Talk:Icovellauna

Mythology Low‑importance

	Mythology portal This article is supported by WikiProject Mythology. This project provides a central approach to Mythology-related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the WikiProject page for more details.MythologyWikipedia:WikiProject MythologyTemplate:WikiProject MythologyMythology articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Celts

	Icovellauna is within the scope of WikiProject Celts, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the ancient Celts and the modern day Celtic nations. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article or you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks or take part in the discussion. Please Join, Create, and Assess.CeltsWikipedia:WikiProject CeltsTemplate:WikiProject CeltsCelts articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

France Low‑importance

	France portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject France, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of France on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FranceWikipedia:WikiProject FranceTemplate:WikiProject FranceFrance articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Gaul Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Gaul, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Gaul on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GaulWikipedia:WikiProject GaulTemplate:WikiProject GaulGaul articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Etymology[edit]

I have cut the following:

Now, the terminal -una/-unus generally stands for a divinity which leaves us with the interpretation of -vella-. Assuming that this word retained its meaning in the later Cymric form of Caswallon then this gives us a Cymric word similar to gwall (taking mutation into account) which may in turn be derived from the archaic Cymric form gwallaw which has the double meaning of — 'to pour' or 'to serve'. The latter meaning makes more sense for deities such as Vellaunus; however, in the case of Icovellauna the former meaning seems to make more sens and fits-in well with the nature of a water deity. Thus Icovellauna's name can be interpreted as 'Divine Pourer of the Waters' (or perhaps more poetically 'Divine Source of the Waters'), an apposite name for a goddess associated with the healing springs of Sablon.

Let me explain why I am cutting this material.

It is unsourced. Wikipedia is not the place to publish original theories. There are many such venues on the internet; WP is not one of them.
There is no "terminal -una/-unus". According to all of the sourced literature that can be brought to bear, the root is uellaun-, plain and simple.
The idea that a "terminal -una/-unus generally stands for a divinity" is extremely dubious. There is an augmentative ending, -on, which we do find in some divine names like Epona "the great mare" or Sirona "the great star". But even here, augmentatives are not unique to divine names.
"Assuming that this word retained its meaning in the later Cymric form of Caswallon..." is not what Wikipedia is meant to do. We don't make assumptions like that. Even if this were an academic journal or some other forum in which original research could be published,...
...serious academics would not make an assumption with no foundation (concerning the wrong root!), invite readers to imagine a connection with a superficially similar word, and then use the latter as the basis for speculation about the first root's meaning. This simply will not do. It's circular, it's disingenuous, and it's seriously confused.
Even by this miserable line of reasoning, the best interpretation we could offer for the name Icovellauna would be as water-pour-[divine]-[f.sg.]. There's nothing agentive here that could warrant the title Divine Pourer of the Waters (and why use majuscules? why use boldface?). Finally, to come up with first one fanciful interpretation, and then offer a "more poetic" alternative (and I wonder what kind of poetry the contributor had been reading), is seriously flawed.

Etymology, and historic linguistics more generally, are serious academic disciplines. They are not free-for-alls in which any kind of amateurish fantasy can be indulged. It would have been far more defensible to identify the roots, ico- and uellaun-, that have been identified by scholars, and simply explain the meaning of each. (This is in fact what I did, with appropriate footnotes, in any earlier contribution.) The anonymous contributor who gave us this travesty of an etymology did Wikipedia no service, and she or he certainly did no service to the study of Celtic religion. Q·L·1968 ☿ 18:01, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Icovellauna. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:18, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]