`Sancho'

[Rick Mc Callister]

>Debatable.  The form <Sancho> is Spanish.

	Of course it is, BUT it's a Spanish name commonly associated in
Spanish literature and culture with the Basques [despite Sancho Panza],
along with In~igo [vs. Ignacio, with which it is correctly or incorrectly
associated]. That's why I qualified it as "Spanish spoken by Basques".
Elsewhere in Spanish, the proper name developed as Santo or, more often,
Santos. In Latin America, I've only come across Sancho as a dog's name.

>The medieval Basque form of
>the name is <Antso>, which must derive from *<Santso> by dissimilatory
>loss of the first sibilant.  And I don't see why this form would develop
>from a palatalized coronal (/ts/ notates an apical affricate).

>There is no need to appeal to a Romance palatal to account for the
>Basque /ai/.  For example, the word for `fast, quick, soon' was mostly
><laster> in the 16th century but is mostly <laister> today.

	Then what's the reason? Is it an analogy to words with /ay/ --which
underwent this change previously because of metathesis of palatal, etc. Is
it part of a regional phenomenon? --as in Portuguese, in which stressed /a/
often > /ay/ among certain speakers, e.g. the proper name Bras, which is
often /brayz, brayzh, braysh/

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
MUW
Columbus MS 39701
rmccalli at sunmuw1.muw.edu