pianu

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Attestation:	VB·22 (aśkonetio/pianu) (1)
Language:	Celtic
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. sg. masc.
Stem Class:	on
Morphemic Analysis:	pian-ū
Phonemic Analysis:	/pi̯a/ānū/ (?)
Meaning:	'Pianu'

Commentary

on-stem personal name in the nominative; unlikely to be a patronym as per De Hoz 1990: 323 f. and/or Lejeune 1971: 53 (see the inscription page and Tibiletti Bruno 1978c: 24 f., 1979: 254 f., 1981: 166 f., Morandi 2004: 564). The base pian- (p/bian(d)-) is unclear. Tibiletti Bruno 1979: 256 tentatively compares two marginal attestations, CIL XIII 124 piandossonn[ (Labarthe-de-Rivière, Aquitania) and CIL VII 115 pian[ (Caerleon, Britannia). Better and geographically closer fits are the Ligurian gentilicia CIL V 7653 bianius (Fossano) and 7706 cobianiu[ (Augusta Bagiennorum), but no obvious analysis suggests itself – maybe with a nasal suffix? But -ān- is not common in Gaulish (Stüber 2005: 73); the formation may not be Celtic, though Delamarre 2007: 41 compares bienus and analyses the names as (kom-)bii̯-āno- 'striker'. Alternatively, TB (ibid.) considers the possibility that the glide is palatalised /l/, but notes that #bl- is intact in blando- 'gentle' (whatever its origin) in attestations in northern Italy and Gaul, and also in Cisalpine Celtic (pla(, plai, plialeθu, plioiso).

Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

CIL	Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. (17 volumes, various supplements)
De Hoz 1990	Javier de Hoz, "El genitivo celtico de los temas en -o-", in: Francisco Villar (ed.), Studia indogermanica et palaeohispanica in honorem Antonio Tovar et Luis Michelena, Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 1990, 315–329.
Delamarre 2007	Xavier Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques dans l'épigraphie classique. Nomina Celtica Antiqua Selecta Inscriptionum, Paris: Errance 2007.