Talk:Ilergaones

@Isomorphyc, -sche, Samubert96, howdy again. I noticed this page earlier because it was misspelt Ileargo, but when looking up the current spelling, I could only find Ilergāonia, not Ilergaō (this later form would also require some quantitative metathesis to account for the vowel lengths). Is this form legit? —JohnC5 14:16, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@JohnC5: The word might be an hapax legomenon, but I found it around Pliny 3.20 in the plural used to refer to a people. I suspected it might be plurale tantum (not singulare tantum as it was marked), but in fact I rather doubt it and I am going to remove that tag. I hope someone will correct all of this if I have made a mistake. It is possible a similarly spelled city was intended; if so that entry will have to be made again, unfortunately. Samubert96, I apologise if we have made a hash of your entry in this process. Isomorphyc (talk) 15:40, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@Isomorphyc: Thanks for the find in Pliny. If it is a plurale tantum, then we need to move the entry again. We also have not resolved the aō vs. āo issue. In Proto-Italic, ā(j)ō resulted in Latin aō, but I don't think we are at all close to being in scope for Proto-Italic in this case. —JohnC5 15:47, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

A town in northern Spain beginning with Il- immediately suggests Basque hiri (“town”) < hili, which is apparently frequent as the first element in ancient toponyms. I don't know what the next part might be if it is Old Basque rather than Italic. --Hiztegilari (talk) 16:04, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@Hiztegilari: This is very interesting, as we have now so few etymologies for our new entries for Spanish towns. Given we are not quite in northern Spain, do you feel this is still likely? Isomorphyc (talk) 16:25, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, the mouth of the Ebro is outside the probable ancient Basque regions, but not so far away, and there are some sporadic names outside the area, like Iliberris (berri (“new”)) down Granada way. --Hiztegilari (talk) 16:34, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@Hiztegilari: No, it is not so far away. Not having any Basque expertise, I made a list of Il- names in Spain (User:Isomorphyc/Sandbox/Hispania or Environs Names in Il-), and it seems to me that these names are distributed throughout Baetica and Tarraconensis, for the most part, with a few in actual Basque territory (which is of course comparatively small). Many of these Il- names are older names than the ones used during the Roman period. Do you have any idea what the rest of word could be, if Ilergaones derives from a city name? Isomorphyc (talk) 22:07, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Proto-Italic euphony is likely only an issue by analogy, but we would be following Gaffiot to move the macron to the [a]; if this were truly a town name in the third declension I would expect either for both vowels to have macrons, or for the /a/ to be shortened. I do think we need to move the entry again, at least, if you would describe words such as Romani and Helveti to be plurale tantum. I think this distinction is normally too trivial for dictionaries to make, and it happens for comparison we do not have either of these words ourselves. Also, please see either the related word in Livy 22.21, about the Second Punic War also here around the mouth of the Ebro: Castra Punica in agro Ilergauonensium, castra Romana ad Nouam Classem erant cum fama repens alio auertit bellum, etc. I also found an entry in Smith's Geography under a different spelling. He points out the [g] can be interchangeable with a [c], and gives the Greek version with an omicron-- so you can certainly make the vowel short if we are not using third declension singular. Isomorphyc (talk) 16:25, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@Isomorphyc: We have a fair number of pluralia tanta entries that are group ethnonyms such as Alētrīnātēs, Bastulī, Borussī, etc. It may not be a good practice, but we tend to create entries for the group only if the singular is unattested. Regardless, the current situation wherein the lemma form and the declension table are not the same number is confusing and not unacceptable. Either we should declare the lemma to be (the unattested) Ilergaō with singular and plural forms or we should have have the lemma be Ilergāonēs with only plural forms. —JohnC5 16:40, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@JohnC5: I agree completely; could you please perform the move? I can only move without leaving a redirect with my robot account, and the intent is clearer when I do it for maintenance rather than lexicographical reasons. I am more comfortable with just the plural entry, since we do not have to deduce vowel lengths and semantics for a non-existent singular this way. Isomorphyc (talk) 16:50, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Just checking Google Books, I only see "Ilergao" as a (mis)scan of google books:"Ilergaones", google books:"Ilergaonibus" or (!) google books:"Ilergaonum" or google books:"Ilergaonia" ("Ilergaonia in numis dicta est", OCRed as "Ilergaonia in nuinis dicta eft") across a line break or faulty-OCR-imagined word break. However, all of those forms get Latin hits, so it doesn't seem to be a hapax per se (if it occurs in both -nes and -nibus) and it seems to have some relatives (-num and -nia), although I leave it to you to decide what the lemma form is. - -sche (discuss) 16:14, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@-sche: Most of these are mediaeval or not Latin at all, but you are right the Ilergaonia appears in the Itinerarium Provinciarum Antoni Augusti. For some reason this is not a work I have in my local Latin corpus. Isomorphyc (talk) 16:50, 9 September 2016 (UTC)