Etruscans

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 8:16 AM

> Having dismissed (correctly I hope) the Eastern sea-route, one can still ask
> when and by which route the Etruscan-speaking community came to Etruria. I
> can't answer this, but I think the best approach is a thorough analysis of
> substratal material. The Tuscan hydronyms Albinia, Alma, Armenta, Arnus, and
> Auser (with Albula = Tiberis) have been interpreted as "Old European" and
> pre-Etruscan. This is difficult to assess: do these names actually contain
> "Old European" elements, or are they Latinized Etruscan, or from some other
> source?

[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
Amblève), 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.

> Someone recently cast doubt on the whole program of using toponyms to deduce
> anything, citing the obliteration of native names in Texas and elsewhere by
> the Spanish bureaucracy. This sort of objection only applies when there is a
> literate bureaucratic class. To our knowledge, literacy didn't reach Etruria
> until ca. 700 BCE, so arguments from toponyms should have some validity. The
> problem is the large volume of unedited medieval archival material.

> DGK

[Ed Selleslagh]

This bureaucratic obliteration of native names seems to be a rather modern
phenomenon, linked to the emergence of nation-states obsessed with uniformity
of language, religion, etc...In earlier times, the names were usually only
adapted to the new speech pattern, not translated.

Ed.