Reconstruction talk:Proto-Brythonic/llew

This article needs to be deleted. First of all, llew is the MODERN WELSH form of the word, not the Brittonic form (which would have been something like *lewu); secondly, as a Latin loan from Roman-era Brittonic, it dates to many, many centuries after the Proto-Brittonic period!

@Gowanw what is leugui? Is this the personal name Leugui from the Redon Cartulary? ShellfaceTheStrange (talk) 18:14, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@ShellfaceTheStrange: It's from {{R:cel:EPCW}} where he claims it's a compound word (proper noun?) for “lion” in Breton. 🤷 --Gowanw (talk) 20:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I see. I think Koch's wordlist is generally reasonable, but it has some errors (which is explicable, since it seems unfinished and/or unedited). So far as I can find the only occurrence of Leugui in any stage of Breton is in the Redon Cartulary (so this is an Old Breton name, not a common noun). It must be Old Breton in any case, because intervocalic <gu> would of course not be possible in Middle or Modern Breton spelling. I have not found any previous etymological analyses for this name, but it has been compared - I think correctly - with Old Welsh Liugui, Legui (approximately /ɬəwɨ/?) in the Book of Llandaf, which furthermore occurs in Middle Welsh as Llywy (as a name) and importantly as an adjective llywy (“beautiful”). The y demonstrates that the original vowel cannot have been *e because this would not have become a schwa in this context; instead, a connection with golau (“light”) < *gwo-luw (> Middle Welsh lleu (“light”) in CA and T, per GPC) seems phonologically and semantically inviting. Alternatively for the name we could also invoke Proto-Celtic *Lugus, which is certainly the source of Loumarch cited by Koch (Middle Welsh Llywarch, not **Llewarch).

All this is to say that it seems unlikely that Koch is correct to infer that these names are derivatives of *llew. ShellfaceTheStrange (talk) 22:04, 21 December 2021 (UTC)