Loucita: Etymological Notes on a Female Name from the Norico-Pannonian Onomastic Landscape

Abstract

The undoubtedly Gaulish personal name Loucita, attested in the Norico-Pannonian onomastic area, is particularly interesting from the point of view of its word formation. Unambiguous parallels for such a derivative are difficult to find in Celtic onomastic material, the only possible but very uncertain candidate being a Goidelic river name Ἀργίτα, recorded by Ptolemy. Outside of Celtic, the name of a Germanic seeress Vel(a)eda, if it goes back to *u̯elētā- (which is a probable but not the only possibility), is a potential case in point, which would then unavoidably imply that Loucita < *leu̯k-ēt-ā- must somehow be based on the oblique stem with a generalised length of the suffixal vowel (*leu̯k-ēt-) taken over from the nominative singular, where it was inherited. Since the category of lexicalised, synchronically unproductive dethematic *-et-stems in Celtic typically displays exactly that phenomenon, this etymological interpretation cannot be dismissed as ultimately improbable. Another reasonable possibility, however, would be to start from a feminine abstract *lou̯k-i-/*leu̯k-i- ‘brightness, lustre’ (itself based on the thematic possessive adjective *leu̯k-ó- by external derivation), to which Loucita could then represent a barbātus-type adjectival derivative *leu̯k-i-to- ‘having lustre,’ exactly parallel to the type seen in Indo-Iranian colour adjectives. It is argued that the latter type probably does not represent thematic possessives of t-abstracts to i-stem adjectives but, contrary to the communis opinion, rather goes back to to-possessives of i-stem abstracts. Under both analyses, however, the name is an important addition to the Proto-Indo-European type of derivative in *-ito-, so far unambiguously identified only within Indo-Iranian.

Keywords

• celtic
• gaulish
• proto-indo-european
• norico-pannonian onomastic area
• anthroponymy
• word formation
• etymology