The Gaels in Gallaecia 0.99 Version

The Gaels in Gallaecia

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0.99 Version, beta, 19/03/03

Prologue

Silius Italicus:

Fibrarum et pennae divinarumque sagacem

flammarum misit dires Gallaecia pubem,

barbara nunc patriis ululantem carmina linguis,

nunc pedis alterno percussa verbere terra,

ad numerum resonas gaudentem plauder caetras.

'Rich Galicia sent to its men, capable in the knowledge of the riddles by the entrails of the beasts and lightning; men of those who enjoyed singing Barbarian songs in their crude native language, or beating alternatively in the ground with the feet in their rhythmic dances, and playing sonorous caetras.'

Silius Italicus, 3º book of the Punic Wars (III, 344-348). Text and extracted translation from

the Galician Encyclopaedia, Volume 21.

(This paragraph has been extracted and adapted from the content of the web page: http://members.xoom.com/musicagalega/).

We consider that these words include one of most descriptive, synthetic and exact definitions that have been able to express in all the times what nowadays is usually denominated Celtic music. The text, from Silius Italicus was more or less equal to the one we see here, conserved and copied time and time again by the monks of the monasteries for 2000 years, always rereading the following transcriber what had been written in the previous calligraphic reproduction. But we think that there is an apparently insignificant detail, that makes these words a little bit different from the original ones. If we are not mistaken, in one of the copies, the corresponding monk amended an apparent error of the previous text. In the last word, the one that says caetras, we are convinced that the original one was caethas or gaethas, and not the corrected caetras. Gaethas or, in other words, what today we know as gaidas, or gaitas, or pìob mór; bagpipes. With the restitution of this small detail, the text acquires all its crucial amplitude and is revealed to us as a invaluable description of the old behaviour of the gaedels, solving unquestionably hundreds of doubts and questions that have been formulated, time and time again, on how or from where the bagpipes came, or when and how they began to be used by the Galicians, Irish or the Scots.

To clarify many accumulations of small similar errors, that have led to the generation of tremendous ignorance, we dedicate this web page, that tries to make justice to one of the most impressive cases of homogeneity and cultural lasting that universal History knows; the one of Gaethels, Gaedels or Gaels also denominated Gallaicoi; and of course Galegos, Galician, Irish, Scots, Milesians, Gaethae, Gaedil, Gaitanes, Gaiztelu, etc.; centering us specially in the section of everything that corresponds to their pass by the Iberian Peninsula.

Introduction

This text is written up to try to show in an ordered way, the data known about the subject that appears in the title of the page. Although in the Internet numerous references to this or that aspect of interest referring to this subject can be found, they are usually quite fragmentary and do not allow, therefore, to make a global idea of how the facts happened at issue, nor how their real development was.

You can find here, therefore, evidences that we believe essential for the correct valuation and understanding of the stay of the Gaels in Galicia and, later, in Ireland and Scotland. As it sometimes happens in these cases, we are not indeed individuals well enabled to confront such an ambitious text as this one is, but since we think that, it was very necessary and urgent that it had already been written, no matter by whom, but it was important that somebody did it yet, and we did not see anybody that had intention to do it, then we have decided to try the task.

If we are able to carry out the raised objective, we will have finally been able to clear the doubts and incognitos whose essential resolution interposes in our way, when we wished to approach to the true historical context of the period of formation, not only of Galicia, but of the rest of the people of the North-west of the Iberian Peninsula (that, as we will see, were put under a strong influence and political domination of the Galicians for several hundreds of years) and, without a doubt, also of those of the British Islands.

On the other hand, it's of interest to indicate that this will not be (it does not try to be) a tale of political pretensions, arranged to look for interpretations and/or readings more or less interested for the benefit of the authors. Neither is it a rigorous work of academic investigation, because the limitation of available resources; despite it all, the references of the sources of information will be included in some cases, so that those that wish to deepen in more specific aspects of the problematic at issue, will be able to do it. Anyway, we hope that the exhibition of the facts and conclusions will be able to allow to sustain a knowledge base, sufficient to fulfill the aspirations of the present paper, that are fundamentally introductory, divulging and, anyway, merely informative.

The Leabhar Gabhala Eireann (The Lebor Gabala Erenn)

Let us go there, therefore. First of all, let's clarify one fundamental subject: as you sure have yet guessed, we will assume here that the Leabhar Gabhala Eireann (Lebor Gabala Erren, in anglicized and/or modernized spelling), mythical book written in first millennium by Irish monks that explains in a legendary fashion the origin and early evolution of the tribe of the Gaels, and the so called milesian legends, are essentially true, and are associated to true facts, despite the myths that were included there. This implies the existence of a great community of people, associated to the facts related in this saga, that we will call Gaithegal here (pronounced Gaidegal), identifying it like a kind of old nation.

For the people who do not know it, we will remember that, following these old legends, the Gaels came from Scythia (more or less identified with the south of Ukraine, center of Romania or Polish Galitzia, nowadays). From there, they went to Egypt. Once their mission was fulfilled in Egypt, and after a brief return to Scythia, they went to Spain, which they conquered by force of arms (according to declarations of Irish aristocrats, fled in 1601 after the battle of Kinsale, the conquest would be accomplished beginning by Galicia, which was followed by Asturies and Biscay. As we will see later, the amazing exactitude of this description even makes us suspect that, in fact, the upper Gael classes had always known the facts that occupy us, with all their details included. And finally, from the tower of Breogan they descried Ireland, which they took after a cruel fight against the Tuatha De Danann.

The content of these legends is known from time back, and their references to the Breogan hero (Bregon or Bregan, in some variants) have been got up (we think that modernly, and with the occasion of the arrival to Galicia, in the 17th century, of the Irish refugees of the war against the English that, without a doubt, popularized and extended these kind of legends) with great energy to Galician popular mythology. Nevertheless, the scholars have traditionally tended to consider them as one more Gael story, comparable to other legends of more than problematic real possibilities, that are so frequent in the cultural scope we refer to.

However, the improvement in communications and the deepening in the cultural relations (mainly in the fruitful subject of the folk music) have motivated, as a result of the exchange of information that it has caused, that in the beginning as suspect, and more recently as conviction, more and more experts conclude that behind the evident existing similarities between Galicia and Ireland, there is a lot more than simple coincidences or convergent cultural evolutions. On the other hand, the advances in the archaeological, linguistic and historical investigations have been conforming also a corpus of proofs (most of them circumstantial ones, but proofs, in the end) that allow to suspect that, as said, the milesian legends of the Leabhar Gabhala are essentially true and describe perfectly verified historical facts. To such aim we wrote the present document with tries to reunite and to synthesize everything that, in a more or less exact way, is known about the subject.

Origin of the Gaels

Like any other Celtic tribes, the Gaels could be found, in the very old times, in the center of Europe: Germany, Austria and Switzerland would be their first nuclear mother countries. In this aspect we are not very different from the others Celts. A question is due to write down: in spite of this unit, Gaels belong to the dialectal group that is known as q-celt. Q-celts were, as we know, also Celtiberians. On the other hand, the p-celt type speech tribes were the Gauls and the Brythonic tribes, including Welsh, Cornish, Breton (Galatians ?), etc. It must be noted that this class of division can also be found in the old Italic languages, very related to the Celt ones.

Based on the elements that we will be developing in the present text, Gaels would have been a group of people where the predominant cultural and linguistic element was the Eastern Celtic one (originated from an area more or less identified with Central Germany, Austria, the South of Poland, and Czechoslovakia, therefore), their material culture would be identified with which today is known as culture of Hallstatt, or old Celtic one. These elements, more or less dispersed previously, had to come together towards the half of the millennium previous to Christ in the final course of the Danube River, nowadays called Romania, to enter the History under the name of Gaethae or Gallacoi, so called since then.

The name of the tribe

Following the Leabhar Gabhala, we are Gaedels or Gaedil, sons of Gaedel Glas (also Gaythelos or Gathelos, in the Scottish versions of the legend), the mythical hero who married the daughter of the Pharaoh, Scota (from her also come the Scots). Gael is gaedel, evolved phonetically with elision of the internal syllable -de-, as is usual in Gaelic. This way, goidel could also be a phonetic variant of gaedel (also influenced by the Welsh word gwydel -foreigner-, according to what has been said by some folks).

Nevertheless, another possibility is that goidel was simply another name of gaedels related (perhaps) to gothi (the Germanic tribe that later lived almost in the same space that old gaedels); goidel could be that way goth-el, with the Indo-European suffix of adjective -el (meaning, therefore, concerning with the gothi) which is an interesting possibility, anyway (it must be said that the old Rumanians were called gethi, and according to some possibility gethi, gothi, and also gaedel are perhaps related to a name that speaks about an old region of Romania, in this interpretation).

Although any possibility must be considered to reach a better analysis of the matter, it must be observed that the root word gaeth or gaith and its related (gaedel, gaithel, gaita, gaida, gayda, gajda, etc.) is absolutely general in the present and the past of the three main territories that were occupied by our people: the British islands, North-Western Iberia and Southeastern Europe. This way, gaith must be considered a main solution from the linguistic point of view, and the other ones (goidel, etc), therefore, secondary variants. In our opinion, the true meaning of the word is related to Gethia or Gaethia, a name that more or less talks about the present territory of Romania, as we have said. So it seems, following Herodotus (5th century B.C.), that the Gethians or Massagethians were an old tribe of Scythian type (of the ethnic group indoiranian, therefore) that occupied the old river Araxes (modernly known as Aras) and that finally made allies between a group of Eastern Celtic tribes, generically identified by diverse denominations based on the word gall; Gallaica, Galitzia in Poland-Ukraine, Gallathia or Galathia, etc., that finally occupied territories located towards the north of the river Ister (Danube). This is, in our opinion, the origin of the Gaels. As they were predominant, the Celtic elements gave the language, the main proportion of the customs and almost all the stuff except a very important thing: an old and valued pedigree. Scythia, in spite of being considered a barbarian tribe, was a great and old empire, and that was a very important value, because it was equivalent to a presentation letter, to introduce anybody in the high society of the times we refer to. It must also be observed that the name of Scot seems to be derivative, according to some interpretations, of Scythia but, again, it must be noticed that the Scots did not like this name, they preferred the one of Albans, that had been applied, in origin, to the old brythonic tribes of Great Britain (nevertheless, in our humble opinion Scot, Scotland etc. are likely related to the old meaning of cut, slice or shave that this celtic word had -modern Galician escozar, escofar or escochar; Spanish escotar, escodar, Gaulish scota, double axe ?, etc.; and this way alluding to the special geographical shape of the scottish peninsula).

From gaeth comes the name of the bagpipes, gaetha, preserved, in some diverse variants in Galicia and several countries of Eastern Europe (gaita, gaida, gayda, gajda, etc). The coincidence with the name of the ethnic group suggests clearly a strong identification and an almost sacred consideration for this musical instrument on behalf of these folks. The origin of this bond gaels-bagpipes is in our opinion related to the Egyptian facts of Gaels, because the bagpipes are documented in Egypt at very old times (year 1500 B.C. at least, according to some opinions).

It is necessary to show, on the other hand, that prior to the Roman conquest of Gallaecia, the main name the tribe received was the one of Gallaicoi, formed as local name (gentilice) respect to the root gall, that means Celt or Gaul, in general, and that was applied to all the associated tribes of this ethnic group, beginning by the classical transalpine Gauls. The Polish Galitzia or the reference from Herodotus to the region called Gallaica, next to the Black Sea, indicates us that the name was of an absolute majority for all the Eastern populations of Celts; surely the well-known Galatians did not have, in this sense, another name that one more variant of gall.

The Gallaicoi name was rejected energetically by gaedels mainly from the Roman conquest: it was evident that the name sounded as too much as celtic when it had become a shameful condition in the surroundings associated to the pacts that the gaethels had established in the Iberian peninsula. It is necessary to suitably value the difficult wars that the Romans had against the Gauls (who were another class of galls, but galls, anyway) and how much effort and suffering the final victory cost them. So, the name gall was, therefore, object of a peculiar process of negation, common with other cases of acculturation or submission with known parallels, up to the point to finally get to mean foreigner in modern Gaelic, exactly the opposite of what it had been originally.

In the Iberian peninsula, nevertheless, this manoeuvre did not obtain results because the rest of the folks, neighbours of the Galicians, were too conscious of what the authentic original name was at issue. Nevertheless, it is out of all doubt that the “galegos” did not please that name; in the north of Portugal it was abandoned: nowadays it is used by the rest of the Portuguese exclusively, and it is considered almost like an insult. It disappeared in Galicia and was only later restored, but under the Castilian version of “gallego”, which is nowadays popularly used.

In the present text and with the purpose of improving clarity, we will apply the following practical conventions: we will refer to Gaedel or Gaedelic as everything related to the old folks that we follow in their initial stages of development, as much in Scythia does, as in Iberia and the islands. When alluding to the modern Irish and Scottish folks and corresponding languages, the used expressions will be Gael and Gaelic. On the other hand, when we want to refer specifically to the occupants of Galicia, we will denominate them Gallaic if they are old, and Galician if they are modern (including, in its case, the concepts that refer to the Portuguese territory and language). Also, the historical territory of the old Galicia (much more extensive than the present one) will be denominated Gallaecia (it is simply called Spain in the Leabhar Gabhala), and thus will be perfectly differentiated from present Galicia (in the Gael texts it is denominated by the brythonic name of Brigantia -conserved in modern toponymy as Bergantinhos, Bragança, etc., alluding to the former rulers of the territory, the Brigantes or Brigantini- always avoiding the name of Galicia, that the Gaels hated so much).

First movements of the Gaels or Gaedels

After an unknown process of differentiation of the others Celts, the Gaels went down, following the Danube (river of the Celtic goddess Danu) and reached the Black Sea. The date of this phenomenon is not clear but we can think, as a first possibility, that it could have happened the first time from the 8th to the 7th century B.C. The Greek historian Herodotus says in the 5th century B.C. that Persian king Xerxes passed by a region that had been known as Gallaica, before arriving in Thrace; he also says that this region was later well-known because of have been inhabited by the Ciconian people (the Gallaics did not live there anymore, in the 5th century B.C.; perhaps they all had yet gone away to Galicia ?). On the other hand, what we know on the Galician culture of hillforts, suggests this could have happened, indeed, by that time. The archaeologists calculate that around this date, some influences associated to the Hallstatt culture, began to arrive to Gallaecia, mixed with some levantine contents. We cannot be sure that this interpretation was true (only more investigations will clarify it) but, at least, another big wave of Gaels had to arrive to Gallaecia towards the 200 B.C. According to what seems to be clear, it is possible to date by then the Egyptian subject of the Leabhar Gabhala and, anyway, some cultural and religious influences continued arriving from the East until the Middle Age, specially from Egypt. On the other hand, the Galician military regiments went frequently to their place of origin (to Dacia) at least towards first century A.C., in a surprising movement of return. All these relations, were likely doubt, based on a common language that these tribes shared, at least until the end of the first millennium A.C.

The Polish region of Galitzia, the names of the bagpipes in Eastern Europe (gaida, gajda, gayda, etc.), and the existence of surname words of this origin (Yegor Gaidar, the Russian ex-minister, for example) show us the wide extension of the territory covered by the Gaedil, Gallaicoi or Gaethae, always in the boundaries of the Celtic scopes.

It must be observed, finally, that what today is denominated the Balkan Mountains and the related territories, had a quite heterogeneous composition, from the ethnic point of view. The Gothi (goths), Scits (Scytians), etc. were also there, like Thracian and Greeks, etc.

The Gaedels in Egypt

The Leabhar Gabhala relates diverse eventful journeys of the Gaedels in Egypt, from where the hero Gaedel Glas (Gaythelos Glas, in Scottish) comes; he married Scota, the beautiful daughter of the Pharaoh, and thus started the saga of both Gaedels and Scots.

From a more simple point of view, it seems that the trip was motivated by business matters, and as our predecessors were the best soldiers in the world, they reached the highest degree of competition in the army of the most seductive empire that has ever been: the Egypt of the Pharaohs. Egypt gave them good satisfactions: they learned there the sacred art of the adornments in form of crossed circles and interlaced graphs. They enjoyed also the metal works, made with good gold from the Balkan Mountains. An very likely, they learned the fine art of bagpiping there, which allowed them to enjoy and celebrate their victories with good music. As a counterpart, they adopted the instrument, gave it their most sacred name, gaetha, and made it their clearest sign of identity, forever.

Basing us on independent sources, it seems we can consider that this episode of the Leabhar Gabhala could happen towards 180 - 190 B.C. as the latest possible date. This is of special interest to determine when happened the facts related to the Gael occupation of Galicia, and Ireland also.

Despite not being too permanent, the Egyptian trip produced a lasting fascination in the mind of the Gaels. Later legends related, for example, on the famous stone of Scottish coronation, clearly indicate that the passage was absolutely unforgettable. The relation with Egypt did not finish here, because the economic complementariness (Egypt was a great producer of wheat, that they exported everywhere, including Brittany, Galicia and the islands; and a metal importer, receiver of tin, copper and gold, mainly) and the created links were maintained until the Middle Age.

As we were saying, this stay originated not only many of the symbols of the Gaedels, but also the way as Christianity penetrated in their land, as has been concluded by the investigators who have been interested on this subject. In fact, this visit had to be the motivation that ended up creating the Gaedel nationality. Until then the Gaedels were perhaps no more than an heterogeneous meeting of adventurers. Following this possibilities, the Gaethae probably had known the good qualities as warriors of the Eastern Celts, and maybe they recruited them to cover the large military needs they had to attend for the old Egyptians. From there, the facts would happen in an absolutely foreseeable way: given their overwhelming numerical superiority, the Gallaicoi imposed the language and material culture, whereas Gaethae would lend name to the tribe resulting of the fusion, established in a such opportune way. On the other hand, the explanation given to the first facts of the Gaidels in the Leabhar Gabhala, seems to corroborate these considerations.

We will finally remember, that the popular cult to Santiago (Saint James) apostle (head of the Christian church at the death of Christ) is also related to this bond, through his disciples, who fled to Egypt after the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans. All this Egyptian subject in general, constitutes an important matter to study because it seems that it can be contrasted by other historical sources (it seems that there are references of locations of expeditionary regiments of Celts in the Nile, found there towards 190 B.C.).

The Gaedels arrive in Iberia

Following the Leabhar Gabhala, from Egypt and after a brief scale again in Scythia, the Gaedels reached Spain (Spaine) which they took by “force of the arms”. This journey, carried out mainly by the hero Breogan, Bregon or Bregan, according to versions (also called, otherwise, Golam) culminated with the well-known episode in which Ith, son of Breogan, descried Ireland from the high Tower of Brigantia and marched towards its conquest.

From a historical point of view, it is very little what we can deduce of the clues we can gather on these facts, aside from what is stated in the Leabhar Gabhala. The archaeological testimonies indicate that towards VII to V centuries B.C., cultural influences pertaining to the Hallstatt (old Celtic) began to arrive in Galicia and North of Portugal. Together with other elements identified as coming from Eastern Mediterranean as well as those surviving from the previous culture (known as the Atlantic bronze, surely carried out by Brythonic Celts, Brigantini, Albions was some of their tribal names) dominant in Galicia, they all ended up in the creation of a new culture of fusion of these portions, that is known as Castrexa, name that alludes to the main type of towns that were built -the hillforts-, that the Romans denominated castros (dùn, dùin -or don-; in Gallaic language).

The knowledge that we have today about the society of the hillforts is very limited; if we followed what the Roman historians said, the Galicians were a reunion of barbarians who spent the day fighting and the night eating, drinking and dancing to the moon. But today it seems absolutely clear that from the year 500 B.C. to the change of the era, they developed in an aristocratic and even perhaps a feudal social model. The division of the country -in concelhos, concept similar to the counties of the islands or Romania-, seems to be based on this class of social organization. Also, the structure based on hillforts, seems to be associated to a fortified occupation of the territory, resemblance to the one of the Central European classic Celtic habitat. The old Gallaecia could also, in certain way, be compared to a new Babylonia, in the sense of the multinational and multiracial origin of its inhabitants. On the other hand, this kind of occupation of the Country was likely associated to the fatal attraction that its mineral wealth provoked that was in a similar way, as a certain class of gold fever. Anyway, it is also clear that the interest of the Romans for this earth was mainly related to its gold mines. When the Muslims came, they also rejected to have no special hunger for this wet corner, very difficult in attracting southern folks, with its deficiency of oil, wine and bread (the Mediterranean trilogy).

