Pre-Basque Phonology

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) wrote:

>Well, the only way I can think of to decide whether <Maite> originated in the
>Basque Country is to check the historical records, if there are any.

>But <maite> happens to be an ordinary Basque word, and moreover a most
>appropriate one for naming a woman: it means 'beloved' in Basque, and is hence
>a translation equivalent of Romance female names like French <Aimee> and
>Castilian <Amada> -- and perhaps of something in Catalan?

I suppose Amat (Cast. Amado as in Alonso) is a Catalan name,
although I can't think of any examples (and Altavista only gives
me Amat as a family name).  I seem to recall the existence of a
provencalizing Aimat or Aymat, at least in the Middle Ages.

In any case, although Maite is generally associated with Maria
Teresa, and people generally don't know that the word means
anything in Basque, there may be an association between the name
and the "North".  Mainly because of the song "Maitetxu mia".

>I'd be interested to hear what the Spaniards or the Catalans think of the
>female name <Arantxa>.  This is unquestionably of Basque origin -- it's a
>Marian name, from the Basque word for 'thorn' -- yet it is now far from rare
>in Spain: there's famous tennis player with this name, and she claims no
>Basque ancestry that I know of.  Is the name perceived as Basque in the
>Peninsula generally?

Because of the <tx>, it's probably perceived as Basque or
Catalan.  Since "Arantxa" doesn't mean anything in Catalan, I
suppose most Catalans at least will tend to perceive it as
Basque.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl