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Dear Richard,

I cannot give very satisfactory answers to those three points (below).

On Archaic Irish nd -> nn, I cannot say that this development occurred in all instances, or at one particular time. To argue against myself, why do we have the Ptolemaic Irish tribe Coriondi, not Corionni? Also, I would have thought that Romand(a)e (ref. Thurneysen) was a fairly late neologism, and we don't have Romanni (as far as I am aware). Nevertheless, nd -> nn certainly happened in many instances.

No, I cannot point to a precise parallel with another ethnic name, and I take your point about an adjectival suffix on a prepositional phrase. I will keep thinking about this!

I slipped up with my reference to the etymology of Lydney. Personally, I have "always" thought it came from Lludd/Nudd, but I don't remember where I picked that up. It is mentioned here:

https://clasmerdin.blogspot.com/2008/10/luds-church-v.html

but of course that hardly counts as an authoritative reference. Anyway, in my view, the Nuadu/Nudd/Lludd/Lydney derivation seems likely to be correct.

Regards,

Martin Counihan

Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2018 at 11:28 AM
From: "Richard Coates" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dobunni

Dear Martin,

If you want to make your argument stick, you’ll need to say:

1. why the Archaic Irish change of [nd] > [nn] shows up in Latin texts as early as the second century (data in PNRB 340)

2. whether there are precise parallels in ethnic names (as opposed to lexical words illustrated by Thurneysen 225) to the proposed structure, as regards both the initial prefix/preposition and the proposed suffix; an adjectival suffix on a prepositional phrase looks unconventional

3. where your suggested derivation of Lydney comes from, because Ekwall, PN Gl and Watts all disagree with you and give the same simple English origin, while Baddeley gives a different and probably unsustainable one, also with initial <L->; Dillon and Chadwick don’t suggest it

Best

Richard