The Latin sources inform us about the name of the tribes who inhabited Gallaecia when the Romans came. As was said, there was a previous domination of the Brythonic tribes, who were defeated (or had been defeated earlier) by the Gaedels. What it is very difficult here is to exactly determine the dates of the whole process. It seems quite sure for example, that the Egyptian facts (as they are described in the milesian legends) can introduce an inferior limit of the date of the process in the beginning of the second century B.C. But this can be confusing, because the continuous space of Gaedels could have been uninterrupted for centuries, as other experiences of colonization can suggest us. Think about America, for example; people continue arriving from Europe, 500 years after the conquest and initial colonization. This class of processes are not instantaneous and cannot be valued this way. What is also sure, on the other hand, is that the absence of materials of la Tène (modern central celtic culture) eliminates the possibility that recent immigration had come from the islands (that had been put under the influence of the la Tène culture by then) or of Central and Western Europe. On the other hand, there are no signs of this class of culture (culture of the hillforts or Castrexa as it is called) in the Iberian Peninsula, outside the corner of the Northwest, and this fact eliminates the possibility of a Celtiberian origin. The kind of Celts who took Galicia was, this way, a handful of peripheral people, that came here by sea, from outside the centers of what by then constituted the European Celtic culture.

And, as we can know from archaeologic research, the typical Gaedel decorations came to Galicia towards the change of era. These decorations can be related to the tradition of Hallstatt and have also a deep influence of Scythian, Greek and Egyptian adornments. This is extremely interesting as we cannot speak of true Gaedels without these decorations, because their other sign of singularity (their language) cannot be object of analysis by the archaeological finds.

Then, the (provisional) conclusion of all this sketch on how and when the Gaedels came is this: there would be a gradual immigration of Celtic people who came from the borders of the Black Sea, and the definitive process received its strongest momentum towards the change of era. Although there are no direct proofs of it, carrying out this type of colonization was not possible without the participation of the Phoenicians, who had the effective monopoly of navigation and lucrative commerce that was related to copper, tin, and bronze (coming from Galicia and the British Islands and destined to the markets of the Mediterranean) until Roman times. The Phoenician findings in Galicia corroborate this assertion, with some installations that, no matter how incredible it could seem, continue being functional after 2500 years after their construction (for example the port of Bares -hills, in Celtic language- in the most Northern point of all Iberian Peninsula). This way, the Gaedels probably came with the Phoenicians in order to assure the bases that they had built in the Galician coast, as the Phoenicians did not have terrestrial troops able to control the territory. The abundance in Galicia of old toponymy that alludes to ports (Ortegal -from portegal, pronounced in old Gallaic mouths-, Ortigueira -similar to the former-, Portugal, etc.) corroborates this assertion. Nevertheless, the (interested?) silence that the Leabhar Gabhala gives to this specific subject seems very strange.

Three battles in Spain

Continuing with the Leabhar Gabhala narration, we read that once in Spain, they waged three wars or battles: one against the Tuscans, another against the Langobardi and finally, one third against the Barchu (or Barchunes or Bachra, according to versions). Also, the Breogan hero constructed a city called Brigantia, where he rose the great tower or castle from where Ith, his son, descried Ireland. The Leabhar Gabhala also requests our attention on the extraordinary demographic productivity of the Gaels; as it is said, the originated amount of children and grandsons was enormous, when they stayed in the Iberian peninsula.

As the new occupants arrived in Galicia, gaining of space to the original inhabitants became a necessity, and surely this would had not be obtained in a pacific way. The main strategic weapon of conquest and colonization contributed by the Gaedels (aside of their value in combat and the mentioned demographic machine) was the dun (hill-fort, originally pronounced doon, as in Brigadoon): a fortification always constructed around strategic places that allowed them to dominate the surrounding space as with a medieval feudal castle (in fact what could have happened is that the castle was not more but a delayed evolution of dun, in this sense) that in modern Galician is designated with the latinised expression castro. It seems to be that the Brythonic Celts did not construct duns (at least not in Ireland or Galicia) and this disadvantage played an important role in the defeats that they had to suffer from the Gaedels in Galicia and later in Ireland and Scotland, until they also learned to build them, thus stabilizing partially their situation in Wales and Cornwall, and controlling what had become a true whip for the old inhabitants of the British islands. We must also notice the importance the castles had for Castile, up to the point that they ended up giving name to the whole kingdom, when the old Gaedel strategy was applied against the Arabs, with remarkable success. There are, therefore, many castles painted in the shields of the noble houses of Gaedel origin (for example, in Gaztelu) that refer to this circumstance.

It seems that the first establishments of the Gaedels in Iberia were located in the area that today corresponds to the North of Portugal, between the rivers Minho and Douro (or, even, till the Mondego), according to the archaeological sources that inform us about the progress of the Hill-forts' or Castrexa culture (of the castros, or duns, or hill-forts). From there they would be extended by the basins of the rivers Minho and Douro to practically occupy the whole Gallaecia. The domination would have to be practically finished except in the points more separated in the peninsular north, when Iberia was involved in the Punic wars between Carthaginians and Romans. Hannibal recruited many Gallegans for the fight who, this way, gave satisfaction to the strategic alliance that they maintained with the Phoenicians (the Carthaginians were of this origin). As we saw in the preface of the present text, that contributes an appointment of Silius Italicus on the matter, the abilities of the Galicians were yet perfectly developed, by that time.

As it is well-known, after passing incredible difficulties, the Romans finally managed to defeat Hannibal and undertook the conquest of Iberia. The tribe of the Gallaicoi faced them in 137 B.C. in the battle of river Douro that resulted in a great Roman victory against 60,000 Galicians, by who the Roman general, proconsul Decimus Iunius Brutus, turned to Rome as a hero, receiving the name of Gallaicus, according to what relates the historian Paulus Orosius. The evidences suggest that the resistance of the Gaedels against the Romans ended here; from now on, they would be enlisted massively like auxiliary troops of the Roman legions, fulfilling destinies sometimes completely separated off Galicia, including Thrace and Dacia, for example, where they would be again with its origins in a peculiar phenomenon of return. It has been estimated that of the total of Roman auxiliary troops coming from Iberia, more than 30 % would belong to tribes and folks of the peninsular North-West (Galicia and North of Portugal). As a result of it, there are tens of localities in Galicia whose name is known as something-mil, today (mil=military man): Belmil, Vilamil, Vilaframil, Gondomil, etc, etc. Thus, as the Milesian legends describe the facts, “...from here also the sons of Mil come...”. Surely that each small city had, this way, its own regiment or small army, to contribute to the glory of the empire.

The two wars that we just have mentioned are in our opinion, the ones the Leabhar Gabhala defines as confrontations the Gaedels led in Iberia against the Tuscans and Langobardi. Following this interpretation, the text of the legends would have used these denominations as euphemisms to designate the Romans (langobardi or longobardi were indeed, among other meanings related to the original Germanic tribe, the denomination the Italians received in popular romance languages till the end of the first millennium), thus eluding negative references for them. It is necessary to think that towards the moment in which the texts were transcribed by the Irish monks, the absorption of the Celtic church by the catholic hierarchy was quite recent, and the circumstances were not therefore, too propitious to present the Romans as Irish enemies.

Despite it all, there is a -possibly- much more surprising explanation for the second of such confrontations (the one of the Langobardi), that may not be disregarded a priori, that is based on the possibility that, indeed, the Langobardi really came to Gallaecia, and fought against the Gallaics (!!). The Langobardi or Lombards were a subdivision of the great Swabian or Suevi tribe that, as it is well known, conquered the North of Italy and became extremely well-known by their extreme violent methods. Nevertheless, it is possible that some (or even enough) contingent of Lombards arrived up to Galicia accompanying the Swabian invasion. This could explain, for example, the large amount of Gallaic-Asturian last names that allude to the root Lomb-: Lomba, Lombán, Lombardía, Lombardero (this last one, as you can verify at the beginning of this paper, accidentally turns out to be the second last name of the author of these lines of text), etc. If future explanations confirmed this possibility, it would be necessary to move the line of historical separation of the Milesian legends until 5th century, a lot later than it would have been possible to be conceited at first sight !.

The Leabhar Gabhala defines finally a last war (in some versions of the texts, the last is the Langobardi one, nevertheless) or battle that took place in Spain: the war against the Barchu or Barchunes. We dedicate the following section to that crucial confrontation.

The ultimate battle in Spain: the war against the Barchu, or Cantabrian wars

What is now called Galicia was not totally occupied by the Romans until the Cantabrian wars, in the last decades of the old era. As we see it, these wars marked the future destiny of the Gaedels, and the end of the process of their definitive territorial and political consolidation.

The Cantabrian wars defined in last instance, the final situation of the Gaedels in continental Europe. These confrontations that were lead by the emperor Octavius from the year 26 to the 19 B.C., finished the occupation of the rebellious rest that still remained in the Iberian Peninsula and were narrated as extremely wild and cruel by the Roman sources. Conventional interpretations assume that this war was led against the Cantabrian and Asturian assembly of tribes. This affected what corresponds, more or less at present, following the traditional interpretation of Roman texts, with the scope of the provinces of Asturies and Leon (Astures), and Cantabria (or Santander, if you want).

As the Romans describe the facts, the violence of the war was tremendous, including collective suicides before surrendering, crucified prisoners who sang triumphant hymns before dying, rebellions of enslaved captives who killed their guards and returned home from Gaul, women who killed their children and themselves, etc. What is not said by the Romans in a clear manner, is that a lot of this dirty work (and the subsequent benefit) was carried out by the Gaedels. This may be observed, in fact, by the deep intrusion of the Gaedels in the demi-depopulated regions of Northern Iberia, after the war finished. For example, the predominant impression the current historians have on the subject is that there was no apparent Indo-European penetration in Asturias, before the wars. No matter this, Asturias had become later nearly one complete Gallaic colony. As we consider that this one is a critical subject, we will see it with more thoroughness.

The name of Barchu or Barchunes to which the Leabhar Gabhala alludes, evidently, is an orthographic and phonetic variant of Barscunes, which is the denomination the folks that we know as Basque or Euskaro today were called. It seems that the Gaidels were not very fond of pronouncing the consonant group -sc- and made the -s- disappear replacing it by an aspiration (of a similar way as it happens in most of the current Castilian dialects). A very surprising fact is that the name was likely Indo-European and Celtic: according to the linguist Tovar, it is originated by Bahr or Bar (height, mountain; look at Dunbar, for instance) and for the dialects that prefer the fall of the -r- to the one of the -s- (the ones of Eastern Iberia, in general, Basque and Celtiberians) the result is Bascunes or Bascones, meaning literally pertaining to the heights, mountain dwellers or highlanders.

Nevertheless, the reference to the Barchunes of the Leabhar Gabhala seems to be a little bit amazing. On the one hand it is one of the most evident signs of the authenticity of the Galician trip of the Gaedels because it is clear that the editor took the name in the way it was pronounced towards the change of era and not of later references (because the word evolved quickly towards basco or uasco in the Middle Age); it seems quite likely, therefore, that the transcribers of the legend no longer knew, at the moment of the writing, who could be such Barchunes and it motivated that their original name had been preserved in the transcription. But what is not clear, is how the Gaedels could reach the Barchunes, being interposed the ferocious Cantabros and Astures between both folks. It is clear that something does not fit, at least apparently, in the Gaedel narration.

The answer to the apparent enigma responds to the fact that, without a doubt, the text also considers the Astures and Cantabros as members of the ample assembly of folks that entered under the denomination of Barchu. The meaning of Barscunes, mountain dwellers, is also the generic name that the Roman and Greek sources, for example Strabo, gave to the assembly of all the inhabitants of the north of the peninsula, including Galicia, affirming in addition that their way of life was very homogenous among all of them. On the other hand, the denomination of mountain dwellers (Montañeses) continues having much vitality, as alternative to the one of Cantabrians and it is frequently used in mass media as press, radio or television (specially to the football sport commentators when talking about the players of the football club of Santander, to which they often denominate that way: los Montañeses, with the meaning of Cantabrians).

The Barchunes were then in fact the mountain dwellers whom Strabo speaks about, discounting of course, the own narrators of the Leabhar Gabhala (Gaedels), that surely did not consider themselves as so highlanders. The cultural and linguistic penetration of the Gallaics, mainly in Asturias, was impressive. The toponymy (names of the towns, etc.) and linguistic facts seem unquestionable here: the Gallaic toponymy can be found everywhere in Asturias. For example, the name of the capital, Oviedo (before, Ovedo, of an original *Obaid(o), in archaic Gallaic, from ab or ob, meaning bay and/or river) can be related to the place names of Castrove, Landrove, Corrubedo and some small parishes called Ove. The old Galician name of Santiago de Compostela -Libredon- has its corresponding related Asturian in Llibardon. Also, we have Coroña here (as Coruña) and names like Castro (the exclusive Roman translation of the Gallaic dun -nominative-, don -the genitive, the most used case in usual speech-), Canga, only found in Galicia and related lands in addition to Asturies. In the Picos de Europa, for example, the frequency of Gaedelic place names is to the top: Mountain range of Cortegada, Covadonga (of a previous Covadonega -meaning cave of dun type, or fortified-, similar to Viladonga in Galicia), Liébana (this one, in the Cantabrian face, but also Gallaic), etc.

On the other hand, Asturian language is close to Galician-Portuguese in solutions as, for example, the words that are related to the old Celtic gentilices or locatives (composed around the -iego ending: cabraliego, -of Cabrales-, lebaniego, -of Liébana-, naviego, -of Navia-, etc. This Gaedel construction -and Breton- marks a clear difference to the corresponding Celtiberian one based on -(i)asco, as in Kontrebia Belaisca -old Celtiberian city that was related to the tribe of Beli, well-known by its old texts, found in recent excavations- or with many Celtic words found in modern Spanish: carrasco, -of carro-, churrasco, -of churro-, ternasco, -of tierno-, etc., predominant in Aragon and the eastern area of Castile. In modern English the corresponding form is in -ish: Irish, Spanish, etc.). Other Asturian parallels will be analyzed in the section dedicated to the language, where these fundamental questions will be with a little more extended. A very interesting subject, for example, can be related to the personal appeals, because they are inflected conditioned by the sex of the interlocutor: if he is masculine the appeal is by "o" (qué fas, o ?, what are you doing ?, -to a man-) and by "ne" if she is a woman (qué dices, ne ? what are you saying, -to a woman-) and the identification with the Gaelic distribution of the personal articles O/Ni (O'Hara, Ni Mhary) seems very suggestive here.

Despite being sufficient, in our opinion, all these coincidences, the Asturians also share the common Gaedel style of typical decorations of the other countries that share this origin. This way, hexagonal figures with rhombuses, rings, interlaced adornments and corded shapes, Saint Andrew's crosses, etc. can also be found there. It must be emphasized, however, that one of the most typical samples, the triskel, disappears in the late imperial age (even in Galicia), perhaps because of religious reasons, as it would have been considered a dangerous pagan symbol, and even more after the Priscillian's affair (on a tremendously popular bishop that was finally declared heretic and beheaded by the catholic hierarchy). Asturian examples of these decorations can be followed in the architecture (really suggestive, in this sense, are the churches of the denominated preRomanesque style, Santa María del Naranco, San Miguel de Lillo, etc.) in the popular crafts and adornments, and the architectonic decorations.

Finally, the similarities in the popular suits and the customs between both countries are evident. As it is also known, the Asturians have become fond of the music of bagpipes, the rustic and collective meals, and singing and drinking, like their Galician neighbours.

The following stage of the Gaedel progress was the colonization of Cantabria and the Basque Country. The tracks in toponymy are not so evident in Cantabria as in Asturies and (surprise !) in the Basque Country. In the scope of the Picos de Europa the gentilices in -iego are still dominant (lebaniego = from Liébana), are some gallaica toponymy (Galizano, of a previous *Galiciano, perhaps) and last names as Gaitán or Gaytán. This one, originally located in Cantabria and the North of Castille (near Burgos), constitutes the most abundant surname of those that come from Gaeth, of all Spain; very usual throughout the country and very extended also. Finally, the denomination of the capital, Santander (Sant-Ander = Saint Andrew, patron saint of Scotland) evokes also an old and strong Gael relation.

In spite of all these evidences, it seems to be clear that the penetration of the Gaedels in the area of Santander was not as deep as in the rest of the Northern coast. Perhaps the resistance of the Cantabrians against the occupation was not as ferocious as the Asturians one (and the Basque's also) and, therefore, the Romans did not allow an important colonisation as the one of Asturies. This is a question that (as many others) future investigations will have to solve. It must be observed, on the other hand, that there are evident samples of gallaic presence near Burgos, in the North of Castile. Aside from the referred last name of Gaitán (also remarkable is Obregon -or *O'Bregon, if you want-), architectonic adornments of that origin can be found in some small and well preserved churches (dating back to the first millennium), as well as the names and toponymy unequivocally related (Castrojeriz, for example. Also Montes de Oca; Oca is a Gallaic last name very extended and popular. The Leabhar Gabhala tells us about Occe -note the cc, evolved in modern times in c and not in g-, that died in the plague after the battle against the Barchu. The related variants are Ocáriz, Oquendo -pronounced Okendo- and, perhaps, O'Kelly in Ireland).

But the most surprising among all the conquests of the Gaedels is the one of the Basque country. By the moment of the related events, the region was mostly called Vardulia. The territory corresponds to what today is called Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, Álava and the partially Rioja (it must be observed, nevertheless, that significant portions of the territory of Basque ethnics, as Navarre and Aquitania, for example, were not included in Vardulia). The tracks of the Gallaic occupation are absolutely evident here. Toponymy and onomastics are full of names related to a Gallaic or Gaedel origin: Gallarta, Portugalete, Gaiztarro, Ga(i)ztelu, Ga(i)ztambide and Orue, Oca (Galician), Ocáriz, Oquendo, Olóriz, Olarriaga, Olavide, Uriz, Oria, Uria or Obregón (this one in Cantabria), Cañedo (from a previous *Ceannaid(o), = Kenneth), Cañas, or even the most latinized Ovalle, Ocampo (in Galicia), etc., etc., that demonstrate the delayed persistence of the particle “O”, meaning man, Mr. (in fact, and as a direct appeal, this meaning of “O” is alive until today in popular language, in Galician and Asturian, at least) and opposed to “Ni” or “Ne”, meaning woman, lady, Miss (also today alive in popular language, must of all in Asturies). On the other hand, also remarkable are the names that include the Germanic particle riz (= little king), -surely, pronounced as ric in old times- (king, rei in modern Galician and Spanish), that can also be found in many place names, and reflect the social organization based on small kings or chieftains.

Remarkably, we can find here also isolated cases of the Gallaic diminutive in -iño (Treviño, Abadiño -analogous to Abadin in Galicia-), the ending -aga (Olarriaga, for example; from a previous -aiga, as in Gallaic/Gaedel, and the modern Galician ones ?), as well as another sample which could perhaps be another derivative of Gall, and resulting of different phonetic transformations: Galdo, Gadea, Galdacano, Galdeano, Galdiano are perhaps of this origin, and would thus demonstrate to us, the heterogeneous composition and the multiple origins of the throats of ancient Basques and Gaedels.

It must be observed that the penetration was not possible in Navarre, because the Romans had one of their better allies there, that gave the name of their capital (Pamplona) to one of the more significant patricians. As the Navarrese used their influences in Rome to advance against the Celtiberians of the Valley of the Ebro, it must be observed as extremely surprising that the Gaedels were authorized to advance up to their own beards and against their close relatives the Vardulians. Perhaps it was simply Roman interest, a compensation of what they had perceived as an excessive penetration against the Celtiberians. Again, more investigation, will be able to clarify this intriguing questions in the future.

Finally, it must be stressed that what we know of the results of the archaeological excavations of this period, shows us important improvements in modus vivendi and wealth, mainly in the old Gallaecia Bracarensis (the north of Portugal, center and main core of the population of Gaedels' culture -Sanfins, Briteiros, Monte Mozinho-, although it can also be observed in Southern Galicia: San Cibrao de Las, Santa Trega, etc.). This was likely the reward in payment of the Cantabrian conquest. The decorations of the houses of the hill-forts improved their sophistication and we can find there for the first time unquestionable adornments of gaedelic style: crossed rings, parallel lines that formed graphs with rhombuses, corded and interlaced motifs, Saint Andrew's crosses, linear developments, triskels, hexagonal and kaleidoscope like rings, etc., etc..

