surica

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Attestation:	VB·30 (surica/ciponis/f) (1)
Language:	Celtic
adapted to:	Latin
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. sg. fem.
Stem Class:	ā
Morphemic Analysis:	sū̆r-ik-ā
Phonemic Analysis:	/su/ūrikā/
Meaning:	'Surica'

Commentary

ā-stem personal name in the nominative; grammatically Latin, but etymologically Celtic.

The name surica, suricus is also attested in CIL V 5618 suricae (dat., Castelseprio), 4856 surici (gen., Maderno), as well as III 4197 surica. Rhŷs 1913: 55 f. suggests a segmentation into a first element su- 'good' and second element rik- as in OIr. richt 'form, appearance' (i.e. 'of good appearance'), but the latter cannot be divorced from its suffix and probably corresponds to Gaul. riktu- (see Irslinger 2002: 123). Delamarre 2007: 175, 230, 233 also separates su-, but goes with rīg- 'ruler' as second element, possibly with regard to CIL V 8939 surix (Vercelli) and XII 4172 uitousurix (p. 203). This is semantically attractive (and cf. Lambert 2000b: 103 f. on Châteaubleau surexetesi and OIr. suirge 'courting' < *su-regi̯ā), but both readings are uncertain – in surix̣, ⟨x⟩ appears to be damaged; a genitive uitousuri[gis] is an emendation given in AcS III: 412 and KGP: 298 for uitousuri[, but the partly preserved letter after iota may as well be ⟨c⟩. Also, thematised variants of surīgs should feature /g/ at least in some of the attestations (and ideally also a -(i)i̯-suffix), which renders this analysis unlikely. Since sur(i)us, sur(i)a as well as names which look like hypocoristic derivations, such as surianus, surilla, surucca, are well and widely attested (see AcS II: 1672–1682, Delamarre 2007: 175) – including sura at Oleggio, it seems preferable to analyse surica as a hypocoristic from a name in sū̆r- (of uncertain derivation) with a velar suffix -ik-.

See also Ponti 1896: 155–157, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 154, Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 173, Morandi 2004: 569.

Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

AcS	Alfred Holder, Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, Leipzig: Teubner 1896–1907.
CIL	Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. (17 volumes, various supplements)
Delamarre 2007	Xavier Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques dans l'épigraphie classique. Nomina Celtica Antiqua Selecta Inscriptionum, Paris: Errance 2007.