ara/ndano

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 15 Mar 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>> arándano [ara/ndano] "blueberry" 1726, s. XI "adelf" [sic] < ¿?, [c]
>> compara con vasco arán [ara/n] "endrino" [c]
>> pre-rom. raíz de arán [rai/z de ara/n] [c]

[LT]

> Basque <aran> `plum' resembles various words in both Romance and Celtic,
> but no direction of borrowing seems to be phonologically plausible.
> According to the standard etymological dictionaries, the Romance words
> require *<agranio>, while the Celtic ones require *<agrinja> -- neither
> of which looks like an obvious relative of Basque <aran>.

> Could aran be from an original form *agran-?

In borrowings taken into Basque from the Roman period onward, a medial
plosive-liquid cluster (intolerable in Basque) is normally resolved by
the insertion of an epenthetic echo vowel, and hence *<agran-> would be
expected to surface in Basque as *<agaran>.  But, if the word was
borrowed earlier, perhaps different strategies were in use for resolving
such clusters.

> btw: what are the other forms in Romance & Celtic?

The only forms I have handy are these:

Aragonese <aran~o'n>

Irish <a'irne>
Welsh <eirin>, singulative <eirinenn>

Other forms can be found in the standard etymological dictionaries.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk