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 and generally in Insular Celtic, though late OIr. develops a secondary ā-stem variant rígan; the expected form for Gaulish is thus *rīganī. rikanas 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 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.

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.