Is the Deba Celtic?
Orthodox Vascologists who maintain that the Basque language was implanted in what is now Euskal Herria from the Central Pyrenées during the Dark Ages hold up as their unanswerable proof the River Deba, whose name they say is Celtic and means “goddess”. If a river that flows through the western part of Euskal Herria entirely contained with the province of Gipuzkoa has a Celtic name, they say, this proves beyond all doubt that the language spoken in that region in ancient times was Celtic, not Basque. To orthodox Vascologists, it is game, set and match. But is their argument as slam dunk as it first appears?
We have two inquiries to make, and they are cumulative. First. Is the river name, Deba, Celtic? Second. Even if it is Celtic, does that prove that the language spoken in that region in ancient times was Celtic?
I will address the second inquiry first by posing two questions. The Guadalquivir has an Arabic name. Does that prove beyond all doubt that Arabic, and not Latin or Iberian, was spoken in the Spanish South in the classical period? The Llobregat has a Latin name. Does that prove beyond all doubt that Iberian was never spoken in Catalonia?
The Gipuzkoa Deba was probably first recorded by Ptolemy as DEOUA around 150AD, though Ptolemy may have been referring to the Cantabria Deva, further west. Ptolemy recorded three other instances of rivers with the name, DEOUA, all of them now known as Dee. There is the Cheshire and North-East Wales Dee, the Aberdeenshire Dee and the Galloway Dee.
Is this hydronym Celtic? No, it is not. It is Roman.
Both Latin and Celtic share a word for “god”. In Latin it is deus, with a combinatory form, *diw-, and in Celtic it is dios(Welsh diw, Irish dia), with a combinatory form, *diw-. Latin has both /e/ and /i/ forms, while Celtic only has /i/ forms, as far as is known. *dewa is therefore a lost Latin word meaning “goddess”, a variant of the more usual diva.
In Gaulish and Hispano-Celtic, only /i/ forms are recorded. On the Third Bronze Plate of Botorrita is to be found the anthroponym, Diogenos “born of the god” or “descended from the god”, and Ptolemy lists a place in the north of Spain, DIOBRIGA “fortress of the god”. Then we find the combinatory form, *diwo, in DIOUODOURON, the name recorded by Ptolemy for what is now Metz (Moselle, France).
Deba is quite clearly the name given to the river that runs through Gipuzkoa by the Roman conquerors. It is a trophy name, like Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), Pompelo (Pamplona), Leningrad, Ho-Chi-Min City, etc. The same is true of the three rivers now known as Dee in Britain. All these rivers were on the western edge of the Empire and were ways of saying to outsiders “this land belongs to Rome”.
So what, then, is the original name of the Gipuzkoa Deba?
Let us look first at the Cantabria Deva. There is a village on the west bank of the Cantabria Deva north of the confluence with the Cares known as Narganes: <*nar(V)-gan “above the River Nar(V)”. (Near the source of the Cantabria Deva is Dobarganes: <*dobar-gan “above Dobar”. The village of Dobarganes is quite literally above the village of Dobar.) Iberian *nar(V) corresponds to Basque (BN) nare “calm”. This word is also to be found in the name of the River Nairnin Scotland, recorded as Naren in 1195 (from British Vasconic *naR(V)).
Having ascertained the original name of the Cantabria Deva, let us now take a closer look at the Gipuzkoa Deba. The only toponym on the banks of this river that may incorporate a hydronym is Elgoibar. This was first recorded in the 15thcentury as the name of the field on which the new town was built. Basque ibar can mean “river bank”. So what is Elgo-? It is often assumed to be Basque (BN, Z) elge “cultivated field”, but why final /o/ rather than /e/? Might it be that Elgo is the original name of the Deba?
So, next time an orthodox Vascologist points to the presence of the Deba in Gipuzkoa as unassailable proof of the theory of the late implantation of Basque, he/she needs to be shown the above.