The invasion of Ireland

Following the narration of the Leabhar Gabhala, the hero Breogan (or Bregon, or Bregan) also called Golam, that had commanded so many battles against the Hispani, constructed the city of Brigantia (or Braganza) and the Tower that took his name. From the Tower of Breogan (it is called Torre de Hércules, now), his son Ith descried Ireland “... an evening of a day of winter...”. This way, Ith commanded the first expedition to Ireland in which the natives (note that, surprisingly, they also spoke Gaelic, according to the text) killed him treacherously. It all ended up in the second and definitive expedition, commanded by Mil, also son of Breogan and brother of Ith, that led to the conquest of the island.

Returning to the historical sources, on the other hand, as result of the battle or waged war of the Gaedels against the Barchu, that the Romans and their Gaedel allies tackled against the Barchunes, all the Barchu territory was celtized and gaedelized until nearly the river Bidasoa (current French frontier) and, mainly, Asturias was turned into a simple colony. The Roman census of the year 77, mentioned by Plinius, yet included next to the classic conventus (territorial divisions) Bracarensis and Lucensis, the Asturicensis one, as conforming a kind of New Gallaecia. Just by then the Gaedels enjoyed one of their sweeter times ever because, with the victories in hand, their prestige increased to the eyes of the Romans, and it gave them power and wealth. It is by then when they erected the famous statues of the Gaedel soldiers and baptized their hill-forts as if they were the Greek colonies or polis (because in fact, the Greek model of civilization was the one they more envied) that they had left next to the Black Sea. This way we have Vilapol, Buspol and Castropol, with their names so similar to Sevastopol or Simferopol and, also, later, Pola de Allande, Pola de Siero, Pola de Laviana, Pola de Lena...

In this conjuncture of triumph, resources and power, is when it seems that the Gaedels undertook the adventure of the conquest of Ireland. Proud of themselves, feeling impelled by the crest of an euphoria wave, it seems that they carried out their new enterprise without excessive problems. Unfortunately, this process is rather unknown to us, there is a lot of stuff to investigate and data to obtain to try an approach towards those facts. The only thing that seems sure, is that on a previous base of La Tène culture type, advanced progressively, from south to north and from west to east, a culture of no La Tène type, constructor of forts (duns, hill-forts in English) similar to the Gallaic castros (denominated dun, don or donga in the old Galician language). Also, by the written references of the Leabhar Gabhala we deduce that the protagonists of the conquest were military (sons of Mil) word that suggests clearly that the responsibility of the facts was on the part of Roman auxiliary troops, Gallaic in this case. As this it is not the central subject of the present Web page, we will not extend ourselves on the subject although, we must remember, it is one other of the crucial facts that happened towards the change of era, that conditions and surprises us a lot when we analyze them nowadays.

On the other hand we insist that in our opinion and in agreement with a coherent interpretation of the archaeological data available, as well as with the narration of the Leabhar Gabhala, there were Gaedel (or Gallaicoi) colonies in Ireland previous to the conquest, likely located there on the part of the Phoenicians, what would explain the absence of archaeological discoveries of La Tène type in this zone, as well as the observation of the milesian text, that the Irish, who received Ith, yet spoke Gaelic too.

Personally we consider as more likely the hypothesis that in fact the Galicians knew perfectly the existence of the Gaedel colony of Ireland (that would act, this way, like a kind of Trojan horse against the inhabitants who dominated the island, that were Brythonic Celts, and belonged to La Tène culture) and mediating pretext or not, they finally decided to completely seize the island, leaning in the military technology, the resources, the experience and, in short, the power that they had acquired in the course of the Cantabrian wars. We repeat that, like all the rest of the matters that are discussed here, it will have to be object of more and more investigations that will allow to explain the true real reach of the facts.

The Gaedels in Spain after the Irish invasion

What happened next, according to the Leabhar Gabhala, is that the Gaedels continued living in Spain although the Hispani “...molested them continually...”, being specially bothersome the Gothi (goths) according to some Scottish legends.

The history books relate, on the other hand, what happened next. Gallaecia was integrated in the Roman empire, receiving the favorable treatment that corresponded to the allies. The expansion of the Gallaics from their shelter is testified by the archaeological and linguistic testimonies, according to what we saw in the previous section. Also, as we said, the rejection is perceived whereupon they received the denomination of Gallaicus istead of the one they liked of Gaethel or Gaithan, manoeuvre that as we said, did not obtain more results than very partially in Iberia due to, that Gallaicus was too much implanted by that time; nevertheless the extension and vitality of personal surnames related to the root gaeth- (Gaeta, Gaite, Gaitan, Gaztelu) indicates that this denomination was rather used, at least during the first millennium A.D.

The Roman administration was gathering, on the other hand, under the name of Gallaecia, increasing amounts of territory including all the area of influence that the Gaedels had obtained in the Cantabrian wars. In the provincial division of Dioclecianus, of year 305, the province of Gallaecia will even occupy all the territory from the Cantabrian sea and the Atlantic to river Douro and the Iberian system by the West, partially absorbing Celtiberia too, area of an old Celtic origin, quite different of the Gallaic one.

As it is known, the Roman domination finished in fact in year 409, with the invasion of the Germanic tribe of the Swabians or Suevi. It seems to be that after some beginnings marked by a relative mutual lack of confidence, they all ended up understanding well each other, Swabians and Gallaics. The dynasty lasted until the 585, year the Swabo-Gallaics were defeated and absorbed by the Visigoths, who controlled the rest of the Iberian Peninsula and South-Eastern France (Languedoc). Both invasions are usually considered as of limited demographic consequences, even compared to the well-known presence of British refugees who fleeing from the Saxon invasion settled in the coast of Lugo between Vth and VIIth centuries, with Maeloc bishop as their more outstanding leader (this event suggests, on the other hand, that the north of Galicia continued to be perceived in a certain Brythonic way, even after the Gaedel conquest).

The domination of the Gothi evildoers did not last too much, as in 711 the Muslim conquest annihilated the Visigothic monarchy, that was yet very weakened by internal fights. Gallaecia escaped to the permanent occupation of the Arabs, due fundamentally to the low interest they demonstrated for the country or, at least, this is the traditional explanation on the subject. Nevertheless, the facts make patent, that the empire of Islam began to experience problems and to suffer defeats in Gallaecia, for the first time from the beginning of its triumphal stroll (later, the Francs would also be able to overcome them). From the defeat of Covadonga in 722, in Asturies, the Muslims' power initiates a slow but progressive retirement, being perceived as moving more and more away off Gallaecia. And soon, around the city of Oviedo a new kingdom was established, named Asturias-Leon by modern Spanish historians, although there are indications which suggest that the name by which it was known was the one of Gallaecia (with complete certainty, this was the denomination that the Arab historians gave to the kingdom, for example), in this sense this is a question that nowadays is even put under debate and it is not absolutely clear, therefore.

The war of Reconquest against the Muslims, motivated the appearance of a dynamic county, first called Vardulia (and later Castile) that starting from the territory of the current Basque provinces, was able to obtain the secession off the Asturias-Leon kingdom (or Gallaecia, according to we have said) to end up even absorbing later the old original kingdom. This was considered as casus belli in the old Gallaecia Bracarensis what motivated its separation and the creation of the kingdom of Portugal. And, in short, this way in a certain sense, in the end, the Barchu were able to obtain a fulfilled revenge of which had been the Cantabrian wars. The rest can be consulted in any text book, so we are not going to stop anymore on the matter.

There are other questions more difficult to explain as, for example, when and how the Gaedel language disappeared or from when the Gallaics lost their particular and specific conscience of their traditional origins. These questions likely lack of satisfactory answer, at least, to the level the available knowledge arrives with its answers.

In the case of the language, for example, it seems clear that Latin and Gaedel must have shared a bilingual stage that maybe ended up with the absorption of this one by that one. Nevertheless the problem, once studied with thoroughness, does not seem as clear as before. A first possibility could be based on the consideration that it must have been little while the dialect descending of Latin and its basic vocabulary moved yet definitively to the dialect descending of the Gaedel and his corresponding basic vocabulary. But this could be, otherwise, caused by a progressive phenomenon of influence, similar to the one of English language underwent during the Norman domination, thus being modern Galician a form of Gallaic eroded and absolutely influenced by the Latin and the Western European conceptual world, that is constructed around Latin and to a lesser extent, also around old Greek. In this, like in many other things, more and better investigations must have the definitive word. In the following section we will try to come near this difficult problem, trying to discover something of what has been preserved of the old Gaedel in the present Galician language.

Where have all the Gaels' words gone ?

It has been commented repeatedly that the Gallaic language disappeared totally with the romanisation, in Gallaecia. Only the words corresponding to the toponymy (denomination of the cities and geographic features) and a little bit on the names of some plants and animals, stayed (something similar to this was published in the Internet, out of an interview made to a first order personality of the Galician culture, some years ago).

Although we are not going to be entangled in the sterile discussion on the possibilities that these judgments responded or not to the reality, we think that, at least, it is necessary to do some explanations. Indeed, despite being present Galician what is usually known as a Romance language, (it is to say, coming from Latin), we think that it may not be considered as synonymous of the total disappearance of the old language, Celtic/Gaedel, because of several reasons.

To begin with, it is necessary to clarify that the diverse Celtic languages and Latin itself, belonged to a same Indo-European linguistic block, which nowadays is denominated Italo-Celtic. This means that they were very close each other: both the syntax and the phonetics and even the lexicon of their basic vocabulary were very similar. This was so up to the point that, for relatively instructed people, Latin and Celt were mutually comprehensible; there are even anecdotes on how the Romans had to speak Greek, when they were in the presence of Celts, and they did not want their conversations were understood by them.

This way, there are many of these common characteristics that have passed to the Gallaico-Portuguese language (these considerations must also be valid for other Latin languages), and it is extraordinarily difficult to discriminate which is their true origin, in this sense. This happens to many of the words, as well as the syntactic and phonetic features. However, this proximity must not justify sufficiently, as it is usually done, that as soon as there is a minimum possibility of embroidering a certain Latin etymology (or, if not Latin, Germanic) all the other alternatives are automatically rejected. Sometimes, the desire of forcing Latin origins for the words has arrived until the fall in absolutely grotesque deformations.

On the other hand, the peripheral situation in which the old gaedel lands were left at present times (Ireland and Scotland in the Anglo-Saxon world and Galicia in the Latin-Hispanic one) has caused that the investigation on the subject has been practically nonviable until today. In order to advance on the subject, a deep knowledge of languages so apparently different and remote as Galician and Gaelic are is indispensable, and there are very few people who could reach these requirements nowadays, what makes the progress of the works enormously difficult.

In short, of course we do not try to blame nobody personally, but we think that, on the one hand, time has arrived for the general (not only the specialized one) academic world, and the universities to begin to seriously consider the need to study the Celtic languages, as they are very important for our origins, and not everything is only and exclusively composed of Latin and (old) Greek. It is not an easy task after more than 20 centuries of emptiness and marginalization that our genuine popular culture has been suffering from all the scopes of the power and knowledge; it is evident that this type of studies lacks of the adequate tradition, and that those who wanted to try an approach to the problem will not enjoy many theoretical aids, almost all the knowledge may be practically built from zero. But doing it so, not only signifies an inalienable act of justice towards our roots but in addition, it is essential to find out the complete comprehension of the origin of our present languages and, therefore, for the progress of linguistic science.

Thus, let us go on and try to discover the little that has been left in modern Galician of the old Gallaic language. To begin with, and related to the phonetic renderings, there are habits of articulation that are absolutely characteristic and differentials of Galician and Gaelic, within the group of European languages. For example:

Aspirated consonants: bh, ch, dh, gh, lh, nh, th, etc. The orthographic and phonetic correspondences can not agree exactly between Gaelic and Galician, in some cases, but the fundamental tendencies can be related approximately thus. Saving the specific cases where aspiration extends to the writing (ch, lh, nh, th is z or ce, ci in current Galician spelling) the present Gallaico-Portuguese (also almost always the Spanish) solely generates these phonetic effects with positional character (the aspiration is carried out at intervocalic position, fundamentally) and nonphonemic (bh, dh, gh). Examples (with pseudophonetic spelling): beira, demo, gaita; but (pronounced), na bheira, o dhemo, a ghaita. In Galicia, North of Portugal and Castille the v is identical to the b. Far from Galicia these phonetic effects seems to be weakened. In some Spanish southern dialects, the intervocalic b more and more frequently tends to be pronounced practically equal to the English or Portuguese v.
The sound g is mainly in Galicia -despite being considered a popular use, or even vulgar- pronounced like kh (Khalicia, khalekho by Galicia, galego) paradoxical solution in a Romance language, that is evidently a sign of gallaic phonetics. It is necessary to stand out that both Castilian and Portuguese languages have created recently similar sounds (gente, jauja are pronounced in modern Castilian like khente, khaukha; in Portuguese this tendency -not yet totally completed- is expressed through the rr: carro, rua, terra, are pronounced more and more frequently like cakho, khua, tekha) what would be, likely product of the accomplishment of a latent tendency of articulation of gallaic substrate. This is, on the other hand, one more aspirated sound (corresponding to the ancient ch, or aspirated variation of the c). The Castilian sound seems to be very old, as it was apparently trapped in the process of transition between the preRomance value of the ch (as in Scottish loch, German nacht, etc.) and the new Western European one (as in English child, chair, etc.), as some modern cases of hesitation may suggest on the subject: rajar/rachar, ja/cha or ca, lonja/loncha, and -sorry- pija/picha, etc. No matter how it was originated, it advanced in the second half of the second millennium, perhaps starting from some dialectal scope, from west to east (it seems as if the Aragonese was reluctant to this change) and north to south, by analogy and conservation of the old pronunciations, in order to reject new strange sounds in the phonetic system, and spread later to the rest of the linguistic dominion.
There are clear indications that the change of pronunciation ce, ci > se, si, or similar, typical from the Romance phonetics did not get to produce very spontaneously in Western Galician and even, it has not yet taken place with words that are not etymologically identified by the general users, what can be demonstrated, for example, in toponymy (quenxe, quenlle, quilmas, etc.). Probably this fact is also related to the difficulties of these dialects to accept the phonetics of Asturian eastern Galician, that pronounce like in th, the combinations ce, ci and related forms, as Castilian does (Vicedo > Vithedo, Noceda > Notheda, Foz > Foth, etc.). This is a very interesting phenomenon to study, it was not likely generally completed until the centuries XVIII or XIX, and it did not arrive, therefore, on time to colonize America. The sound th had to be originated surely from dialectal Castilian of gallaic influence, from the analogy with the end of word of type cnòth > noz (nut), ath > azar (to evaluate again; of there chance, chance, fate), brùth > bruces (blow; to fall or to give of you brush: to strike themselves), cruth > cruz (cross, from shape), roth > rozar (wheel, and from there, to graze) and also roda, rueda (wheel), srath > rada (srath, low lying land by to riverside), sùith > sucio (of sùith, +e, soot), lùth > luz (force, power, and from here light), sath > saciar (satiate), etc.; to advance from there to the rest of the distribution of related words that contained ce, ci, as noceda, etc. that had been related by the apparent Latin etymology of some of them (for example noce by cnòth, cruce by cruth, lucis by lùth, sucidu by sùith, etc.) on the part of the cultist agents.
In fourth place, there are the nasal and velar sounds of the n, so characteristic of the Gallaico-Portuguese. Even, in all the western strip of the Castilian (including Andalusia), this type of phonetic renderings specially exposes the regional origin of the speaker; for example through the typical pronunciations like eng-hebrar, ung amigo, ing-herente or ing-hábil by enhebrar, un amigo, inherente, inhábil, etc., in the rest of the Peninsula. Really, this is a special case of the aspirated consonants, that we saw in #1, in fact, in the more habitual of the Galician spellings, it is usually written with an added h: unha, algunha, etc. The problem of this representation is that it conflicts with the normal Gallaico-Portuguese one for the palatal n, that also uses the digraph nh; because of this reason some people have advised recently the adoption of the digraph mh for this phoneme, that does not present these problems.
On the other hand, it must be said that Portuguese has very frequently nasal vowels, phonetic effect that is lowered lately in current Galician, possibly by influence of official Spanish, that lacks of this kind of sounds. They are associated to the mh digraph in Scottish Gaelic, it is also evident that these are very p-Celtic related sounds (they can be found in Welsh, Breton, French, etc.), and, possibly, even more Brythonic than Gaelic, maybe (we must remember here that the pre-gaelic indoeuropean substrate of Gallaecia was fundamentally Brythonic).
Another characteristic to be noted in these languages, is the difficulty to pronounce the consonantic groups based on s (mainly -sc-, -sp- and -st-) already treated when speaking about the Barchunes. Portuguese language solves it modifying the s (osh caminhosh by os caminhos) while in Castilian, it usually becomes h (ahco, mohca by asco, mosca). It seems to be that the preIndo-European tradition (Basque) as the Germanic one, the Latin and Celtiberian; all they were against this tendency. In our opinion the q-celtic one (Gallaic) was also against this, but nevertheless it was strongly present, in general, in all the p-celtic languages spoken in the peninsula, that were mainly placed in the western scope: preGallaic Galician, southern old Portuguese (Algarve) and western (or central, if you want) Andalusian. It is well-known, for example, the absence of this type of combinations in French (ecole, hopital, pate by *escole, *hospital, *paste) and this is also quite characteristic in the southern Spanish speech. In modern Galician, it seems as this tendency remained hidden (it is considered vulgar), although its historical weight is beyond any doubt.
Diphthongs ei, oi, ou, absolutely characteristics, that come from diverse Gallaic origins, that are normally also present in popular speech of Western Asturies (between the rivers Nalón and Navia, in general). In the Portuguese territory and language, these features are supported by the official orthography and pronunciation, but in popular speech, they are only pronounced as far as near Lisbon. In Asturian and to a lesser extent in Castilian, other diphthongs also appear: ue (notable modified conservation of the Gallaic and Gaelic ui diphthong) and ie.
Long, or double vowels; they were traditionally spelled as aa, ee, oo, etc. (Baamonde, Cée, Voo). Sometimes, nowadays, they are written otherwise: a+o (a preposition + o article) is pronounced as óo and writen as ó; a+a (a preposition + a article) gives áa, and is written as á; etc. This type of sounds does not fit in the vocalic system of “Vulgar Latin” (a, e, open -or broad- e, o, open -or broad- o, u) and is not of general Romance formation: the phonologic system of real Galician language and vowels is rather most complex than the simplified models that are usually admitted on the subject (the seven vowels officially admitted). It's one of the main phonetic characteristics that increases the capacity and performance of northwestern phonology, and happens in Galician, Asturian and neighboring Spanish dialects, and even -in some cases- in the cultist or official Spanish pronunciation (but not in the popular and eastern ones, in general), but currently limited (in Spanish) to the case the of contact between words; for instance, phrases as: “...Bélgica ya ha anunciado...” (where a long a or aa may be heard between the h and the n) happens to be usually pronounced in Eastern Spanish dialects as: “...Bélgica ya 'nunciado...” with a clear different pronunciation (there is only a simple a, now). Note that these renderings provide really powerful comparative gains in intelligibility, on the part of this kind of speech, and allows for instance the discrimination of “...ya ha comido...” from “...ya comido...”; note also its frequent appearance in Galician combinations, that are originated by the presence of the o article and any word beginning or ending with an o, etc. This feature is yielding from the middle ages, as it is a clear northwestern characteristic and specialty, unknown in common Spanish (not northwestern Spanish) and modern Portuguese.
Ample and very marked pitch variations, according to the content of the phrase. This is one of the recognized characteristics of Galician elocution, rather noticed by the speakers of other languages, when they depict this one.
Evident traces of the presence of what in Gaelic are called the broad -palatal- and slender -velar- variants or alterations of consonant sounds (broad in contact with broad -or open- vowels a, o, u; slender -or small, or closed if you want- when e, i), resulting in a palatal rendering when the slender effect is done. The easy change between s and sh (as sh in shine, in English spelling; this sound is represented in Galician by an x, as in caixa) sounds, or either between t and ch (as ch in chair, in English spelling) are attested, by example, by the galician pronoun che (te in official Portuguese), or the oscillations páxaro-pássaro, passiom-paixão, etc. But, undoubtedly, the most representative of these effects are visible today in Brazilian. Pronunciations like je, ji by de, di (jia, saudaje, by the officials dia, saudade) and che, chi by te, ti (china, repenche, instead of tina, repente, just like in modern Scottish Gaelic), initially attributed to the popular speech or Rio de Janeiro, are becoming more and more general in current Brazilian. And, as a Brazilian reader said to us in a recent communication, it must be noted that 90 % of all the (official) Gaedel speaking people are living in that giant country nowadays. As the reader insisted to us, we must remember that Brazil was initially colonized by people coming from Viana do Castelo or, in other words, from the center of the old Gallaecia Bracarensis, the first place that the Gaels occupied in Western Europe. The persistence of the singular character of their speech is, as we see now, quite evident nowadays.

