Etruscans

[Jim Rader]

But Welsh <aber> doesn't only look Indo-European, it has a
generally accepted etymology, i.e., *ad-ber-, "place to which water
rushes/flows," paralleled in Goidelic by Old Irish <in(d)ber>, "river
mouth" (Inver- in Scottish place names), with different prefixation of
the same verbal root.  A base *ber- with other prefixes is well-
attested in Celtic.  Pokorny reconstructs *bher- "aufwallen (von
quellendem oder siedendem Wasser)," with a mass of somewhat
dubious comparanda, but on Celtic grounds an Indo-European
*bher- would be unimpeachable.

Jim Rader

[ moderator snip ]

> [Ed Selleslagh]

> The Tuscan hydronyms cited remind me of the (P-Celtic) Welsh 'aber' (river
> (mouth), estuary) and its probable derivatives in Holland and Belgium (from
> the Celtic Belgae, I suppose): Amel in Belgium (the French-Belgian river name
> is Amblhve), Amer in Holland and Belgium (the latter name having been
> transferred to the river banks of the lower Eikse Vliet). Indeed, they all
> contain A-L/R-B/M(/N), sometimes with metathesis.

> Of course, even though the word looks IE, this still leaves the possibility
> that the Celts picked it up from another people, somewhere, e.g between the
> mouth (in the Black Sea) and the springs (in S. Germany) of the Danube. Or
> else: some IE-ans (e.g. P-Italic Umbrians, ...) were living in Etruria before
> the arrival of the Etruscans; that would bring us back to the earlier idea
> that was based upon the name of the river Ombrone, rightly or wrongly.