uenia


Attestation:	NO·18 (metelui:maeśilalui:uenia:metelikna:aśmina:krasanikna) (1)
Language:	Celtic
Word Type:	proper noun
Semantic Field:	personal name
Grammatical Categories:	nom. sg. fem.
Stem Class:	i̯ā

Morphemic Analysis:	u̯en-(i)i̯-ā
Phonemic Analysis:	/u̯en(i)i̯ā/
Meaning:	'Uenia'

Commentary

Probably an ā-stem personal name, short or hypocoristic from the base u̯eni- 'family member, friend', see Herbig 1906: 197, n. 2, Danielsson 1909: 18 f., Rhŷs 1913: 58, Pedersen 1921: 41, Lejeune 1971: 62, n. 190, Tibiletti Bruno 1975: 55, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 149, Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 175, Pellegrini 1983: 36, Prosdocimi 1991: 160, n. 24, Solinas 1995: 373, Motta 2000: 213, Morandi 2004: 582, Gambari 2019b: 98 f. Negligible Vetter 1927: 12 f., who proposed that uenia was a lexeme 'wife' < PIE *g^u̯enih₂ 'woman' with *g^u̯ > u̯ as in Latin (also Pisani 1964: 284 f., no. 122), cf. Lejeune 1971: 73 f. and Hamp 1974: 194. McCone 1993: 243–245 interprets uenia as a lexeme (collective) u̯eni-ā 'family, offspring' as in OIr. fine, which is formally possible, though the attestation of a name uenu at Giubiasco supports the analysis of uenia as a personal name (cf. Eska 1995b: 131–134, who notes an attestation of uenia in Turkey [CIL III 6861]; Delamarre 2007: 194 lists uenialo [dat.] in Liguria [CIL V 7713]).

CIL	Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. (17 volumes, various supplements)
Danielsson 1909	Olof August Danielsson, Zu den venetischen und lepontischen Inschriften [= Skrifter utgivna av Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala 13.1], Uppsala – Leipzig: 1909.
Delamarre 2007	Xavier Delamarre, Noms de personnes celtiques dans l'épigraphie classique. Nomina Celtica Antiqua Selecta Inscriptionum, Paris: Errance 2007.
Eska 1995b	Joseph F. Eska, "Another look at Lepontic uenia", Beiträge zur Namenforschung 29/30 (1994/1995), 129–136.