The phonetic profiles that we've just expressed, outline Galician-Portuguese as a language of strong vocalic (based on vowels) combinations, that admits long or double class of vowels and diphthongs as well as hiatuses. It must also be indicated the profusion of which in Gael are denominated aspirated sounds, a strong tendency towards the weakening or loss of inner consonants and syllables as well as a support to the elocution of a strong pitch difference according to the sense of the phrase. Let us think that all this components can be considered shared with the Gaelic. There are also some elements of the Gallaic lexicon and morphology that have remained invariable. For that reason, we will examine previously some simple rules that must be followed for the reading and interpretation of the sometimes complex Gallaic phonetics.

To begin with, it must be indicated, that for the references to Gaelic we will mainly follow unless we want to affirm the opposite, the traditional Scottish Gaidhlic orthography (not the modern or simplified ones; this is important, for instance, with the full -rich- and traditional accents, as they are very meaningful in many cases) according to the dictionary MacFarlane, which is the one that we have more easily available. As, on the other hand, it seems that the Scottish variant is more conservative than the Irish one (this may be referred specially to the modern or reformed Irish spelling, that hides a lot of useful information for us), it may be definitively the best option of those we have available (the ideal would be to have grammars and dictionaries of Irish/Scottish, the older the better, but it is not thus, to our grief). As far as Galician concerns, as we know, there are no written documents from the Gallaic stage and, even so, the best thing would be again to handle grammars and dictionaries the older the better. Sorry, we do not have it either. On the other hand, as far as possible, our considerations will try to be based, whenever possible, in the morphology shaped in the writing, that is normally very conservative. This can be enormously useful, mainly for Gaelic, that has evolved a lot its phonetics from the time the orthographic traditions were fixed. In the case of Galician, as a convention to clarify the spelling, palatals n and l will be represented by means of nh and lh, as in modern Portuguese, except the Asturian and Spanish words, in which ñ and ll will be used instead. Finally, for the representation of the aspirated sounds in Galician, habitually not reflected in the writing, will be more or less used an adaptation of the Gael criteria. And once stated these conventions, the rules of correspondence that we have been able to select are:

Vowels: ui is associated to o (sometimes Asturian and Castilian preserve this diphthong as an ue), ai results in an broad or open -e- in Galician (ie in Asturian), ei stays, oi stays between oi and ou oscillating; ì (long i) would evolve to ii to give finally ei, and the ea hiatus becomes a (sometimes also as e), the oa leads to a and ua renders usually as an oa (sometimes also as ou). Hiatuses formed around the clusters i + vowel lose their i, but there are some exemptions to these rule (in short words, basically: Galician's ria, biorta, etc. -from Gaelic rian, bior, etc.-, instead of *ra, *borta, etc.). The oai cluster is frequently coming from an oi shape that has been preserved in Galician but there some other cases of an *odai correspondence (not sure). The syllables with an accentuated o produce very frequently diphthong in oi or ou. At end of word Galician adds a vowel of support, o, a, or e, according to cases. Finally, in agreement to the rules of the Galician phonology, final unstressed i is transformed into e (or, better, i and e are neutralised in a common sound, i or e depending on dialects).
It is necessary to indicate that there is a general tendency towards the change i > e, nevertheless, this is not always absolutely so, in fact, and mainly for the Galaico-Portuguese, it must be spoken of a state near the oral neutralization or confusion between these two vowels, in many cases, and mainly in non-stressed vowels. Alternative pronunciations as dezir, dizir, to dizer (dizer, in Portuguese official spelling), vezinho, vizinho, etc. are perfectly usual in certain zones of Galicia, in daily speech. The palatalizations caused by the i vowel can prevail over the normal vocalic evolutions; for example, the ai > open e transformation is avoided when there is the effect il>lh, that was, hence, previous to the vocalic alteration; this is very evident in the ending-ail, that is transformed in -alh (ceangail > cangalho) and not in -el. In a similar way, the gaelic endings -uil, -uill evolve in the more popular words to -ulh, and not in -ol or -old, but sometimes they are corrected to -olh, as result of more cultured influences. Finally, the diphthong -ai- evolves in -ei- when it is in contact with -r- or -s-, thus avoiding the transformation in broad (or open) e. Examples: làir > leir (o/a), càise > queixo or queijo, etc.
On the other hand, in diphthongs, the step or phonetic change of i > e must be partially behind phenomena of type ai > broad e (Asturian ie), ui > broad o (Asturian ue), both Asturian and Galician, long i > ei. The intermediate steps could have been ai > ae > broad e, ui > ue > broad o, long i > ii > ei. For the ea hiatus the evolution could be as ea > ia > a, with the usual fall of the i in the ia shape ?; there is, for instance, the Galician word mada (= skein, hank), that has apparently preserved the miada and meada archaic counterparts/variations, with the same meaning !?. There are also, on the other hand, some residual oscillations and hesitations, fundamentally toponymy and onomastics: Taramundi, Amandi, Luiña (modernly, they would have to be *Taramonde, *Amande, *Lueña), Cuinha (and not *Conha -an ugly sound/meaning-; this surname is likely the Galician version of the Irish Quinn or Cuinn), etc. These conservative phenomena can also be observed sometimes in Galician and Asturian place names (with oscillations as Andreade / Andrade or -nuiz / -noz, etc.).
Consonants: -l- and -gh- inner and intervocalic disappear, also disappears -n, in final unstressed syllable; the sounds represented by d usually gives t except in absolute final position (without including the support vowel here. It seems to be, really, that Gaelic evolved the ancient t in a modern d, and this change has not happened in Galician.), -dh- or -th- only change orthographically, in Galician, they are represented by d and c/ç/z; -nn- (sometimes inn, mainly in Irish) always gives palatal n -as the ny of canyon (that is likely a Gallaic word, and related to the Gaelic ceann; to compare for instance, to barranco -similar meaning to cañón-, that is surely related to bàrr)- nh or ñ according to the Portuguese and Spanish spellings; the stability shown by this phenomenon is amazing and, in fact, it represents a magnificent and safe radar to identify gallaic words in Galician and Spanish without missing the blow, as its distribution is almost always different in the rest of the Indo-European languages. The phenomenon, on the contrary, is quite surprising, because nowadays the spoken Gaelic does not seem to preserve the etymological distinction between n and nn, as Galician and Asturian / Spanish do. There are, nevertheless, some exceptional cases of rendering of the double nn as nd or ndr, maybe related to a different or previous inflected version of the word, or root of the considered word. It must be said, on the other hand, that in final position the Asturian is against the Galician result with absolute systematic certainty; in this position when Galician generates nh Asturian does n and vice versa with n and nh, still at the cost of going against the etymology. This phenomenon would have ended up being signified as a criterion of supradialectal or social differentiation, undoubtedly.); -rl- gives - lh-; -il- and -ill- give -lh-; (it seems to be a very old phenomenon, previous to the step ai > e, that happens when the accompanying -i- is part of a diphthong, that is, becomes demiconsonant), -ll- gives -ld- or -ldr-, it's also sometimes simplified to -l- (the Galician/Romance rendering of Latin -ll-, maybe this was caused by influence of ancient Latin or bilingual speakers), -mh- gives (probably coming through a rendering of velarized n, similar to the english ng and galician nh, -mh if we follow alternative spellings-) -ng-, -s- can give -s- but, in agreement with the phonetic broad/slender effects, it leads it to -x- (pronounced sh), principally when the original -s- is in contact with -i-. Finally, in agreement with the rules of the Galician phonogy bl, cl and gl clusters give br, cr and gr, respectively; the same way, c or ch in end of syllable produce demiconsonant i and, hence, a diphthong. The consonant p does not seem to belong to this linguistic system, and do not produce words, hence.
It must be indicated, for those of you that would like to try to deepen on the subject, that as well as these simple rules agree sometimes with the ones that are described by traditional Romance linguistics for the evolution of the Latin words to Galician, the subject is not so way with some other instances, fundamentally with the evolutions of l and n (for example, in the processing of -l- and -ll-, as we have noted, or in the -nn-, it is reduced to -n- for the Latin words: pinna > pena, and not penha). It must be noted, on the other hand, that in many words, there can be consonant variations, in agreement with the rules of phonetic inflections of Gaelic; this way, the conserved form in Galician would be the second and not the principal one. This is very obvious, for instance, in the c/ch case (the ch was pronounced, for example, when the word was accompanied with the definite article): chorra, chouriço, charro, and not corra, couriço, carro, possibly from or related to còrr, coire, cèarr, etc.
Finally, another factor to consider is the rendering results originated by other celtic dialets, not only old Gallaic, that may have influenced the modern galician speech. This is a rather complex subject, but in our opinion, the principal alterations to the rule would come from p-celtic dialects that were likely spoken in the western fringe of the Iberian peninsula, associated to the presence of the Atlantic bronze civilization (previous to the hill-forts' one), and later (1500 years later !), to the migration of British refugees, because of the invasion of England by germanic tribes, in the 5th and 6th centuries A.C. As an example of this eventual influence, these dialects probably rendered the old etymologycal -t- in africated -ch- (the sound of ch in English chair) and not in -th- or -dh- as in Gallaic or in -t- as maybe cultured or Latin speaking people had done; the divergences originated by these different treatments sometimes lead to a whole mess (for example, gato / gad(dh)anha / gaz(th)oupa / gacho / gassa, all of them coming from a former gat- root, with the meaning of hook or sickle ?).

The etymological case usually evolves from the second shape of the words, the no nominative one (probably the genitive), as it is referred by MacFarlane's dictionary; Romance linguistics refer the accusative case to this function (following our experience, sometimes, mainly in toponymy and onomastics, the preserved reference is in nominative; however, this supposed permanence of the nominative may sometimes be rather deceptive or unreal, specially when the word that serves us to establish the reference is not exactly the original one, or at least its transformed version), when mentioning the Gaelic words we put in the first place the nominative case and then the second one, that is usually the one preserved in Galician language, as we have said; example: àrmunn, -uinn (nominative àrmunn, genitive àrmuinn).

It must be noted, finally, that the existence of a link, common word or relation between Gaelic and Galician, does not guarantee a celtic origin for that particular subject, because it is clear that before the Galician / Gaelic division, the former common language was yet influenced by other ones (Greek, Scythian, Latin, etc., and even Basque ?). In this sense, not celtic words, and even the Latin ones (!), can be equally interesting if they help us to determine the whole range of the links that existed between ancient gaedel and galician worlds. This is very evident when the foreign (Latin ?) word is particularly adapted in a characteristic shape, with phonetic and semantic specialized features, that made it a new gaedelic creation. Examples on the stuff may be found in the gaelic words luan, mion, borb, mam, that are related to the galician ones lua, miunça, borbotón, mámoa, in a special adaptation (both in their pronunciation and meanings) of the Latin originals luna, minutia, barbarus, mammula, for the Gaelic / Galician needs. On the contrary, words of the same (Latin) origin that did not enter the Gaedelic and Galician languages by the shared common ancient ways, could develop quite different shapes in both modern languages; the different adaptation of buabhall (Gaelic), búfalo (Galician), of the Latin word bubalus, may illustrate this subject.

And with this we think that all this stuff is more than sufficient, mainly for an elementary work as this one is. Here we are, therefore, with one short relation of the more significant words that have been identified (in addition to what we had commented previously), mainly following the dictionary MacFarlane and also, naturally, according to our opinion:

