andera 'woman' Celtic ?

[roslyn frank]

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>"roslyn frank" <roslynfrank at hotmail.com> wrote:

[RF]
>>Having said that, I would suggest that the overall thrust of Vennemann's
>>argument is worthy of consideration, namely, a model that posits a
>>higher node and consequently, an older source for the IE and Euskeric
>>items alike. In such a simulation of events, one could argue that
>>originally the item was used in reference to a "woman" and that over
>>time the term was generalized to refer to "human, person".

[MCV]
>Vennemann, as I read him, is not claiming that Greek <ane:r>, G.
><andros> "man, male" (PIE *H2ner-) has a Vasconic etymology.  He
>merely claims that the element -andr- in a word like <salamandra>
>and names such as Andromeda, Andromache and Kassandra might be
>derived from a Vasconic *andr- "woman" instead of Greek <ane:r> "man".

[RF]
Yes, Miguel, you are absolutely correct in your representation of
Vennemann's claim. What I attempted to say above was that I believed the
"overall thrust" of Vennemann's model was an interesting one. I then
went on to say that such a model could be used to construct a similation
of events such as the one that I presented of the Gk. materials. I
apologize for not having made that point clearer.

[RF]
>>These individuals called <chandros> (i.e., sing. <chandro>) are referred
>>to throughout the text in the masculine so there is no question about
>>their gender. Moreover, from the duties assigned, it is likely that the
>>group as a whole was composed exclusively of men. In short, in this
>>concrete case there is little question about the ultimate female
>>referentiality of the "title" of <chandro>, its derivation from
>><etxekoandre>.

[MCV]
>I'm not familiar with the term "chandros", who it refers to, or
>what the history of the word is, but on the evidence presented
>here, I don't see any compelling reason to derive the word from
><etxekoandre(a)>.

[RF]
Perhaps I didn't make the context of its usage clear enough. In the
Basque law codes that I spent some ten years perusing in one of my
research projects, there are certain phrases that reoccur in Spanish.
They refer to the householders of the village in question who are
"voting" members of the community. The right to "vote" was not
individual but rather by "household" and further, there were only
certain "households" or "etxe" that held that status of "full-fire
voting rights". At times the houses with voting rights are represented
as "fuegos". When speaking of these householders, the texts in question
often speak of their representatives as "cabezaleros" and "cabezaleras"
and/or as "buenos hombres" y "buenos mujeres". Their duties and
responsibilities are laid out. Hence, in the particular case in
question, there is little doubt that the rank of those involved was
conferred by their "house". My assumption is that the expression
<chandro> is derived from Euskera, as are many other odd expressions
that pop up in these codes which are written in Spanish. To my
knowledge, there is no alternate derivation for the term.

Moreover, the phonological reduction of <echekoandra> "the lady of the
house" to *<chandra> with the resulting form being "masculinized" by
replacement of the <-a> definite pronoun ending with the masculine
ending <-o> from Romance seems fairly straight forward to me. However, I
might be missing something.

On a related note: certainly we know that the compound
<etxebarri>/<etxeberri> (also with the definite article in <etxebarria>
and <etxeberria>) meaning "new-house", gave rise to a variety of
surnames and first names in Spanish, ranging from the very obvious
Spanish last name Echeverria to the more obscure first name "Xavier".
The same house name became, for example, Dechepare and Chavert in
French. It seems to me that odder things have happened, e.g., Ximena
(Jimena), the name of El Mio Cid's wife, deriving from <seme-enea> in
Euskera which means "my (beloved> son." At least that is what one of my
professors told me some years back.

Again in a marketplace town like medieval Burgos, stomping grounds of El
Cid Campeador, it wouldn't be surprising to encounter this sort of thing
either given that many of those living there and travelling through were
probably bilingual in Castilian and Euskera. If I'm not mistaken the
linguistic boundary at that time was a few kilometers north of the
Montes de Oca just outside Burgos.

In the 70's I spent seven summers teaching in Burgos and found quite a
number of curious characteristics in the Spanish of the Burgaleses, many
of whom had recently moved to the city from former Basque-speaking zones
(that is from zones where Euskera was still spoken in the Middle Ages
(help! Larry, with the exact boundary lines).

For example, one of our constant headaches was finding families in
Burgos for our North American students to live with who did not have a
tendency to "speak in infinitives", as we characterized that aspect of
their speech. Anyone familiar with Euskera could recognize what was
going on in the Spanish of these individuals, usually from the popular
rural classes who had just moved into the city of Burgos.

Best wishes,
Roz Frank
April 6, 1999