andera 'woman' Celtic ?

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Xavier Delamarre <xdelamarre at siol.net> wrote:

>I confess that the celticity of _*andera_ 'woman' (found in French
>dialects) is extremely uncertain.Moreover there is another Gaulish
>_andero-_ in the inscription of Chamalihre : _brixtia anderon_ "by the
>magic of the  infernals" (anderon : genitive plur.), which is, for sure, IE
>and Celtic, making an exact phonetic equation with Latin _inferus_ O.Ind.
>_adhara-_ < IE _*ndhero-_ "d'en-bas, d'en-dessous, infernal".

>But words like _izokin_ < _eso:ks_ "salmon", _mando_ < _mandu-_
>(Mandu-essedum, Mandu-bracius) "mule", and most probably, with unexplained
>loss of initial, _azkoin_ < _tasgo-_ "badger" (on which see the beautiful
>article by Joshua Katz in a recent issue of HS), show the early contacts
>between continental Celts and (proto-)Basques.

There are more possible examples.  Classics are Bq. hartz "bear"
~ Celtic *artos, Bq. adar "horn" ~ OIr. adarc "id." and Bq. harri
"stone" ~ OIr carrac "rock".

Also interesting are the Gaulish "intensive" prefix ande-
(Ande-roudus "the very red one", *ande-bannos "big horn") and Bq.
handi "big".

Bq. orein "deer" (*olein ~ *oleni) ~ We. elain (*el at ni:)
"Hirschkuh".

Further, with loss of initial t-/k- (besides *karr- and *tasg-
above), Bq. ahuntz "goat" (*anuns < *kamuns?) and Alpine
pre-Latin (Celtic?) camox (*kamo:ss) "chamois".

Celtic *teg- "house" ~ Bq. -(t)egi "place" (e.g. ardan-tegi
(ardandegi) "wine place/house, tavern, cellar"), maybe also Bq.
etxe "house" < egi, et- + dim. -xe.

Finally, in view of the discussion we had here about a possible
Celtic origin of English "dog" (dag-cu: > daggu: "good dog"), and
considering my theory that the absence of Basque initial d- is
due to a development d- > z-, I have this crazy notion that Bq.
zakur "dog" (besides [older?] <or> "dog") might be from *daggur.

[For d- > z- cf. also Bq. zaldi "horse", Pliny t(h)ieldones
"Cantabrian ambling horses", German Zelter "ambling horse", PIE
*del-t-].

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