In the first item, we will mention the lexical elements that seem to us absolutely unquestionable as gallaic, and that can only be explained through gallaic origins (it is to say, lack of alternative satisfactory etymology to the Gallaic one, in any other known language). They are:
gaita (bagpipe, from ancient gaetha, maybe ultimately related to Gaethia, in Dacia ?. Conventional explanations link this word to gaits, goat in Gothic language; on the other hand, it is possible, nevertheless, that Gothic gaits was related to gaetha, as the word was very extended -gaita or similar words seem to be documented in Arabic, Turkish etc.- and prior to the germanic spread),
galego (galician, from gallach, -aich or gallaigh, first well-known mention from Herodotus, 5th century B.C. -!!-, originally this did not mean foreigner -as in the modern gaelic word gall, that is perhaps related to this link-, but well on the contrary. It must be noted that the phonetic rendering is not of a pure gallaic evolution -as *galdego would be-, what indicates that the word was very usual in Latin speaking -or Romance- mouths.),
moinho (mill -building-, from muileann, -inn, mill -buiding-, through the links ui > o, nn > nh and the fall of the -l-. This word is placed here and not in the Latin shared paragraph, because of the ending in -inn or -inho that is quite gallaic or gaelic -no Latin- and characteristic. On the other hand the possibility of the root of the word was coming from Latin must be considered.),
o & ne (similar as the O & Ní of modern Irish and Nee in English; man or Mr., woman or Mrs. or Miss. Used in direct appeals, of familiar expression only; o is quite alive everywhere, ne is very popular in central Asturian),
nina, menina, nena, niña -Spanish-, neña, and from here, in masculine, nino, menino, neno, niño, neño, etc. (female child, young girl; likely from nighean, -in or -inn, daughter, young girl; there is also the less frequent inghean variant. This word may be modernly interpreted, at least in Asturies, as a diminutive form of ne or ni=woman, but this possibility of derivation was perceived as doubtful or incorrect by some linguists in the Internet. It must be noted also, that the shapes that begin with an m as menino, meninho, etc., can be considered as result of related / crossed interferences with the meanings of small -for instance Gaelic mean, +a; or meann, minn; and other similar words in this sense, Latin minus, modern Galician meminho, minho, mininho, etc.-. This was possibly, in the end, also the original sense of words as Gaelic's mac, mic, etc. -small, as it is nowadays in some Romance (?) languages; mic = small in Rumanian, for instance-. Finally, the Gaulish word ninnus, servant, Old Irish nen, id., must be noted as alternative related sources for the suggestive link.),
nai (mother. The etymology and origin of this fundamental word is unknown until today and constitutes one of the most disconcerting mysteries of Galician language. From our point of view it's clearly related to the former words, specially ne or ni=woman; and possibly tinged by the word neach, person, any person, individual. Following the McBain Dictionary, the principal shape of this family of words is nic that is a <<female patronymic prefix, Middle Gaelic nee (Dean of Lismore), Irish ní, Middle Irish iní, an abbreviation of Old Irish ingen, now inghean or nighean and ui, nepotis (Stokes). The Gaelic nic, really "grand-daughter", stands for inghean mhic or ní mhic; we have recorded in 1566 Ne V@+c Kenze (M`Leod Charters).>>. The word bean, g. mnatha, d. mnaoi, v. bhean, pl. mnathan, g.pl. ban; wife, woman; can also give some references on the subject; the closeness of the dative mnaoi and the galician nai shape are very evident and, on the other hand, there are several indirect references -of compound words as bandalho, bad woman, or another ones as ban, waist of women, etc.- of the ancient use of the words ban or ben refered to women, and in fact, bem is still said usually so in common Portuguese, in colloquial or intimate speech.),
mico (little child, also by extension little monkey -!?-, from mac, mic; son, the young of any animal. Note that the Galician word is taken here from the no nominative case, as the rule is.),
macaco -and many other derivatives as macao, macada, macana, macareu, etc.- (similar to the former word but, as includes derivatives, you must note that the original form comes from the nominative now; little child, and little monkey also -these secondary meanings are perhaps this way due to the extravagant attitude of the conquerors of the 16th century, of predominant gallaic origin, that called the little monkeys that found in the tropical areas this way-; from mac, mic; son, the young of any animal. The semantic variations as macareu; young sardine, or those ones with pejorative or despicable sense as, for instance, macao; little puppet, macana, macanear; foolish or stupid remark, extravagance, -surely from a former meaning of childish act-, are also interesting for their value as testimony, and to try an approach to the conflicts the galician society was immersed in, when these words were finally fixed.),
mono/a, monada, monecada, moneco/a or boneco/a, Spanish monaguillo, etc. (mono or mona are -again- a (little) monkey or a small and very pretty thing, monecada is a childlike action, play or gibe, moneco/a or boneco/a are a doll, a dummy, a puppet, monaguillo is an altar boy; from mion, +a; minute, small. The possibility that the English word monkey, of unknown etymology, was related to this link must also be considered. To be noted also, the frequent Mon and Meana Galician and Asturian related surnames ?.),
loio (hole in the ground, cave, possibly formerly lake, from loch, -a; lake, arm of the sea and, possibly, hole in the ground and cave also. This interesting word will be analyzed later with thoroughness),
croio (stone, from clach or cloch, cloiche; clough in Irish, stone),
granha -there is also the granda variant, and metathesized gandra or gándara, frequent basically in Eastern/Asturian-, etc. (great extension formed around low portions of the mountains, from gleann, glinne; glen, valley; these are very important words, not only for their frequent presence in the labels of the bottles of whisky, but also because they have a lot of toponymy associated, both in Gaelic and also in Galician),
meigo/a (smiling, related to mìogach, smiling, smirking, sly; this word is also applied to galician witches, maybe anciently crossed with mùig, -e, cloudiness, surliness, gloom, frown),
canga -and other related words, cangalho, cangar, and even escangalhar, etc.- (family of words with the meaning of link, arrange, in general. The first one, for example, canga, means yoke -for oxen, but also for pigs, etc.-, Latin jugo, from ceangal, -ail, tie, bond, fastening, binding. As canga was also known in old Spanish, it can be found in the dictionaries of this language; for example in the María Moliner one, where its authors already had realized the word is likely of celtic origin, but did not give much more additional information on the subject.),
barra, barragán -and related words- (valuable, brave, strong man; from bàrr, -a, top, point, crop, superiority), barrouca -and other related words- (summit, top, highland, also from bàrr, -a), barroco, barranco, (barroco is a high rock of strange look, valiant behaviour; also the baroque architectonic style -through the French adaptation, baroque -comes from this origin; barranco is a precipice; also from the productive origin bàrr; and also berreco, -Spanish berrueco or barrueco-, with the meaning of boulder or small rocky summit; and also Catalan barret or barretina, hat; etc.), barra (bar, and also entrance of an estuary, or a river or bay or port, etc., related to -MacBain's- << barra; a spike, bar, Irish bárra, Welsh bar, nail, etc.; all from the English bar. >>. Same as other ones, this basic word is also present in French, and is not Latin. Despite, its presence is ancient, as can yet be detected in late Latin documents. Perhaps the true meaning of the word was related to the one of frontier or barrier, as with the semantical value of estuary and ultimately related to the previous link bàrr, -a, top, point, crop, superiority ?. Note also the Spanish word desbarrar; to talk extremely nonsense, act foolishly, do silly things, etc.),
barcela, bárcena, barcia, branha, beira, abeira, barro, barruza, etc. (complex family of words related to a preroman/celtic root bar- that means wet land or earth, puddle, mud. The particular meanings are the following ones: barcela; plain space near a river that is frequently inundated; bárcena; same as barcela; barcia; plain terrain that is cultivated; branha (from a former *baranha ?); wet meadow; beira (from a former *baira, genitive of *bara ?); riverside, seashore; abeira (as in the the former word beira, the nominative original shape was probably *abara ?); leak; barro (and derivatives); mud; barruza; fine rain. From a Gaelic's point of view we can find the following words (MacFarlane's): barrag; nf. g.d. -aig; pl. +an, scum on the surface of liquid; cream; eabar; nm. g.v. -air, mud, puddle; tobar; nm. g.v. -air; pl. -raichean, well, fountain, source, origin; braon; nm. g.v. braoin; pl. braoin, a drop. It must be noted that, maybe, the special connection between barro (mud) and barrag -scum on the surface-, is partially based or infuenced on the former family of meanings, related to bàrr, in the sense of top of a liquid, puddle, etc.?),
canhola, can, cão, canhas, canhón, canhoto (family of words related to ceann, cinn; head, end, chief, extremity. This way: canhola, -popular Portuguese- head; can, top of a beam or rafter; cão; crown of the head, skullcap, tonsure; canhas, white hair from the head of mature people, maturity, headship, chieftainship, that is shared/crossed also with canus, white in Latin; canhón, bald; canhoto, stump, trunnion), con, conha, conho (con is a boulder, large and sharp rock that emerges with the low tide; conho is a round and isolated rock emerging at the middle of a river; conha is a leaf bud, excrescence at the low part of a trunk previous to the new branches; all of them coming from cionn, phonetic alteration of the ceann previous link. To be noted that the pena -rock, boulder, Spanish peña- word is likely, no matter other interpretations, the p-celtic version of this q-celtic link, coming from p-celtic penno or penn; head, extremity, etc. On the other hand, the Spanish word cañón; canyon -as in Grand Canyon- is perhaps related to this family -in the sense of boundary, barrier, frontier or limit of certain scope ?-; to compare for instance to barranco -similar meaning to cañón- coming from the previous link bàrr, -a, top, point, crop, superiority.),
canheira, canhar, acanhar (canheira is a hard and bloody fight with disastrous consequences, canhar or acanhar is to impoverish, subdue, ruin, hug, trap, shame, etc. From caonnag, -aig; fight, skirmish, fray. MacBain's: << caonnag: strife, tumult, Irish caonnóg, strife, a nest of wild bees: *cais-no-, root kais, kai, heat, English heat, Gaelic caoir ? >>.),
ranho, ranhada, ranhadoiro, -and also arranhar- etc. (family of words that, apart the frequent pejorative sense associated to many gallaic words, has a general meaning of partition, portion, line of separation in a known enviroment, and also to scratch, to cleave, to split; from rann, roinn; part, portion, division, section, verse. The portuguese meaning of ranho -mucus, running of the nose- is likely derived by metathesis from another root: ronn, a slaver, a spittle, Early Irish ronna, running of the nose. No matter this meaning, official Portuguese also conserves derivatives that belong to the principal root: ranhura, groove, split; also ranhar, etc.),
gavela, gavinha, gavião or gabildo -Spanish gavilán-, etc., (family of words, related to the classical gaelic one, gabh, va.+ail; take, receive, admit of, accept, go, proceed. Picking some of them, the more easy to associate to the original gaelic meanings, are the following ones: gavela, old galician tax, old right to pass through certain properties, bundle, hadful, hug; gavinha, aerial roots or hooks of climber plants, link of chain, embrace, tangle; gavião or gabildo, sparrowhawk, bird of prey -Accipiter nisus-, etc.),
lo (then, that moment, immediately, from lò, là or latha; pl. làithean; day, one day, certain day. The word lecer -pronounced as lether- or lazer, temporal ocassion, opportunity, free time for doing something, also comes probably from this origin, with the shared contribution of the latin word licere, -let, permit-. The MacBain's makes about this interesting link the following comments: << là, latha; day, Irish lá, g. laoi, Old Irish lathe, laithe, lae, g. lathi, d. lau, lóu, ló: *lasio -, root las, shine; Sanskrit lásati, shines; Greek láw, behold >>.),
cacho (galician word of unknown origin until today, that has become incredibly productive in derivatives nowadays. The original meaning seems to be related to the gaelic word caoch; empty, hollow, blind; in this sense, it means any globular object, specially hollow ones, earthenware pots and the pieces that result of breaking this kind of appliances. No matter this meaning, there are also many other ones as, for instance, cachifro, small space for sleeping under a roof; cacha, gap in a skirt; cachola, head of a crazy person that is supposedly brainless and hence empty; cachoza, small cave under the roots of an old tree; cachalote, sperm whale -this way alluding to the huge head of this cetacean-, etc., etc. The sense of pot in this word was probably reinforced by the influence of the Latin word caccabus, pot.), couchinho, cocho (shelter, place that is not exposed to the elements; related to cuach nf. g. cuaiche; d. cuaich; pl.+an; quaich, cog, dish, bowl, drinking cup, hollow part of bird's nest. Etymologically related to the previous link ?; note also the Galician and Spanish word concha; shell, that is considered of greek origin), acochar, cochar (cover with clothes, related to cochull, -uill; husk, hood ? Also related to the former links ?),
maranha (muddle, mess, mare magnum, from marannan, plural of muir, mara -sea, ocean-; in the sense of unacheivable scope or subject ?),
ceivo, ceive or ceibo, ceibe (communal pastures, open field without fences, also ceive by extension has become free, with freedom; related to cìob, -a; mountain grass, and cìobair, shepherd),
agás, and also agasalhar ? (agás is excepting, without, from aogais or eugmhais, possession, dispensation: as eugmhais, without. The word agasalhar, to treat well, with lavish hospitality, is possibly also related to this link, in the sense of the exceptional circumstance and the shelter/refuge/isolate associated concepts ?. Current references only relate agasalhar to the hypothetical gothic word *gasalja, companion),
rachar (to tear, rip, rip up, split; from riach; cut the surface, graze the skin. Note also the Spanish variation rajar, pronounced as rakhar, where the old phonetic value of the ch is still preserved.),
orca, alcandorca, candorca (orca, killer whale; related to uircean, -ein; little pig, young pig; this is a well known celtic word. The semantic connection can be explained by the alternative galician denomination, porco do mar; marine pig, that is also present in Portuguese and Spanish when applied to dolphins, porpoises and other cetaceans, likely due to the greasy texture of these animals, so similar to the pig's one. Note that the link is compatible with any celtic origin, no matter it was related to the “P” or “Q” branches.),
galantear, galante, gala, galar (galantear is to court, woo; galante is a lover, gallant; gala is full dress; group of words that seems to be related to the concept of courting; they are very extended in western Europe and their origin is not Latin. From a Galician's point of view, links to Gaelic's words as gaol, gaoil; love, fondness, beloved object, must be considered. On the other hands, more sheer words as galar, to copulate -specially cocks and hens-, fornicate, seems to reinforce this possibility.),
bragado (speaking about things or animals: good, fine; from brèagha or briagha; splendid, beautiful),
bradar (to shout, yell, clamour for, cry out for; from briathar, -air; word, saying),
leirar (to battle, fight, be patient, work hard; related to léir; torment, pain, distress),
leilán (vagabond, licentious, from leigeil, letting, allowing, setting free),
magán -and related words; magano, etc.- (jovial, sly, naughty, and also handsome, evil, etc., from mag, scoff, mock, deride, and magair, mocker),
ca (no, not, negation in general, from cha, not. Not also the likely related ca and ja -or kha- in Castilian, and perhaps even che, in South America),
miagar (to mew a cat, from miagail, [miamhail], mewing, as a cat),
mor (the meaning of this word is, more or less, the same as the Gaelic one; from mór, big, large, great, important, tall, of high rank, lofty, spacious; familiar; esteemed),
moço or mozo (young man; from Old Irish moth; penis, man. This is a panceltic word, see Xavier Delamarre's `moto-' item, in the DLG. Also to compare, French mousse, Italian mozzo, Southern Spanish mocho -stump-, etc.),
serselha or cercelha (starfish; from Old Irish ser; star. Perhaps words as sere(n)o, not cloudy, fine, settled; serán, afternoon, and Italian sera, íd, etc., are also related to this link.),
choula (noise of pouring, spilling water; related to chuala; heard),
marabalheiro, marafalheiro (naughty, meddler, unruly, from mear, +a; merry, sportive, wanton, playful),
engrelhada (mess, confusion, fuss, muddle, hidden plan made up among some conspirators in a cautious way, from aimhreidh,.+e; confusion, disturbance, disagreement, contention),
angas (shoulder straps, and also the top portion of an oar. This word is a very pretty and surprising discovery, in our opinion. Related -we are following the MacBain dictionary here- to amhach; neck: *om-âk-â; Latin humerus, shoulder (*om-es-os); Greek wnmós; Gothic amsa; Sanskrit amsas.),
tangalhón, tangarina, tángano-mángano, and also estanguir, etc. (group of related words, with a general meaning of passivity, weakness; but simultaneously, being on foot, standing; from tàmh, tàimh; rest, quiet, sleep, staying, dwelling, Irish támh, Early Irish tám: *tâmo-, root stâm,sta, stand, English stand, station, stamina. Also related here is tiamhaidh; gloomy, lonesome, dismal, melancholy, eerie. As the etymology of the word that defines the tango dance is unknown until today, the possibility that this subject was related to the stuff, then alluding to the special behavior of the dancers, must be considered.),
denguice, dengue, etc. (desire of being pleasant but falling in affected manners, from dàimh, +e; relationship, affinity; MacBain's: <<dàimh; relationship, Irish dámh, tribe, family, Early Irish dám: *dâmâ, tribe, company; Greek dcnmos, Dor. danmos, people, tribe, English democracy. It is usual to compare Old Welsh dauu, cliens, Welsh daw (dawf), son-in-law, Middle Breton deuff, Breton den (do.); but these words may be allied to Greek dámar, spouse, and be from the root dam,dom, house.>>. Very interesting word, hence.),
carnoedo (heap of stones; and also large rock, boulder, from càrn; heap of stones, cairn, Irish carn, Early Irish, Welsh carn, Breton karn),
chacho/a (word used in colloquial context, that means a normal person, any person, common pal, deica o chacho = everybody, in feminine it means servant; from càch, chàich; the rest, the others. Compare also with cach a chéile, each other.),
lándoa, llan or llande -Asturian-, alén,alende or além -Spanish allende - etc. (family of words with the general meaning of unused land, field, and simultaneously limit, boundary. The meanings are: lándoa, portion of land near the boundaries of a property, or separated off the rest, llan or llande, frontier or limit between lands, alén, alende, além, allende -Spanish- etc., the space that follows away off a boundary, etc. From lann, lainne; inclosure, house, repository, apartment. The MacBain's gives the following references: << lann, an inclosure, land, Irish lann, Early Irish land, Welsh llan, Old Welsh lann, area, ecclesia, Breton lann:*landâ; Teutonic land, English land.>>. The special case of alén, alende, além, allende, has been recently discussed in the internet, where an american linguist found out the excellent link to Old Irish -and medieval Galician- al "farther, above, outside of", based on works of the catalan linguist Joan Coromines, recently died. This way, for instance, Spanish allende would come from an origin of al and laind -the inflected genitive of land- and an evolution as *al-laind > *al-lénde > *alliende > allende.),
gramar and related gramelo or gramil, maybe also gramalheira (to fasten, to hold down, to trap, to handle, to eat, to drink, etc., gramelo and gramil are trap, mousetrap, specially the traps based in a mouth-with-teeth like system of trapping, gramalheira is a chain with hooks used to hang cauldrons over a fireplace -also to compare crémaillère in French or cremallera in Spanish: zip fastener-; from gramaich; hold fast, take hold of, cling to; and also gramail; strong, vigorous, having power to resist; and even gramasag, -aig; bite, anything to chew. Following the MacBain's, the etymology of these words comes from the shape greim; a hold, a morsel, so Irish, Old Irish greim, greimm, a hold, strength, Welsh grym, force, strength: *gredsmen-; root gher, hold, Greek héir, hand, Sanskrit gáras, grip. Stokes separates greim, morsel, from greim, hold, strength. greim, morsel, he refers to *gresmen, a bite, Sanskrit grásati, devour, Greek gráw, eat, Norse krás, a dainty.),
bogalha or bugalha (ball, skittle, knob or lump in a tree, related through metathesis to builgean, -ein; blister, pimple, bubble. The words as boligar and derivalives, to bubble, are probably also related to this link. It seems that the celtic nature of this link is now admitted by the scholars.),
enlimar (to drool, to slaver something, related to imlich; to lick. Following the MacBain's: << imlich; lick, Irish imlighim, lighim; im-lighim. "about-lick". With lighim is cognate Old Irish lígim, I lick, Welsh llyaw, llyad, licking, Breton leat (do.): *leigô, *ligo; Latin lingo; Greek leígw; English lick; Church Slavonic lizati (to lick); Sanskrit lihati >>. Also Galician's limo -mucus of cows- and related words, may be related to this lexical group.),
grenha -Spanish greña- (tangled hair, from greann, +a; grim, surly look; bristling of hair as on an enraged dog. This is an exceptional case among the words we are analysing, as its celtic condition seems to be well-known by the scholars. For instance, the Porto's dictionary identifies the word as of celtic origin, and the MacBain's finds out the greña Spanish link: << greann; hair, bristling of hair, surly look, also "cloth", "rough piled clothing", Irish greann, beard, hair hair, Early Irish grend, beard, Welsh, Breton grann, eyelid, cilium: *grendâ; German granne, beard of corn or cat, Norse grön, moustache, Spanish greña, tangled hair, Prov. French gren, Old French grenon, beard of cheek and lip; Albanian krande >>.),
codo (piece, bit, and/or end, extreme of something, from cuid, codach; portion, share, some, part, one's complement; even likely related spanish codo; elbow ?. Note also the P-celtic version of this link, that is the peça; piece, panRomance word. See the pettia link in Xavier Delamarres's DLG),
cuidar or coidar, and cuidado, etc. (to care for, to take care of, to look after, from cuidich, help, assist. This word -etymologically related to the former one, codo or cuid ?, is rather surprising, because of its exceptional maintenance of the old Gaelic/Gallaic ui diphthong, what maybe was caused by cultured influences and the confusion with the Latin originated word coidar, to think -from cogitare -, that would have acted interfering the natural evolution to the hypothetical result of *codar. The word is also notable as has nearly displaced the Latin originated cura -Gaelic cùram-, of its original meaning of care, vigilance, etc.),
esgorriar (to slip, to slide, from sgiorr; slip, stumble, slide. This word may be the counterpart of the Latin originated escurrir; to drip, to drain, that has nearly the same semantic scope, as we can see.),
esguelho, esguelhar (oblique, sideways behaviour, to dissemble, from sgailleas, -eis; disdain),
esgarreado, esgarriado, esgarrado (a person or an animal of solitary behavior, that does not accompany the others, a ship that loses its course, from sgar; separate, disjoin; sever, pull asunder, part, divorce),
esnocar, esnoiar, esnoirar, esnoucar, esnacar (to shatter, reduce to pieces, related to snaidh, hew, whet, chip, shape; and also to snaois, +e; slice, piece of anything),
estoa (stupid, silly, naïve, a person of a slow, sluggish or rural behavior, from stuama, stuaime; temperate, abstemious, sober, modest),
esgazar (to tear off, to shatter, to rip, to tear to pieces, usually referred to branches of trees, dresses, etc., from sgath; lop off, prune, injure. Note also the connection with gath, Galician gazúa, etc.),
gazúa, gazoupa -the z must be read as a th-, Spanish ganzúa (skeleton key, burglar, claw, paw; from gath, g.+a, v. ghaith; sting, dart. The word gato; cat, is likely related to this link, whence the t > th conversion was blockaded by the early adoption of the word by Latin speaking people. There are also a group of galician words that perhaps is no more than a variation of this one, with -d-: gadoucha, gadoupa, gadanho, gadanha, etc.),
cristas (perspicacity, keensightedness, from cliste, dexterous, nimble, swift, agile, expert),
zurra, zurrar or surra, surrar, etc. (beating, thrashing, from ciùrr; hurt, injure. Note the fall of the i in this position, a typical gallaic phenomenon.),
doira or duira (torrent, water falling from the mountains, from dòirt; pour, spill),
trado (drill, related to << tradh; a lance, fishing spear, Irish tradh, lance, treagh, spear; from the root tar, tra, through, Latin trâgula, a dart >>. There is also a late Latin possible connection for this, taratru, drill; but this word is now also accepted as of celtic origin.),
tona (skin, the surface of a liquid or the sea, cream, crust, from -MacBain's- << tonn, toinnte, skin, Irish tonn, hide, skin, Early Irish tonn, skin, surface, Welsh tonn, cutis, Breton tonnenn, rind, surface, hair of the head: tunnâ, skin, hide, whence possibly Low Latin (9th cent.) tunna, a cask, "wine-skin", now English ton >>. The rendering of this word is irregular because of the lack of palatalisation of its -nn-, what perhaps indicates that was frequently used by Latin speaking people. The panRomance / Latin Vulgar tunna or tonna word -Galician Portuguese toninha or atum- associated to the tuna or tunny fish are likely related, no matter of other interpretations, to this link.),
edrar (to distribute, to share out compensating the differences of the resulting portions or assignments, from eadar; between, or eadraig; interpose, separate, etc.),
aleuto (intelligent, smart, clever, and also strong, handsome, ready, etc., from ealanta; ready, expert, artistic; ingenious; and this one related to ealain or ealdhain; art, skill; and to ealamh; quick, nimble, expert),
lacada and related lacazán (momentary disease, lacazán is lazy, from -MacBain's- lag; weak, Irish lag, Early Irish lac, Middle Irish luice (pl.), Welsh llag, sluggish: *laggo-s, root lag; Latin langueo, English languid; Greek laggázw, slacken, lagarós, thin; English slack, also lag, from Celtic. Cf. lákkos.),
tosquiar, tosquiador, etc. (to shear -a sheep, for instance-, to prune, related to -MacBain's- << tosg; a peat-cutter (Dial.); from Scottish tusk in tusk-spawd (Banff), tuskar (Ork. and Sh.), tusk, cut peats. Cf. Shet. tushker, from Norse torfskeri, turf-cutter >>. No other origin is known for these words.),
guzma -pronounced as goothma- (gossipy person, from guth, g. -a, v. ghuith; voice, word, syllable. For the etymology of this word the MacBain's says: guth; voice, Irish, Old Irish guth: *gustu-; Indo-European gu; Greek góos, groan; Sanskrit hu, call, cry, havat-, calls; Church Slavonic zova?, to call. This is different from Indo-European gu, Greek boc/, shout, Latin bovare, cry (Prellwitz, Osthoff).),
gabo, gabar, gabacho, etc. (family of words with the general meaning of boasting, bragging, flattering, praising, etc., the closer Gaelic word is (MacBain's) gabhann; flattery, gossip; from gabh: "take in"?. Another related possibilities are gab; tattling mouth; gobach; beaked, garrulous, talkative, and gobair; talker, babbler. Following the MacBain's: << gab; a tattling mouth; from Scottish gab (do.), Middle English gabben, to chatter, mock, Norse gabb, mockery, Old Fris gabbia, accuse >>. We think this is a very interesting word, of celtic/germanic crossed origin ?. It seems to be also very extended in Occitan language.),
gogo (diphtheria -and difficult breathing- in hens, related to gog; cackle and gogail; cackling. Possibly Galician's gago; stammerer, is also related to this link and to the former one of gabar.),
garaveto, garabulho, garamata (firewood, related to gar; warm at a fire. The celtic nature of this link is perspicaciously found out by the authors of the Porto's.),
goro, gorar (aborted incubation; from guir; lie upon eggs, breed, fester. The sense of the action defined by this word was changed in late medieval period to a negation, as is obvious and well documented from several ancient sources. The celtic etymology is related to the former words garaveto, etc. -original sense warm, fire-, and was also realized by the authors of the Porto's dictionary -good work !-.),
anhas (exceptionally small bundle or bunch of corn, among the other ones; from annas, -ais; novelty, rarity),
lura -or lorga, lorca- (particular kind of squid with a small and long body, also hanging from the nose mucus, long filament of fungus, burrow, from lorc or lurg or lurgann or luirg, -inn; shank, shin, leg, shaft or handle, haft, stalk of plant. The alternative Portuguese shapes lorca and lorga are closer, from a phonetic point of view.),
abalainço, abalaiço, abaloira, etc. (family of words apparently related to a previous and currently unused *abal, apple. This way, abalainço means something that lost its taste, flavor, juice, substance, also a fruit that did not become ripe; abalaiço is a tree that produces fruits one year between two of them; abaloira is a long stick, used for shaking the branches of trees and to do fall down the fruits. The original word would be abhall or ubhal, -ail; apple.),
ria (galician fjord, estuary; also way, path, route; also hint, advice; and also row, file; from rian; -Old Irish- sea, ocean, flood; and also order, arrangement, mode and following the MacBain's << order, mode, sobriety, Irish rian, way or path, Early Irish rian, way, manner: *reino -, root rei; Latin rîtus, English rite (Strachan). >>. This link is likely behind the true origin of galician words as rieiro, rielo and even rio -river- and ria -galician fjord-, traditionally attributed exclusively to the Latin word rivu -river-. It seems that, on the other hand, the word is etymologically related to the classical celtic link renos, 'river' as in river Rhine, etc. -see Xavier Delamarre's DLG renos reference, for instance-. Finally, it must be noted that this link is very productive in Galician -and Gaelic- with many other words as for instance relho -order, ruling of home, etc.- from riaghail; to rule, govern, regulate, always meaning arrange, ordered disposition, etc.), riada (flood; similar considerations may be done here as in the previous word),
leira, leiro, etc. (field, arable land, small property, from làr, làir; the ground, floor, ground floor. The diphthong -ei- is coming from the original -ai- that evolves this way in contact with an -r-.),
roán or ruano (golden color, usually applied to horses, the former meaning of medieval sources -see Coromines, for instance- was red, of red color, from ruadh; reddish, red-haired. This etymology must be considered to be shared/crossed with the Gothic word rauda, raudan, with the same meaning as the gaelic one.),
tragar (to swallow, from traogh, ebb, subside, exhaust, drain),
baixo, Spanish bajo, Catalan baix, French bas, basse, Italian basso, etc. (low, small, short, shallow. PanRomance basic word of a likely celtic origin; from a late Latin bass- root. Catalan language has basquet, basket, and bascar, to weaken, that are probably related to this link. In neoceltic languages: Breton bas, Welsh bas, shallow, etc.),
rosca, roscar, enroscar (several words of pan-Iberian Romance range, related to the concept of round object surrounding a space or another object. This way: rosca; thread, coil, spiral, ring-shaped roll-pastry, larva of insect, etc.; roscar or enroscar; to coil, wind, screw in, etc.; from rùsg, rùisg; external covering, rind, skin, husk, fleece, bark of tree. Catalan language has also the special words rusca, bark of a cork-oak tree; rusc, beehive. Very important word; MacBain's: << rùsg: a fleece, skin, husk, bark, Irish rusg, Old Irish rúsc, cortex, Welsh rhisg, cortex, Cornish rusc, cortex, Breton rusgenn, rusk, bark: *rûsko-; whence French ruche, beehive (of bark), Old French rusche, rusque, Pied. rusca, bark. Stokes thinks the Celtic is probably an old borrow from the Teutonic - Middle High German rusche, rush, English rush, rushes; but unlikely. The Cornish and Breton vowel u does not tally with Gadelic û; this seems to imply borrowing among the Celts themselves.>>.),
croiar, croinhar (croiar is to beg, plead for; croinhar is to implore; related to claon; inclining, squint, oblique, partial; and also to claoidh; vex, oppress, annoy, torment),
esmar, esmo (to compute, estimate, conjecture, from smaoin, +e; a thought; also smuainich; think, consider. The etymology usually proposed on this link is Latin's aestimare.),
teiroa, teiruga, teirugo (these words are apparently the only rest in modern Galician of the classical gaelic one tìr; land, a country; Latin terra. This way, teiroa or teiruga means certain piece of the plough; teirugo means obstinate, brutish, that may be explained through a frequent metaphor, known in several languages, between this concept -simple or stupid- and the one of clay or earth, or a clod of these materials.),
atacoar (to fill, to pack, to stuff, to satiate, from at; to swell, puff up, become tumid. Also associated to this word is tacar, -air; provision, plenty.),
tolda, toldo (tolda is a hole in the wall of a mill as a drainage, and also the hopper of the mill -also called canoura or moega-; on the other hand, toldo is a cover, deck -in a bout-, dark; all of them from or related to toll, tuill; hole, hollow, cavity, crevice. There is also a palatalised branch for this family of words: tulhir; to fill, stuff a hollow object; tulha; small chest, etc.),
balde (bucket, pail, from ballan, -ain; wooden domestic vessel, tub),
biorta, biorto, bio, bordesca, bordón (biorta and biorto are long sticks or wands, useful to tie the bundles; bio is a pin of wood; from bior, +a; stake, spit, pin, prickle, thorn, pointed stick, stick of furniture. The word bordon; stick of pilgrims, maybe comes from similar celtic related origins -Gaulish, via Occitan/French ?-.),
broiar (to talk noisily, related to bruidhinn; speak, talk; also Irish bruíghinn; scolding speech, a brawl),
a tergo (very opportunely or satisfyingly, at ease; from tairg; to offer, propose),
tascar, tasca, tasco, tasqueira and also atascar (the general meaning of this family of words is to empty out; this way -tascar- is to clean the linen of its natural impurities -tascos-, tascar is also to eat, to bit, tasca or tasqueira is a bar, a tavern or pub, and atascar is to clog up, to stall -a negative meaning, introduced by the a particle-. There is also the interesting word tascas, in Peruvian Spanish, that means swell, running, whirlpool. The Gaelic connections are: taosg, +a; a pour, a rush out; exact full of a liquid measure; taosg; pour out, pump, drain, empty.),
tarrago, tarragón, tarrancha, tarranhola (rivet or screw, nail, hook or staple, tarranhola is a castanet; from tarrang, g. tàirngne, d. tarraing; a nail and tarruing; to draw, pull, attract. This is related to a well known celtic link, see tarinca, for instance, in Xavier Delamarre's DLG.),
tega, tego, teicada, etc. (a measure of grain that is equal to one ferrado, some quantity of grain that is carried to the mill, etc., from teagar, -air; provision; and also from teagair, -radh; collect, supply, cover, protect, shelter),
cala (cove, inlet, from cala; harbour, haven. This word is present in several Iberian, Italian, and French languages but it's not Latin related. Joan Coromines even said it is of pre-celtic origin.),
teldereteiro, telderete, telderetada (cheap hardware, sold by small itinerant vendors; related to teallach, -aich; hearth, fireplace, smith's forge).
Also, in some cases, the words of Gallaic origin have been conserved exclusively in Asturian or Castilian, without apparent ability to survive to the present time in Galician; for example, the very interesting word calaña (class or sort of certain individuals, normally used colloquially and in pejorative sense, illustrating, this way, the sad social consideration that have had the gallaic expressions; from clann, cloinne; children, clan. There is also, in modern Galician, the metathesized shape canalha, -note that the metathesis affects the l and n, but the palatal effect stays in its original place- with the meaning of children) coming from what, surely, is the most universal gael word; boñiga (excrement of animal, cow dung; from bonnach, -aich, Irish boinnaigh, cake) that, as we see, includes one amused but less delicate metaphor; tongo (corrupted behavior of a player as a jockey, etc., that loses his game because he is being payed for doing so, related to tomh; offer, attempt, threaten, aim); etc.
Words of no Latin origin, but less clear than the former ones:
curro, corro and curral/corral (corral and/or circle, ring; from old Irish kur, circuit, round ?),
estadea (procession of souls in pain; from éisdeachd, listening, earshot, hearing ?),
mouro (mythical giants, inhabitants of the hillforts, from mór -great, high- ?),
adaba (headscarf of the Virgin, related to aodach, -aich; cloth, clothes ?),
agastarse (to get angry or annoyed, related to aogasg, -aisg; face, appearance ?. Following the MacBain's, the old Irish related word cosc, castigare, seems to confirm the modern semantic content of the galician word.),
anainarse, anainado, etc. (to lull, caress, two lovers or a mother with her children, etc., related to aonaich, unite, reconcile, join in one, side with ?. This word is, no matter its eventual origin, influenced by Galician's nai=mother. It must be noted also the Spanish word aunar, to unite, that seems quite suspicious, no matter its Latin appearance at first sight.),
laz, lazo, lazar (ice, cream, to freeze, related to làthach, -aich; clay, mire, puddle ?),
carantonha (mask, face, from carantas, -ais, kindness, friendliness),
a esgalha (abundantly, plentifully, from sgaoil; stretch out, extend, spread, expand, enlarge, send away, loose, untie. This is a very common word that, surprisingly, is not present in some dictionaries.),
coma (equal to, equivalent, similar, from coma; indifferent, regardless and, following the MacBain's, so Irish, Early Irish cuma, Old Irish cumme, idem, is cumma, it is all the same; from root me, measure: "equal measure".),
estugar (to hurry, to accelerate, to shorten, from stuig; spur, incite as dogs to fight or chase),
estracón (stroke, pull, coordinated impulse among several people in order to move a huge object, from stràc, stràic; stroke, blow),
esgalochar (to generate noise with the clogs, from sgal, +a; a shriek, yell, shrill cry, the howl of a dog when hurt),
escuir-se or esgüir-se (to slip away, to clear out, to disappear among several persons without have been perceived by the others, to pour out something that is in hand, from sguir; cease, stop, Irish sguirim, Old Irish scorim, desist, unyoke: *skoriô, root sker, skor, separate.),
esgueirar (similar to the former one, this word means segregate, separate, remove, from sgar, that -following the MacBain's- is <<sever, separate, Irish sgaraim, Old Irish scaraim, Welsh ysgar, separate, Old Breton scarat, dijudicari: *skaraô, root sker, separate, sunder; Lithuanian skiriú, separate; Old High German scëran, German scheren, shear, cut, English shear; further Greek keírw, cut, etc.>>. To compare, also for instance, the Gaelic word sgeir, +e; a rock in the sea, skerry.),
esgalhar and also related galho, etc. (to splinter, to reduce to pieces, for example in an orange, etc., from sgealb, sgeilb; a splinter or broken fragment of wood, stone, etc.; and sgealb; split or dash into pieces or fragments),
esgrouviado, esgromizar, etc. (esgrouviado is skinny, faded, sad, lost, esgromizar is to crumble, squash; likely from sgrios; destroy, ruin),
talar, talhar; Spanish tajar, Catalan tallar, Italian tagliare, French tailler, etc. (panRomance theme of “late Latin” origin, with the general meaning of cutting, to cut; related to tàl, tàil; adze, that following the MacBain's: << <tàl>, adze, Ir., O.Ir. [tál]: [*to-aglo-] (rather [t-aglo-]?), Got. [aqisi], axe, Eng. [axe] (Strachan). Stokes gives a pre-Gaelic [*tâkslo], root [tek], Ch.Sl. [tesla], axe, Lat. [gelum] (= [tex-lum]), weapon, Gr. [téktwn], carpenter; but [tek] does not appear to have a side form [tâk], and [tâkslo-] would produce [táll] ([tôkslo], Foy). But cf. Lat. [pâla], spade, for root, and for phonetics G. [torc] and Lat. [porcus]. >>. Note also talainte; a partition or dividing wall; etc.), estalha, estalar, estralar, (estalha is a groove, furrow; estalar or estralar is to burst, explode, splinter. Related to stiall, stéille; a streak, stripe, and maybe also to the former group of words: talar, etc.),
garra (claw, talon, hand, paw, related to geàrr; short, cut (vb.), Irish géarr, geárraim),
engorrobelhado and, possibly related, gorro and gorra (in a person, folded, thin, small, from giorrad, -aid; shortness. Gorro and gorra mean cap. This may be related to the former word garra.),
azo, azaloucar, azoucar, azougado, azapurrar and even azar ? (several words that have in common a repeated or reiterated action, they all carry the prefix az- -pronounced ath- that can be related to the gaelic reference, << ath; the next, again; precedes nouns; corresponds to pref. re-; is attached to verbs by hyphen, with the meaning `again' >>. The important word azar -chance, fate-, considered of Arabic's etymology, was possibly related in reality to this link, in the sense of the repeated evaluation of chances with coins, dices, etc. ?),
escozar, escofar, escodar or escochar; and also Spanish escotar, escote (to cut, slice or shave, related to the old Irish word scoth; to cut, erode ?. See Xavier Delamarre's scota article in the DLG. It is possible, in our opinion, that the denominations of Scotland, Scots, came from this meaning and then alluding to the geographical distribution of the scottish peninsula ?),
dultar or duldar (to doubt; from diùlt; refuse, misgive),
faca (certain dagger or knife; related to fiacaill; tooth ?),
farandela, faralla, faramellar (farandela is a galician “crep” -also called filhoa-; faralha is a tangle, confusion; faramelhar is to mess; all of them from fiar, +a; crooked, twisted, curved, bent ?),
froia, froieiro (froia is the cheek or a gluttonous person, greedy, froieiro is chubby-cheeked, glutton; related to frioghan, -ain; a bristle ?),
cuin, cui, or even coelho (rabbit, coney; regresively related to coinean, -ein; rabbit ?),
chuchar, zuchar, suchar or zugar (to suck, absorb, related to thug; bave, brought ?. The link is unsure, note also the Spanish words enjugar; to wipe, enjuagar, to rinse, jugo; juice, etc. where the old phonetic value of the ch is apparently preserved; but in this case an eventual Latin collaboration with sucus; juice, must be considered),
túzaro, touzudo, touza, toutizo, touton (túzaro is a rude, uncivil, stupid or coarse person, touza is a meadow with some oaks, toutizo is a small meadow or pasture and a neglected and dirty person, touton is a clumsy or sluggish one. All of them, perhaps, coming from tuath, +a; peasantry, country people, husbandmen; tuathanach, -aich; farmer, rustic, peasant and/or tuathanachas, -ais; farming. This is associated to a well known celtic root; even maybe the Galician and Spanish word tonto, stupid, is related to this link),
dubra (fastener for the yoke or plough made of leather, related to dròbh; drove of cattle ?),
sábalo, sabaleira, maybe also xabrón or sabão, sova, sovar, etc. (large and complex family of words, of unknown etymology until today, that have a meaning related to the effect of dragging and/or rubbing; the Gaelic sources are the following ones: siab; wipe, rub, sweep along quickly; siabadh; wiping, rubbing, quick sweep past; siabair; wiper, snatcher, sweeper; siabann, -ainn; soap. The more representative among this words is xabrón or sabão, soap, that appeared in late Latin -no classical Latin relatives are known- with the shape of sapone, and originated -among other ones- the English result of soap. It seems that there is also a germanic connection in this stuff. The principal meanings are: sabaleira and also xábega, fisher's dragging net; sovar, to knead, to wear away something by excessive hand rubbing, etc.),
machial and apparently related words as machucar, machacar or machicar (meadow, pasture, the other derivatives have the meaning of to crush, to pound, to squash, to thresh, to reduce to dust; related to machair, -rach; field, plain, level country ?. These important words are of unknown etymology until today, nevertheless, this link is not sure. The MacBain's gives the references of <<a plain, level, arable land, Manx magher, Irish, Middle Irish machaire, macha; *makarjo-, a field; Latin mâceria, an enclosure (whence Welsh magwyr, enclosure, Breton moger, wall.). So Stokes. Usually referred to *magh-thìr, "plain-land", from magh and tìr >>. Machial is apparently only a Portuguese word, nowadays. These words are also possibly related to the gaelic ones màg, màig; a paw, hand, lazy bed, ridge of arable land, and/or magh, maigh; field, level country, plain. On the galician side, esmagar, to squash, may be also considered. This way, finally, the galician semantic contents could be a crossing between the concepts of a paw or hand and a plain, whence the concept of squashing is originated ?.),
