And, yes, "hound of X" becomes a fairly common type of name in the 7th century and later. The implication for Cú Chulainn being that his name cannot go back any further than the 7th century. For what it is worth, even the birth name of Cú Chulainn, i.e. Setantae or Sétantae (we don't know... /3 - ThreadSky

davidstifter.bsky.social • 5 days ago

And, yes, "hound of X" becomes a fairly common type of name in the 7th century and later. The implication for Cú Chulainn being that his name cannot go back any further than the 7th century. For what it is worth, even the birth name of Cú Chulainn, i.e. Setantae or Sétantae (we don't know...
/3

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andubhghailleach.bsky.social•5 days ago

Is there a reason to think it wasn’t used before then other than its absence on ogam stones and “non-Indo-European” form? Surely there could be other explanations for that, and as Carl Sagan wrote, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” I must look into what Michael O’Brien had to say.

davidstifter.bsky.social•5 days ago

I think the absence on ogam stones is statistically significant. Even though their number is limited, there are still enough of them from the 5th and esp. 6th centuries that at least some of those "non-IE" names ought to show up here and there.
Unfortunately, M. O'Brien doesn't say much at all.
/1

davidstifter.bsky.social•5 days ago

He introduced the label "non-IE", but whether it is appropriate or not, I dare not say. It is "non-IE" in the sense that IE complex names are formed via compounding, not genitival phrases. But whether that means that a non-IE language played a role in the emergence of this type, is hard to tell.
/2

davidstifter.bsky.social•5 days ago

BTW, another issue is the precise dating of when binomial names emerged. We basically see them in the genealogies, but so far we don't have a reliable resource that synchronises generations in the genealogies with absolute dates.
/3

davidstifter.bsky.social•5 days ago

...if the first vowel was short or long), looks decidedly un-Irish. If it was Setantae with a short vowel, there is the possibility that this is actually a British Celtic word.
/4

dubhthach.bsky.social•5 days ago

I'm always reminded of the "Setantii" on Ptolemy's map when it comes to the name.

davidstifter.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yes, that's exactly what I am thinking of. If it's not that, then there is no meaningful etymology for the name.

davidstifter.bsky.social•5 days ago

However, the problem with that ethnic name is that it could easily be a copy error for Segantii or Segontii, Greek g <Γ> and t <Τ> being very similar to each other.

chrisgwinnla.bsky.social•4 days ago

Do you think it could be a medieval Irish neo-logism derived (with the adj. suff. -ta) from setan "sack"? There is some uncertainty about the word (Lambert discusses it in EC 22 [1985] pp. 212-213); but perhaps coined after his gae bulga got folk-etymologized as "spear of the belly/sack"?

davidstifter.bsky.social•4 days ago

This is very unlikely for several reasons:
First, the only attestation of "setan" (in two copies) is so isolated that we cannot be sure that it is a genuine word of Irish at all.
Second, there is no productive adjectival suffix -ta in OIr. You are probably thinking of the morpheme of the...
/1

klud.bsky.social•5 days ago

But surely an old borrowing, because the S- would have gone to H-?

Or from St- and borrowed after int was reduced to S- only?

davidstifter.bsky.social•5 days ago

Not necessarily. Since [h] was the lenited allophone of *s, the h- at the beginning of a loanword could be reanalysed as a lenited s-. This is what most likely happened in the case of OIr. sebac "hawk", probably borrowed from OEngl. heafoc.

klud.bsky.social•4 days ago

That makes sense, thank you.

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