. masc.
Stem Class:	o
Morphemic Analysis:	bir(r)-āk-os
Phonemic Analysis:	/birākos/
Meaning:	'Pirakos'

Commentary

Names in birak- are very well attested in Continental Celtic (Conway et al. 1933: 36, Lejeune 1971: 127 with n. 436, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 161, Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 199 C): M-70 biracos, biraco (Lochner von Hüttenbach 1989: 31), birac(i)os, biracius/-ia, biracatus, biracillus, biracideginus, G-257 βιρακοτουτι[, biragillus (often multiple attestations, see Delamarre 2007: 42, 213). Cf. also Ogam CIIC 89 biraco. The connection of the birak-names with the base birr- 'short' (AcS I: 423, DLG: 76; also De Bernardo Stempel 2000: 92, who analyses the toponym βιρακελλον in Ptolemy III,1 as *bir(r)-āk-ellom 'the place of the short-cape-wearing people') is uncertain because of single vs. geminate /r/ – while /rr/ is theoretically possible for pirakos, since the North Italic alphabets do not mark geminates, the exact correspondence with Transalpine biracos indicates that it also has /r/. Furthermore, the suffix -āk- usually forms derivations from substantives. Whatever the base, pirakos is best interpreted as a hypocoristic (see GPN: 311–314, Russell 1988: 135 f. with literature for discussion).

Also attested in the genitive piraki.

David Stifter, Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

AcS	Alfred Holder, Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, Leipzig: Teubner 1896–1907.
CIIC	R[obert] A[lexander] S[tewart] Macalister, Corpus inscriptionum insularum Celticarum, Dublin: Stationery Office 1945–1949.
Conway et al. 1933	Robert Seymour Conway, Joshua Whatmough, Sarah Elizabeth Johnson, The Prae-Italic Dialects of Italy. Vol. III: Indexes, London: Oxford University Press 1933.
De Bernardo Stempel 2000	Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel, "Ptolemy's Celtic Italy and Ireland: a Linguistic Analysis", in: David N. Parsons, Patrick Sims-Williams (eds), Ptolemy. Towards a linguistic atlas of the earliest Celtic place-names of Europe. Papers from a workshop, sponsored by the British Academy, in the Department of Welsh, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 11–12 April 1999, Aberystwyth: CMCS 2000, 83–112.
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.