rikanas

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Attestation:	NO·8 (rikanas) (1)
Language:	Celtic
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	gen. sg. fem.
Stem Class:	ā
Morphemic Analysis:	rīg-an-ās
Phonemic Analysis:	/rīganās/
Meaning:	'of Rīganā'

Commentary

ā-stem personal name in the genitive.

The form rikana = rīganā is evidently to be connected with the Celtic word for 'queen', OIr. rígain 'queen', MW riein 'maid' < PIE *(H)rēĝ-n-ih₂ (Matasović 2009: 311, DLG: 258). The feminine form of rīg- 'king' is an ī-stem etymologically (stem rīgan- generalised from the oblique cases, e.g. gen. *rēĝn̥i̯eh₂s) and generally in Insular Celtic, though late OIr. develops a secondary ā-stem variant rígan; the expected form for Gaulish is thus *rīganī, gen. *rīgani̯ās. The ā-stem rīganās is argued to be lexical 'of the queen' by Gambari 1989 (also 1999: 388 f., no. 5, see the inscription page). Whether an ā-stem variant already existed in Gaulish hinges on the interpretation of RIG L-67 rigani rosmertiac (Lezoux) – the phrase, preceded by the dedicatory verb ieuri, should be expected to be in the dative, in which case rigani may be the dative of rīganā (as in RIIG VAU-13-01 [RIG G-153] βηλησαμι from belesamā). Problems regarding the analysis of the ending/suffixation of rigani itself (ī-stem dative *rīgani̯āi̯ > rīgani̯ī?) and of the theonym rosmerta, as well as of the verb ieuri and the structure of the text overall, however, render the evidence of the Lezoux inscription uncertain (see Lejeune & Marichal 1976: 152–156, Lambert in RIG II.2: 179–183). Though rīganā is not attested as a personal name in Continental Celtic, a personal name is typologically much more likely; cf. Motta 1992: 317 ("transposition en nom propre (tout comme pour l'italien Regina) du mot gaulois rīganī"), Morandi 1999: 184 f. (who compares CIL V 4594 rigiae at Brescia), Morandi 2004: 578.

See also Villar & Prósper 2005: 210, De Bernardo Stempel 1999: 448.

David Stifter, Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

CIL	Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. (17 volumes, various supplements)
De Bernardo Stempel 1999	Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel, Nominale Wortbildung des älteren Irischen. Stammbildung und Derivation [= Buchreihe der Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 15], Tübingen: Niemeyer 1999.
DLG	Xavier Delamarre, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise. Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental, 2nd, revised edition, Paris: Errance 2003.