seχeθu

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Attestation:	NM·6.1 (seχeθu), NM·6.2 (ṣẹχ̣ẹθ̣ụ) (2)
Language:	Celtic
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. sg. animate
Stem Class:	on
Morphemic Analysis:	seg-et-ū or seg-ed-ū
Phonemic Analysis:	/segetū/ or /segedū/
Meaning:	'Seχeθu'

Commentary

on-stem personal name in the nominative. The base is well-attested seg- 'victory'. The suffix could be -ed- or -et- (cf. Lejeune 1971: 127, n. 440 and 441). -ed- is suggested by the commonness with which the suffix appears in on-stems (see the morpheme page), and cf. Villar & Prósper 2005: 285 on Celiberian seged-. A formation seget- 'victor', however, is semantically meaningful and supported by the comparison with the i̯o-stem sekezos, where the situation is similar, but -et- is more likely: seg-et-ū 'the victorious one' (cf. Stifter 2020: 40). seχeθu and sekezos could of course be formed with different suffixes, but cf. also the inscription page on the orthography, which indicates /t/ rather than /d/. Cf. especially plialeθu.

Motta 2000: 208 assumes that seχeθu is the same name as sekezos and therefore the genitive as per De Hoz 1990. This is unlikely, however, even when accepting De Hoz' theory, considering the general dominance of nominatives in the legends. Markey & Mees 2003: 140 interpret seχeθu as a cognomen in -ed-ū.

Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

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.