salhadura, and also saleros (fissure, crack, split, related to sàilean, -ein; little inlet or arm of the sea ?),
sail (grease of fishes, from saill, +e; fat, fatness, blubber. This word is suspicious as the required phonologic rendering of galician evolution was *salh-. Maybe it is a recent loan of Gaelic origin brought by modern fishermen.),
sarandilho, sarabandilho, saramitaino (unquiet and excessively active person, a person with too many initiatives, related to sàraich; oppress, harass, fatigue, wrong, injure, tire ?),
asenlhar -pronounced as asenh-lhar, no matter the orthography- (desire, covet, pursue something, from sannt, sainnt; desire, covetousness, greed. Maybe the word asanhar -and also sanha-, to irritate with rancour, was also related to this stuff but a Latin origin, based on insania, seems more likely here.),
anlhar -pronounced as anh-lhar- (space for the firewood near the fireplace, related to annlann, -ainn; condiment, `kitchen' ?),
loaira (flash of sunlight that quickly dissapears, from luaithe; quicker, swifter, faster, sooner, speedier),
a fetá fetá (obstinately, repeatedly, with tenacity, from faiteach or fàiteach, timorous, shy, Irish fáiteach, faitcheas, fear, Old Irish faitech, cautus. The "a" prefix indicates negation here, one of its well-known meanings.),
culher (tadpole, from cuilean, -ein; whelp, pup, young dog, cub),
colandra, colandrear (tail of a snake and other animals, to wriggle as a snake, from colann, -ainn; body, trunk of the body),
cartamón (property that is quite surrounded by another one of greater extension, from cuartaich; to surround, to encompass),
langrán (stupid, silly, lazy, listless, languid; related to leamh; importunate, impertinent, foolish, insipid, silly and also to lamhrag; a slut, awkward woman, and lamhragan, awkward handling. The semantic contents associated to the "languid" sense are of a partial Latin influence, in this word.),
langrear (to behave with greed, lust; from -MacBain's- << lamh: able, dare, Irish lamhaim, Early Irish lamaim, Old Irish -laimur, audeo, Welsh llafasu, audere, Cornish lavasy, Breton lafuaez: *plamô, a short-vowel form of the root of làmh, hand, the idea being "manage to, dare to"? >>. This word is partially interfered by the former one, langran.),
leido, leidar (ferment, related to leathann, lèithne; broad; also to leudaich; make broad, enlarge, dilate; enlarge upon.),
leixenço, leixar (pimple, boil; leixar is to hurt, to move, shake something; related to leus, leòis; a light, torch, blister, a ray, beam or blink of light ?),
lobo, lobado (ulcer, fatal desease that corrodes the flesh of the legs, related to lobhar; leper, and lobh; rot, putrify, make putrid, become putrid.),
lobete, lobatón, lobato (spinning pieces of the shaft or spindle of the mill, from lùb, lùib; bend, loop, noose, snare),
sangal (simple, tender, from sàmhach; quiet, still, calm, peaceful),
ranguelear (to move something alternatively to get it liberated of an obstruction, etc.; related to ràmh, ràimh; oar),
encoro (dam, related to cuir, cur, put, sow, place, lay ?),
cadeira (chair, from cathair, -rach; pl. -raichean, chair, this is a Greek word, in reality),
coime ! (interjection more or less same meaning as in Gaelic: c'uime; for what? of what? about what? of whom? about whom?),
ca (than; from na=than and crossed with ce; who, what ?, why ?, how ?),
rubir (to go up, to climb, related to rubha; point of land jutting into the sea, promontory, cape, headland ?),
roda do ano (portion of the year, related to rud, ruid; thing, matter, circumstance ?),
calhimbro (husk of grain or any fruit, spherical lump, from càilean, -ein; a husk of grain),
groba (hole in the ground, cave, hill, hump, hunched back, related to gob, guib; beak, bill of a bird, mouth ?),
murcho, -and related words- (faded, withered -in plants-, depressed, gloomy -in humans-, related to murcach, sorrowful ?),
morno (monotonous, tepid, lukewarm, from mùirn, -e, affectionate joy, tenderness ?),
mala (bag, case, from màla, -aidh; bag, budget, sack, bag of a bagpipe. Traditional explanations relate this word to the French one malle, trunk -case-.),
aldeagar (to walk, to wander, to have an extravagant behaviour, related to allaban, -ain, wandering),
aldeán and related aldea or aldeia, etc. (inhabitant of a little town or rural environment, rustic, from allaidh; wild, fierce, savage ?. The meaning of this word seems to be associated to the concept of foreigner, maybe it is also related to the former one, aldeagar; and coming from the Gaelic root all- that means over or beyond. The Arabic's etymology ad-dai'a has been proposed on this stuff.),
arrabalde, arrabaldo, and also arrabal, etc. (suburb, slum, from earball; tail and/or èarr; extremity, tail, end ?. There is also the Arabic eventual connection rabad, but it is also possible that this word -and maybe also some other ones- was a loan taken by the arabians, as for instance in the case of alberca -reservoir-, related to the gallaic root bar- puddle, mud, that is of unquestionable pre-arabian origin, no matter of beeing also present in Spanish Arabic dialects. There are also many other Galician words related to this origin as arrabanda, arrebanar, rebanar, etc. and possibly even recife or arrecife and rabo -tail-, this one mixed/influenced by the Latin word rapu -radish-.),
ermo, Spanish yermo, Catalan erm, etc. (uninhabited, barren, wasteland, related to an indoeuropean root *parm or *param meaning far, high, beyond ?. There is, in this sense, the Galician word páramo, bleak plateau, from a likely Lusitanian origin -see Coromines-, and the Sanskrit paramáh; the highest, farthest, huge. Note that the English words far and farm, fit well in this framework, as do the hermit, ermite, ermitage, etc. of Western European languages that perhaps are of celtic and not greek origin, as traditional considerations usually suggest. In neoceltic we can relate Breton ermaez; outside, off, and Scots Gaelic iomrall, g.v. -aill; an error, wandering, straying: air iomrall, astray),
bazulaque, badulaque, badoco, badio, and related words (several words related to the sense of stupid, unwise or rustic preson; related to baoth; foolish, unwise, stupid ?. Also to consider Esglish bad ?. To be note also Catalan's badoc; easily distracted person),
esgana (unwillingness, from èasgaidh; ready, willing to oblige, possibly coming from the diminutive shape èasgan. The current sense of the word was carried to the opposite, a frequent phenomenon, this time possibly due to the influence of the galician word gana- desire, wish, appetite, will- that maybe was also derived from this lexical group, as the gaelic word gean, +a; good humour, mood, humour),
esganar and related words (to strangle, suffocate, cough, related to sgamhan, -ain; the lungs),
ougana (shoot in a plant, from oighre; heir, and related words ?),
holguín (wizard, from olc, uilc; evil, mischief, wickedness ?),
ranhar (to grunt, related to srann, g. srainne, d. srainn; snore, snort, hum, buzz),
ragador (mediator, intercessor, related -because of the function eventually accomplished- to rag; stiff, rigid, benumbed, obstinate, inflexible, disinclined and/or ragaich; to stiffen, make stiff, become stiff ?),
galdo and geldre or xeldre (bait, related to geall, gill; pledge, bet, wager),
molde (mould, related to moll, muill; chaff. This word can be found in some germanic, celtic and romance languages, while it seems clear that it's not of Latin origin.),
amalhar, malhón or malhão, malha (amalhar is to remark, to put boundary stones, to premeditate, related to amail; hinder, prevent, obstruct. These words are also related to Galician malhón, boundary stone, and malha, net, mail. In Gaelic is -MacBain's-: << màille, mail armour; from the English mail.>>. We are not so convinced of the English origin of mail, possibly it was simply celtic, as it is also found in France.),
tachar or chatar (to cross out a written text, to correct, to accuse of, to knock in, to criticice, from tachais; scratch, scrape the surface of the skin; and tachas, -ais; itch, itching, scratching. This word of no Latin origin, that belongs to the Galician basic vocabulary is traditionally considered as coming from old French. These explanations are really simple excuses when no origin is known for a word; we all could ask that kind of sources for which is the etymology of the french word, in that case.),
taco, tacanho, tachola, and also by metathesis, chatola, chato, etc. (taco is a peg of wood, tacanho is a short or small person now also a mean one, tachola or chatola is little nail or rivet, etc.; this family of no Latin words, probably associated to an old original meaning of little fastener or nail, are present in all the western european languages. The Galician predominant meaning is the one of short or small thing, the Gaelic possible connections are the following ones: tac or tachd; choke, strangle and also tacan, -ain; short time, a little while. Note also the previous related link of tachar or chatar.),
tato, tatexo (stammerer, from tachd; to choke, strangle, stop up; and also related to the previous links ?. The hypothetical evolution of this reference could be as *tacht (500) > *tait (900) > *taito (1300) > tato (1800), if it's all right.),
tabular (to dream, to believe in fantasies; related to taibhse; ghost, apparition ?),
tarbela, tarbea (stable, hall; related to tarbh, tairbh; bull ?),
talentar, talantear (to try out the measurements of one person's behavior in order to obtain something of his will, to tempt; from tàladh, -aidh; enticing, alluring, caressing, hushing. This word is also present in the germanic branch of languages.),
tixola, tixela, tixolada, tixolar, and also tigela, tijolo, etc. (family of words of unknown origin until today and a general meaning of pan, frying pan, to cook, to roast, brick or place to deposit melted metal, etc. From a Gaelic's point of view we can found; teas; heat; maybe the origin of the family was based on an eventual *teas, *tis or *teis, inflected configuration, frequent in this type of ending and, from there, the palatal effect originated tixola or *teixola, etc. ?.),
tixeiras, Spanish tijeras (scissors; from an original form related to teasg; to cut, cut off; -related to the word tusg, peat-cutter, and Galician's tosquiar, to shear- that was hypothetically associated to a nominal *teasg, *tisg, -inflected regular shape for this type of ending-, generating the palatalization of the is particle ?. This may be compared, for instance, to the leisg > leixar/deixar, lixo association/evolution. The word lixo; rubbish, has a parallel in Catalan's deixalla -etymologically preceded by a former *leixalla or *lleixalla -. There is no other known origins for tixeiras, as in the similar and former case of tixola; on the other hand, official Portuguese tesouras is usually considered as an evolution of the Latin word tonsura but... is it sure ?.),
mixiricas, mixiriqueiro (prim, exaggerated scrupulousness or spoiling, related -through pejorative interpretations- to meas, respect, regard, esteem, reputation, opinion, judgment, estimate, valuing ?. The evolution could be based in a *meis or *mis inflected variations of meas, as in the former examples tixeiras and tixola.),
tolo, tolemia (mad, fool, lunatic, related to toil, +e; the will, inclination, desire ?. This word probably was also affected in its 'mania' like needed semantic specialization by the Latin related word tolondro, bump, hump, and hence, atolondrado, bewildered, what eventually leaded to the current meaning.),
nouza (shoot that grows from the stump of a tree, related to naoidhean, -ein; infant, babe, suckling; also in Old Irish nóidiu, nóiden ?. To compare, for instance, to Catalan's noi, boy.),
atroar, trom and maybe also tromenta (atroar is to thunder, trom a thunder, tromenta is a storm; from aotrom, -uime; light, giddy, and trom; heavy, oppressive, hard, difficult, sad, sleepy, pregnant. The word toirm, +e; noise, sound, loud murmuring sound, is likely related to this link, as well as English storm),
soininha, soinamoina, soina (cautious, wary, careful, hypocrite, sly, related to saoil, think, suppose, imagine, deem),
falha, falho -and derivatives, as falhar, etc.- (fail, failure, from fàillig, fàilnich; fail, fàillinn, failing, Irish faillighim, early Irish faill, failure. Similar to the former, this is a very common word in western indoeuropean languages, and all the scholars agree that a Latin origin is impossible here.),
enguizo, enguizar (grief, weakness, discouragement and to sharp, to incite, related to aimheal, -eil; vexation, grief),
nuca (nape of the neck, from cnoc, cnuic; knoll, hillock. Very interesting word, here is the reference given by the MacFarlane dictionary <<cnoc a hillock, Irish, cnoc, Old Irish cnocc, Old Breton cnoch, tumulus, Breton kreac'h, krec'henn, hill, *knokko-; from knog-ko-, Norse, hnakki, nape of the neck, Anglo-Saxon hnecca, necl, English neck. Some have given the stem as *cunocco, and referred it to the root of Gaulish cuno-, high, Welsh cwn, height, root ku, be strong, great, as in curaidh, q.v. Cf. Anglo-Saxon hnoll, Old High German hnol, vertex, head.>>. Following these etymologies, the possibility of interference, or germanic -swabian ?- contribution to the semantic current scope of the word, must be considered. This word is also influenced or related to the next one, noca.),
noca (knuckle, from cnuac, cnuaic; lump, head. As in the former example, this indoeuropean word of no Latin origin seems very interesting. Following the MacFarlane's: <<cnuachd; head, brow, temple, Irish cruaic (O'R.); cf. Welsh cnuwch, bushy head of hair, cnwch, knuckle, cnuch, joint, *cnoucco-, "a prominence"; root kneu, knu; Norse hnúkr, hnjúkr, knoll, peak, hnuðr, a knob.>>. To be considered, once again, a possible germanic influence and a mutual interference with the former word noca <-> nuca.),
gromo (in a tree or plant, shoot, leaf but, from glùn, g.v. glùin; pl. glùinean and glùintean, knee, joint of a plant stem, a generation in genealogy. Note the final -n that, if conserved, becomes -m, a typical phenomenon.),
guerfear (to shout, to yell, from gàir, g.+e; outcry, shout, din),
monho, monha (bun, from muin, back, back part of the neck and region immediately below. An Asturian or Spanish intermediate origin is needed to explain the palatal n of this word. Another possible explanation for the palatal nh may come from a cross with the extended celtic root *bonn, lump; compare to Gaelic bonnach, Spanish boñiga, Catalan bony, etc., for instance.),
calar, calo, cal, calaboiço, etc. (group of words in the sense of slender and narrow, frequently alluding to certain way or path. The first word calar, is to keep quiet about, to shut up, to abate the wind; calo, is a narrow path; cal is a narrow channel; calaboiço or calabouço, Spanish calabozo, is a small and subterranean cell of a prison. Related to caol; thin, lean, slender, narrow; and also caolaich; to make slender, attenuate, etc. The fundamental word calar is usually associated to a vulgar latin word *callare, of greek origin, with the same meaning as the modern one, but in our opinion it was probably celtic -Gallaic-, resulting of a popular generalization of the Latin word callis, narrow path, that was perhaps etymologically related to the celtic ones.),
carvalho, carba or carva (An oak. This tree represents a central reference for the traditional galician culture, in this sense. From craobh, g. craoibhe; d. craoibh; tree. The word carvalho was likely applied to the instruments made of this kind of wood and later extended to the name of the tree itself. The link needs a metathesis to reach the final result, more or less this way, and from the archaic shape cráeb of Early Irish, the evolution could be: *cráebail > *crabhail > *carbhail > *carbhalh > carbhalho or carvalho.),
gralear, gralhar, gralhear (gralear is to twitter, chirp, first words of the children; gralhar is to cry the children, squawk, quack, croac; gralhear is to speak noisily and in a threatening fashion; related to glaodh; cry, shout, proclaim; and related words. Perhaps, the gralharword/meaning was influenced by the Latin word graculus, -i, rook.),
drudaria (gallantry, friendship, related to drùidh; penetrate, ooze through, influence, affect, soak ?),
dubradoiro (fearsome, related to dùbhlan, -ain; challenge, defiance ?),
rei, reinamento, reiporco, reigalho (group of words of a general meaning of small and ready. This way, rei, hayrick of bundles carefully arranged to be straightened -note the English connection in this link-, reinamento, complete kit of fishing hooks, etc. for a kind of fishing net called linha; reiporco or reigalho, stunted or abnormally small animal. The principal gaelic link is réidh; level, smooth, uninterrupted, ready, arranged.),
reito (piece of the plough that achieves the union of the tamón and the rabiza, related to the former réidh and to réite; concord, agreement, reconciliation, marriage contract),
fanfarrón, fanfarria (family of words of uknown etymology until today, of a general meaning of boastful, false threat, great noise, etc., related to farral, farran, anger, force, Irish farrán, vexation, anger, forrán, oppression, Middle Irish forrán, destruction, Early Irish forranach, destructive. Hence Gaelic farrant, great, stout, Irish farránta.),
milhadoiro -and also milhar- (place where mound of little stones are heaped by pilgrims that come to visit sacred places, from meall, mill; lump, mass, mound, bunch, cluster. This was also adopted to designate a legendary galician folk band that, as we can see here, have a quite gallaic name -including the root and the ending of the word-, no matter, possibly, that they did not know it. Maybe, the word milho; corn, cereal, was also related to this root but, maybe, in this case the real link was the Latin word milium.),
madonha (same meaning as the word mámoa, cromlech, megalithic hill, but the shape that is object of analogy is here a paunch instead of a breast; related to maodal, -ail; paunch. The possibility that this link was behind words as madorra or modorra, drowsiness, then alluding to the sleepy sensation that follows a great lunch, must also be considered.),
chorra (exceptional or strange luck, action, behavior, etc.; from còrr, eminent, extraordinary, overplus, excess, odds. Note the phonetic effect c/ch here, due to the contact of the definite article, a Gaelic singularity.),
chouriço -and also chouriça- (sausage, salami, blood sausage, related to coire; pot, cauldron, kettle, corrie; in the sense of the bottling concept ?. Another explanation can be that the word is derived of the Latin related coiro, leather, skin. The Gaelic c>ch phonetic change is, anyway, indispensable to explain the required rendering. There are no other known origins for this word.),
charro (rude, ridiculous, from cèarr, wrong, left-handed; also related to the c/ch effect),
trocar (exchange, related to -MacBain's- << trog, trash (Dial.), busy dealing, tròg, busy dealing, from Sc. troke, to bargain, barter, trog, old clothes, troggin, pedlar's wares, Eng. truck, from Fr. troquer, barter, truck >>. This word is present in all Western Europe, and it is not related to Latin or Germanic origins.),
margalhada, margalhar (trick, muddle, clever manipulation or conspiracy; from margadh, -aidh; market, buying and selling. A wonderful word, because of the extraordinary information that includes.),
bacalhán, bacaceiro (vague, lazy person, related to -among some other words- bac; hinder, restrain; and bac; crook),
laián and laiar (moaner, skinny, weak person, related to laigh; lie, lie down, subside, recline ?. Note also the English connection here.),
nobanilho (cyst, lump, tumor, from gnob, g.v. gnoib; hillock, knoll, knob, tumor. Following the MacBain's, this comes from the English knob; in our opinion it is yet time to begin to analyze the opposite possibility, or, in other words, that possibly the English knob was originated from the Gaelic gnob. And so on with many other words.),
baralha (garrulity, superficial and confusing talk, from barail, -alach; opinion, conjecture. This is a good example of word with unknown etymology until today. Maybe also barulho; uproar, crowd, mess, can be related to this link.),
bazar -pronounced as bathar- (shop, bazaar, related to bathar, -air; wares, goods, merchandise ?. This is a well-known Persian word, we include it here for two reasons: 1.- the perfect fit of the phonological realization and 2.- if the Gaelic authenticity of this word was guaranteed, we could have got a true old Scythian word here. It must be noted, also, that the word is relatively extended in the Galician little toponymy, what could not be eventually compatible with a late origin of the word, coming from persian sources.),
bradar, bracar, brasmar, bramar, etc. (family of words with the general meaning of shouting, speaking with loud, scolding, etc., related to bras; active, rash, impetuous, quick, keen, vehement ?. Compare also to berrar, aberrar, etc.),
brizar (to chop down, to break, from bris; break, fracture),
brogada (boast, related to brogach; sturdy boy or young lad, and brog; stimulate),
ganhar (to win, gain, from a former guanhar ?, related to the germanic root waidanian; to harvest, gain, and also crossed with buannaich; gain, profit, win, benefit ?),
bolada (opportunity, occasion, time, turn, related to buil, +e; effect, use, issue; and also to buileach; complete, entire),
boria (uproar, fun, entertainment, noisy celebration, related to bùirean, -ein; a bellow, roar),
doca (laziness, carelessness, from docair; difficult, hard, uneasy, troublesome, grievous; MacBain's: docair; grievous, hard, trouble, Early Irish doccair, uneasiness, trouble. Note the -cc- of the early Irish spelling -modernly evolved in c and not in g- that may be compared to another ones as for instance, in the case of macc, micc or the Occe hero of the Leabhar Gabhala, that seems to be modernly evolved in the galician surname Oca.), etc.
Terms yet commonly accepted as of Celtic origin by the general linguistics, although in many dictionaries they still appear as originated in Vulgar Latin. We mention them taken from general publications, maybe some of them are not gallaics, despite. They are: caminho (way, path), torre (tower), carro (cart), gato (cat), cavalo (horse), duna (dune), coelho (rabbit), gordo (fat), broa, boroa (bread, made of corn), laje, laja, or laxe, laxa (flagstone), etc.
Terms that agree or are interchangeable between Latin and gael/celtic. Their list would have to be interminable, in fact, but some of the most significant are the following ones:
ouro/oiro (gold, from òr, òir, gold),
tú (you),
con- (with),
lua (moon, from luan, moon; very important word and concept in the ancient religion of the gallaics and, hence, with many references in modern toponymy: Luanco, Luarca, Luanha, Luaces, etc., etc.),
mil (one thousand, military man),
moito/a, muito/a (much, a lot, related to mòid, -e; greatness, more, the more),
él, ele, il (he, from social ultra-correction of é; he, him),
cousa (thing, from cùis, -e, affair, matter, subject, cause),
lhe (him, her in dative, from the initial preposition le, with, together with, by means of, in possession of, on the side of),
colo (neck, from cùl, cùil; the back, the hinder part; this, maybe, is also related to cú -ass-),
que -the pronunciation is ke- (with similar semantic contents in Gaelic; from ce, who, what ?, why ?, how ?),
rouco (aphonic, hoarse, from ròic, tear. The Latin link is raucu here.),
de (of, the same in Gaelic. Maybe in modern with Galician de is crossed with d'; originally the meanings of de and d' were not exactly the same thing),
burro, burrán (maybe with the only meaning of stupid in origin, now donkey also, related to burraidh, blockhead, fool),
cerca (fence, related to cearcall, -aill; hoop, ring. The Latin alternative source is circa; around),
queixo or queijo (cheese, from càise, cheese),
porco (pig, related to uircean, -ein; little pig, young pig, the p- is evidently a cultured addition from latinized influence. See orca, in this text),
peixe (fish, from iasg, éisg; fish, to fish; with yet another addition of the cultured p-),
colgar -and derivatives- (to hang, related to cluigean, -ein; pendicle, bell, drop; and also to cuilgean, -ein; awn of corn or barley. The Latin candidate collocare, seems very weak -most of all, due to phonetic reasons- compared to the gaelic ones.),
achar, Spanish hallar, Rumanian aflà, late Latin of Spain aflare, etc. (to find, discover. Traditional considerations link this word to the Latin one afflare; to blow, but the semantical link is weak. More likely, in our opinion, is to relate it to an eventual *a-falaich, or similar composition, based on a -negative meaning- and falaich; hide, cover),
esquecer (to forget, from scad, what -following the MacBain's- is a loss, mischance ?. Following with this possibility, the link may come from the Scottish skaith, English scathe, scath (Shakespeare), Norse skaði, scathe, German schaden, hurt. This fundamental word, that belongs to the Galician-Portuguese basic vocabulary, has been also associated to the hypothetical vulgar Latin link *excadescere. Possibly its real origin must be related to a mixed celtic-germanic composition ?.),
grena (pinch, spot, from gràinne; a grain, small quantity. The unlikely Latin connection is granu here, but this word gives grao or gran in Galician. No matter this consideration, the lack of palatalization in the final n seems irregular here -cultist influence ?-; the MacBain's presents these links: gràinne; a grain, small quantity, Irish gráinne, Old Irish gráinne, granulum, grán, granum, Welsh grawn, Cornish gronen, Breton greun, (pl.): *grâno-; Latin grânum; English corn (Stokes). Some hold that the Celtic is borrowed from the Latin.),
ladar (to pray, beg, plead, related to leadan, -ain; a rosary, lock of hair, the herb teazle; a musical strain. This word seems to belong to an ultimate Latin origin related to litania; litany.),
cabaz, cabazo, cabaceiro, (provisional or small roof or cover, made of branches and other materials; related to cabar, -air; couple of a house roof, rafter, deer's antlers, a heavy pole, caber. A medieval late Latin origin has been proposed for these words, but the also likely related Galician's cabana, hut; is considered of no ultimate -classical- Latin origin.),
trabelo (box, hopper to receive the grain in a mill, from trabhailt; hopper of a mill. The only link found out as possible for these words is the Latin one of trabula.),
loita (fight, from lot, loit; wound, hurt. The Latin alternative lucta fits better as eventual origin of the official Portuguese shape luta.),
coitar (to urge, to hurry, to press, to afflict, to distress, from coitich; coax, press one to take something, urge. Latin alternative coactus, from the verb cogo, has been proposed for the origin of this word.),
cordial, concordar, etc. (several words with the central meaning of agree, from còrd; agree. The most extended considerations, base the general origin of this words on Latin cor, cordis, heart -?-.),
roucear or roncear, rouceo (to twist something, specially the cart, from roth, g.+a, v. roith, a wheel. Possibly the word roçar, to rub, to graze, also comes from this origin. The Latin alternative source is rota,-ae; wheel),
dóo, Spanish duelo, (mourning; duel, from dùil; hope, expectation ?. There are also some 'Latin possibilities' on the eventual origin of this word: duellum.),
luz -pronounced as looth- (light, from lùth, -a, strength, power, vigour, activity, pith),
borbotón, borbulhar, etc., (powerful bubbling of a liquid, related to borb, buirbe; fierce, savage, passionate ?),
ran, ran albar, ranfonhar, etc. (group of words whose meaning is related to shout, cry, noise, etc. They are: ran, toy of the children; ran albar, cicada; ranfonhar; to grunt, etc. from ràn; to roar, cry out. Ran is also a frog, and this way the word may be eventually linked to this Latin word.),
faixa, feixe, and related words (group of words meaning bundle and/or squeezed, pressed object; from fàisg, squeeze, wring, compress. The Latin candidates are here fascis and fascia.),
queixa, queixar-se -Spanish quejarse- (complaint, from caisg, check, stop, restrain, quench, quell, curb. The Latin alternatives, based on *quassiare, 'to beat, break', are rather weak, because of phonetic and semantic considerations. In our opinion this word is related to an ancient cói or cái root, in the sense of lamentation, that has a lot of derivatives in modern Galician and Gaelic languages.),
cranguexo or caranguejo -Spanish cangrejo- (crab, related to claon; inclining, squint, oblique, partial ?. Usual considerations link this word with Latin word cancer; but the Gaelic link fits better, at least for Galician's cranguexo.),
fiar, fiuzego, fiúza, etc., (words of economical meaning: to loan, honest, security, etc.; from fiach, féich; value, worth; debt, arrears; fiach, +a, worthy, valuable, good; fiù; worthy, estimable; etc. These possible origins have to cope with the Latin competence of fide, fiducia; nevertheless, the Gaelic alternatives are clearly closer to their Galician relatives, both from phonetic as from a semantic point of view.),
roldo, rolda or rola and roldar, roldana, -a back port from Spanish-, etc. (roll, ring, from rol or rola a roll, volume, Irish rolla; -this shape must be related to the real link, the double l is indispensable for the galician result-. In a similar fashion to other words, traditional considerations cannot explain in a satisfactory manner -some folks still try to do it, nevertheless- how the Latin rotula could lead to this result. The only explanations for this possibility are based on the passage through a hypothetic intermediate stage of the word in Catalan language.),
berrar, aberrar (to shout, yell, scold, related to several words as abair; say, utter, express, bàirseag; a scold (Sh.), Irish bairseach, Middle Irish bairsecha, foolish talk, bara, wrath, Welsh bâr, wrath. The Latin dubtous connection verre -pig-, has also been suggested for this link.),
favo (small cell of bees, tonsil, from faob, faoib; excrescence, knob, piece as of dough. The Latin word favu -?- has been also alluded to reference this link.),
forrar, alforrar, aforrar -Spanish ahorrar- (words that are variants around a general meanig of gain, to get rich, saving, etc., from forradh, gain, excrescence, shift. No other origins are known until today for these interesting words; the McBain dictionary relates the etymology to "rath, prosperity, so Irish, Old Irish rath, gratia, Welsh rhad, grace, favour: *rato-n, root râ, give; Sanskrit râti, gift, râs, rayis, property, Zend râta, gift; Latin rês.", whence, a Latin origin seems very difficult here. On the other hand, an Indo-Iranian-Scythian connection could be apparently considered on the stuff -?-. Also, it must be noted the concurrence of the Spanish words despilfarrar, to squander, and alfarrazar, to contract a fixed quantity of money, no matter the amount of the product is only estimated and not well-known. This link is included in the Latin shared group because of the existence of the possibly related reference of arras or earras -property, in Galician and Gaelic-, that apparently is of Latin origin.),
arras (property, dowry, from earras, -ais; wealth, property. The Latin related origin for this word is arrhas, ultimately linked to Greek's arrabhon, that some scholars consider of semitic likely origin. This way, the Latin connection is dubtous, and the Indo-Iranian alternative becomes suggestive here, -Scythian link ?-. See the precedent reference of the possibly related forrar word.),
ourela, Spanish orilla (border, bank, edge related to oir; edge, lip, border. Latin connection is ora; coast, and hence, this is a typical example of word of double possible origin.),
déngaro (demon, related to deamhan, -ain; demon, devil),
diabro or diabo, Spanish diablo (devil, from diabhul, -uil; pl. Diabhlan: a devil: An Diabhul, The Devil. This seems to be ultimately a greek word),
leigo (not priest, lay, this word is also related to leilan and, maybe also, to lei -law-; from leig; let, let out, let go, permit, allow, milk, rain),
rei -also here rey in Spanish- (king, formerly little king, chieftain; from rìgh, king; rí in Irish shape. The Latin alternative is rex, regis.),
rainha (queen; from a former reinha -avoiding the cacophony associated with the diphthong and the contact between the i semi-consonant and palatal n- and this one from rìghinn, -ne, nymph, young lady, queen also. Latin equivalent is regina, that does not fit well to explain the phonetic result.),
lacha (honour, modesty, shame, fame, from laoch, laoich; hero, champion, warrior. The MacBain's says that this word is ultimately related to the Latin one laicus, a layman, non-cleric.),
loia (loia is a lay, praise, secret murmur or story, fib; related to laoidh, +e; lay, hymn, sacred poem. There are also other words, not so clear, but perhaps related to this link as ladoiro, a beg, pleading; loiada, lie, presumption; some of them even seem to have relatives in certain English words. Usual interpretations link these words to Latin laudare, praise.),
leixar -and derivatives- (to leave, to abandon, to desert, related to leisg, +e; laziness, sloth, slothfulness, indolence. This is a word related to Latin laxare, Italian lasciare, French lasser, modern Galician-Portuguese deixar, Spanish dejar, etc. This suggestion has been done by a brazilian linguist. Nevertheless, the perfect fit of the gaelic and galician roots -no phonetic differences can be observed- seems outstanding here. On the other hand, the ending -ar is of a sheer Latin origin.),
dono/a (owner, wife in feminine, from duine, a man, human being ?),
don/a -Asturian and Spanish don/doña, as in Don Juan- (today Mr., Mrs., ancient meaning of noble, aristocratic, from donn, duinne; brown, brown-haired; in Old Irish -and in Gaulish- it was brown but also noble or aristocrat. Maybe this word was also crossed/confused with duine, a man, human being. There is also a -speculation about a- Latin possible origin here, based on the word domine.),
manha -and derivatives: amanhar, manheiro, etc.- (ability, skill, cleverness, will, desire; from meanmna, spirit, mettle, magnanimity, bravery, courage; or, alternatively, from miann; desire, inclination, will, longing: is miann leam, I wish, desire: leis am miann, who desires. The Latin alternative is mania here.),
noite (night, related to nochd, by means of the vocalization of the -c- or -ch- in end of syllable),
oito (eight, from ochd, eight -!?-),
ruído (noise, from sriut, sriuit; a torrent of quick sounds or words ?. The Latin alternative is rugitus; roar),
medeira or madeira (wood -the material-, a little object of this material; from maide, wood, timber, a stick. The traditionally accepted etymology is the Latin word materia but, apart the phonetic complications that this may cause to explain the desired result, the true Latin word for this concept is lignum, -i. On the other hand, this word does not exist in Latin languages not related to Galician),
nada (nothing, not at all, in no way. This fundamental word is, following conventional explanations, derived from the Latin phrases nulla res nata -nothing born- or similar. We think that these explanations are absolutely artificial -Latin languages not related to Galician ignore this word, on the other hand-. In our opinion, one more natural etymology would simply be based on a pronominalization of the word na -not-, through the very extended ending -ada, that means stuff or action related to the concept referred in the root; this way the original meaning of nada would be stuff or action related to a negation=nothing),
naide (nobody, from neach, person, any person, individual ?; in origin this meaning was not associated to a negation, but common use made it this way, similarly as in the French word personne. Yet another crucial word that may be compared to the former nada by its pronominalization effect.),
onte, ontem (yesterday; similarly to the former word nada, conventional explanations for the origin of this word, the Latin locution ad nocte, seem very forced. More likely would be an evolution of a gallaic word, similar to the Scottish Gaelic an dé -yesterday-, in our opinion),
labia, and derivatives as labado or lavado, etc. (eloquence, fluency, glibness; labado means shameless, insolent, a person that speaks with glibness or cynicism; from labhair; speak; labhairt; speaking, speech; labhrach; talkative, loquacious; etc. This word is unanimously considered a crucial panceltic reference; for example in the MacBain's: <<labhair; speak, Irish labhraim, Early Irish labraim, Old Irish labrur, labrathar, loquitur, Welsh llafar, vocalis, lleferydd, voice, Cornish lauar, sermo, Breton lavar, Gaulish river Labarus: *labro-, speak; Greek lábros, furious, lábreúomai, talk rashly. Bez. prefers the root of English flap. Others have compared Latin labrum, lip, which may be allied to bothe Celtic and Greek (labreúomai). Hence Gaelic and Irish labhar, loud, Old Irish labar, eloquens, Welsh llafar, loud, Greek lábros.>>. Nevertheless, the Latin link labiu; lip, that has led to the modern labio, must also be considered as a collaborator or contributor to the final rendering of the word, in Galician.),
mámoa, mamoinha (cromlech, megalithic hill, from màm, màim; hill of a round, slowly rising form.),
meimo (the spoil of a child, carefulness, etc, from mìn, soft, delicate, tender to the touch; smooth, even on the surface, mild, meek, calm, unruffled as water, pulverized, ground fine; fine, soft, as cloth or like fabric. The Latin correspondence, mimu, could explain the second m; nevertheless, a Gallaic contribution is necessary to explain the -ei- diphthong, by the match ì (long i) > ei, as we know.),
maço, maçar, maça (complex group of words that have the meanings of mallet, bunch -of flowers, for instance- and to soften, to crush, pound. There is the possibility that the words were originated in the Latin vulgar word *mattea, but another one that fits better are the Gaelic links maoth, soft, tender, delicate, effeminate; and also maothan, -ain, the chest; a twig, bud. On the other hand, the Portuguese voiceless ç, that had to be a voiced z if coming from a th, could be related to a frequent use of the words by the Latin speaking folks ?.),
miunça, miunçalha (particle, fragment, entrails, from mion, +a, small, minute; and from mionach, -aich; bowels, entrails. The Latin connection is minutia, here. This is a good example of half-breed words and constructions; the root is Gallaic and the ending, -ça, from -tia, quite Latin; in the second instance there is, again, the Gallaic plural post-ending -alha = distribution of objects, from Scottish -ailean. A whole mess !),
baga (small, spherical, fruit; related to bagaid; cluster, bunch, as of nuts),
baio (white-yellow color mainly applied to horses, from bàine; paleness, whiteness, fairness. There is also the Latin connection badius -brown- here.),
balbo (stammerer, from balbhan, -ain; dumb person),
boi (ox, bull, from bó, boine; d. boin; cow. The Latin link is bos, bovis, here.),
cio and ciúme, etc. (sexual attraction or appetite, usually referred to animals' behavior, from cion; want, desire, esteem, love. The etymology traditionally admitted for this word is the Latin word zelu, but the derivative ciúme quite unmasks the true origin of the word, that is clearly gallaic/gaelic.),
laga, and related lagar, etc. (well, reservoir, pool; lagar is the receptacle of a wine press, from lag, luig; hollow, dell; probably the galician word came from the diminutive shape lagan; on the other hand, also related to -MacBain's- làgan; sowens: *latag-ko- ? Root lat, be wet, Greek latax, drop, Latin latex. No matter the nearly impossible Latin origin of this word, the existence of the lacus = lake word, forces the link to be in this paragraph.),
boa (good, in feminine gender, related to buadh, buaidhe; virtue, attribute, good quality; and also to buan; lasting, durable, long. We must remember here the change of gender that the creation of the new masculine article o generated in many words. The Latin reference is bona.),
caçula or casula and caço, caçola, etc. (family of words related to the concepts of chaiff and receptacle -usually for containing water-; nevertheless, sometimes either the water or the receptacle's concept is not there. This way, casula, means, chaff, sheath of the peas; caçula, to mill or to dry the grain and also is an alternative variant of casula; and caço, spoon, saucepan. From the Gaelic's point of view, the links are càth, càithe; husks of corn, chaff; and also càthar, -air; mossy ground, mountain bog. The relation is not as strong as some other ones we have seen -fundamentally from the semantics point of view-, but there are no other clear known origins for these fundamental words, also present in Spanish and Catalan. Latin alternatives, based on the words casa, capsula or calix, do no fit very well in the subject.),
caça, caçar -pronounced catha, cathar- (hunt, chase, pursue, related to cath, g.+a; v. chaith; fight, battle, fighting ?. Note that the genitive is catha. The Latin alternative, captu is weak, from a phonologic point of view, and, on the other hand, the English word chase, -related or coming from the French chasse ?- quite suspicious -!?-. To be noted, also, that an eventual germanic compatibility seems possible, for instance, with words associated to the English one hate ?),
coixa, coxa and also coxo, etc. -the pronunciation is as coisha, cosha, etc.- (thigh, calf of the leg, lame, from cas, g. coise; d. cois; foot, leg, shaft, haft. The Latin concurrence is strong here coxa, but the similar spellings -product of traditional conventions and cultured influences- may be defective here. The real Latin pronunciation was as "cocsa", very different of the modern galician one, while Gaelic coise, coise, are pronounced as "coishe, coish".),
custo, custar or costo, costar (cost, from cosd; spend, waste. This word can be found, as some others we have seen, in English, Modern and Old French, Iberian languages, etc. Nevertheless, there is no good Latin candidate for this fundamental stuff, the best that has been proposed is constare, that is not very convincing. On the other hand, alternatives as the attribution of the whole origin of the word to one of this languages -French, for instance- do not solve the problem, but only translates it to another scope. The coincidence between custas -Spanish costas- and the Gaelic cosdas, -ais, expense, cost; seems to be nearly definitive. It must be noted, also here, a good example of the frequent effect of the Gaelic transformation of an ancient t in d.),
cantar -and many related words- (to sing, to say, related to cantainn; saying, singing, speaking),
morte -and related words- (dead, related to mort, moirt; murder, murdering, slaying. Maybe this is simply a Latin word ?),
ei-lo, ei-la, ei-los, ei-las, eis, etc. (meaning 'you have got this thing here', or 'here you are', etc..; these words are traditionally considered as compositions originated around forms of the haver verb and the archaic definite articles lo, la, los, las. But there is at least another hypothetical or unsure possibility, that seems to be less forced and very interesting: the Gaelic word eile -maybe also English else and Old English elles ?-; other, another, alternative; with similar semantic and functional renderings. On the other hand, there was in medieval Galician the word al, meaning 'another thing', related to Scots Gaelic eile and Old Irish al, el, ol, whith similar meanings. In MacBain's references to the word thall, we can read, for instance: << thall: over, beyond, Irish thall, Old Irish thall, tall: *t-all, Old Irish ol, quam, indoll, altarach, ultra, al, ultra; root ol, el, ol, Latin ille (= olle), alius. Also eile, other, which see. >>. In this sense, we must insist that the shape al; ultra, another thing, was usual in medieval Galician; for instance, in the following sentence: 'Todo aquel dia penssara Lançarote em Dom Tristan que nõ pensou em al.'. Reference: José Luis Pensado (ed.) (1962): Fragmento de un "Livro de Tristán" galaico-portugués. Santiago de Compostela: Anejo XIV de Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, pp. 44-48.).
Finally we will mention some of the innumerable expressions at the moment disused but very repeated in toponymy, being for that reason enough characteristic. They are: dun, don or don(e)ga (hillfort, currently replaced by the Latin castro; modern Gaelic dùn, dùin), -bre, -obre, -bra or -bria (hill, little town, from briga; examples Coimbra, Dumbria), sometimes germanized in -berg; ob(e), ov(e) or -ub (river, creek, harbor, valley, from òb, òib; examples: Ove, Castrove, Landrove, Oviedo, Corrubedo), eu (river, related to abhainn, aibhne, river, stream ?; examples: Eume, Umia and Euve or Eove -medieval shape of Eo, meaning to river of òb, or river of the creek-; the River Eo, also alternatively, may be associated to Old Irish éo, iach; salmon, -this way Euve = River of the Salmons ?-; see Xavier Delamarre's DLG esox reference), bar, barco, barca, barcia (highland, mountain, hill or, alternatively, marshy land, wet terrain; for example: Baronha, Barrantes, Combarro and also, Dunbar, etc.), Liébana (from leanaban, -ain; infant, little child ?), quen, -exemple quenhse in official orthography quenxe, with the same sound- (tip of a projection, normally in one estuary, from ceann, -cinn; head, end, chief, extremity ?, also the Spanish word ceñir, to fit, must come from this root, cinn, in its primitive meaning of extend, surround), oins, onís or ons, (from ùinich, bustle, hurry ?), Elvinha, Elvas (from ailbhinn; flint, flinty rock ?), Armunho (from àrmunn, àrmuinn; warrior ?), etc.

