Abnoba: Encyclopedia II - Abnoba - Etymology

Abnoba - Etymology

The two main etymologies of the word segment it as either Ab-noba or Abn-oba. The first is by far the strongest. Contemporary compilation of etymological lexica at the universities of Leiden and Wales ([1] [2] )are providing greater insight into the proto-linguistics of Celtic words. These lexica suggest that this name is derived from Proto-Celtic *Ab[o]-nōb-ā .

Proto-Celtic *-nōb- is in turn derived from Proto-Indo-European *nebh-. One meaning is wetness . The first segment would be from *ab-, water, as in Old Irish ab, from *aba, flow. One interpretation would be river-wetness which possibly paraphrases the concept of fluvial moisture . In keeping with the conventions of proto-linguistics, the preceding asterisk * denotes an unattested, reconstructed form.

On the other hand, it seems somewhat redundant to call a river wet. Redundance is common in river names, but usually in names renamed in a different language. The geography of the Breg river suggests another interpretation. The root, *nebh-, can mean wet, but more often it means fog, cloud, mist. Some photographs of Furtwangen indicate that the valley of the Breg is sometimes so filled with a ground fog that you can only see the tops of the buildings. Abnoba therefore would mean misty stream with the implication of upland stream.

The other segmentation relies heavily on Celtic Avon type names, such as the the Abona, a river of Gaul. This *ab- is the same as the one above, but the -n- seems to add connotations of a river-daemon. If this is the form of Abnoba, then the -oba remains unexplained. It is possible that the two different Abnobas do not have the same derivation, and further, that the people who used the names confused them together.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Etymology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki