Old Welsh Teuhant, Ancient Brythonic TASCIIOVANTIS and Trinovantes

Koch, John (2024) Old Welsh Teuhant, Ancient Brythonic TASCIIOVANTIS and Trinovantes. Studia Celtica, 58 (1). pp. 1-24. ISSN 0081-6353

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Abstract

In the Iron Age coinage of Cunobelinos, who ruled about AD 10–40, the name of his father occurs on 15 attested coin types. Most often this patronym is truncated, but in four types it is given as a full Latinized genitive: TASCIOVANI, TASCIIOVANII, and TASCIIOVANTIS twice. As recognized long ago by Rhŷs, this Ancient Brythonic name, attested only in coin legends, remarkably recurs in the Harleian Old Welsh genealogies in the sequence Caratauc map Cinbelin map Teuhant. A form with final -nt is found also in Vita Cadoci as Teᴜhᴜant son of Tecmant and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Tenuantius (based on a misreading of h as n). On the other hand, there is Gaulish Tascouanos, and Welsh forms without final -nt include Tecvann father of Kynvelyn in Gwarchan Kynvelyn of the Book of Aneirin and Teneuan in Brut y Brenhinedd. The paper considers the possibility that the compound had forms as both an o-stem and a participial nt-stem, comparable to Homeric ἀνδροφόνος ‘man slayer’, applied 11 times to Hector in the Iliad, as well as ἀνδρεϊφόντης ‘man slaying’, applied to the war god Ἐνῡάλιος. The discussion leads to the suggestion that the Ancient Brythonic group name Trinovantes, nominative singular TRINO/VAS, also contains a participle of the Proto-Indo-European root *gwhen- ‘slay’, thus the same collocation as in the line er pan want maws mvr trin ‘since the refined one, the wall of battle was slain’ in the B text of the ‘Reciter’s Prologue’ of Y Gododdin.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Divisions:	Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Depositing User:	John Koch
Date Deposited:	05 Mar 2025 15:53
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2025 15:55
URI:	https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/3490

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