And, in short, we encourage everyone to the task of finding many more words. The tracks to follow must be more or less always similar: gallaic morphologies and words with unknown etymological references, or at least doubtful. There are many words that we do not have included in this list because the association is not too clear, but that we thought that very possibly they would have to deserve it. Example: orvalho (extremely fine rain; related to ùir, ùireach; mould, dust, earth, in the sense of the very small size of the granulated drops ?). If we check the etymological references this possibility appears even closer, for instance MacBain's: << ùir: mould, dust, earth, Irish, Middle Irish úir, Early Irish úr, g. úire: *ûrâ; Norse aurr, loam, wet clay, mud, Anglo-Saxon eár, humus. Stokes hesitates between *ûrâ and *ugrâ, Greek ugrós, wet. >>. And, if we are not mistaken, there must be many more words, the ones we have seen must be simply the tip of the iceberg. It is only a question of patience and good documentation. The more dictionaries you read, the more words you'll find.

Anyway, it is necessary to notice that many of the words that are more representative, from the point of view which we have described, are considered so informal that they are not collected in the usual dictionaries. The Portuguese ones are specially rigid in this aspect; the Galician ones, as this language is considered as being a more informal (sic), are more frequently including words of this type, but even some of the most usual ones are not gathered, because they are considered too colloquial or informal. For example, the word nanai is used in very informal context to indicate a full negation. It seems evident to us that this word is very extended and generally understood by common people; its origin does not offer doubts to us: as much their phonetics, as their morphology and its semantic contents point at an origin of na and nach (no and not, in Gaelic), resulting in a particular match of words. Nevertheless, none of the dictionaries we have consulted gathers this word. In short, we think that it is yet time to hope that this situation begins to change a little, for the first time.

It seems also necessary to warn that the complexity and the extraordinary proliferation in variations of semantic contents can do some associations apparently impossible, at least at first sight. For example, a very interesting case, that deserves to be analyzed with thoroughness, in our opinion, is related to the well-known Gaelic word loch, -a; lake, arm of the sea. During the process of writing of the present paper, we looked for a Galician correspondence for this expression, because it seemed evident to us that a so fundamental and extended word as it was, could not have disappeared of Galician language. From a phonetic point of view, it was clear that the corresponding form would have to be loi (transformation of ch in semi consonant, as we know) or loi + support vowel, anyway. Immediately we located the word loio as a candidate, with sufficient endorsements in toponymy, on the other hand. Nevertheless, the semantic content was not exactly the same one as in Gaelic: the current meaning of loio is the one of hole in the ground, cave. It does not exist any sign of necessity that the Galician loios had to be stuffed of water and, in addition, bearing in mind the shortage of lakes that there are in Galicia, toponomy was not rather helpful: all the found loios (or, sometimes, lois) were apparently dry, excepting one of them, located in the Way of Santiago, next to Portomarín. In this situation, the solution came, although it can be perceived as a paradox, from classical Latin. Consulting the meaning of the word lacus (lake) and the variant lacuna (little lake), we can notice that aside from the one associated to the water, lake, etc., there is also the other one of hole in the ground, cave, and even, hell. It seems reasonable to think, therefore, that old Gaelic (language that, as all the Celtic ones, was very close to old Latin) loch, would have a similar semantic scope as the old Latin one of lacus and lacuna; and thus, would mean, lake, hole in the ground, and cave. This way, we may expect, finally, that the modern meanings conserved in Galician and Gaelic, would come from the old gaidel ones, of an ampler semantic spectrum, as we have seen.

Next, we will show a series of Galician thematic endings that are enormously representative, because these structures are usually very conservative in all the languages (much more than the lexicon, undoubtedly) and that remains from Gallaic in present Galician. By order of significance and frequency of their presence in the language:

Ending and diphthong in -ei-. Surely it is of the most characteristic and recognizable of Galician-Portuguese language, by the enormous frequency of its appearance; in many occasions it must come, without apparent changes, directly from the Gallaic, examples: rei, meiga, beira, queima. Although its elocution must respond to ancestral phonologic structures, and is associated with a clear preference towards the so called decreasing diphthongs (the ones that end with an i or u vowel) over the increasing ones (those that begin with an i or u) -this seems to be, on the other hand, a deep structural and phonological difference, that divided the celtic and germanic languages from the Latin one-, one of its basic sources of creation, from the morphologic point of view, also comes from many gallaic endings that had an -ea shape in nominative case, but also in -eu and even in -ia (we insist that we are always based on the references offered by the written tradition of the Scottish Gaelic). Examples of endings like these ones (nominative, genitive -or maybe accusative-; etc.): -eamh, -eimh; -eam, -eim; -eum, -eim; -eal, -eil; -ean, -ein; -eas, -eis; -eog, -eig; -eal, -eil; -eul, -eil; -ead, -eid; -eart, -eirt; -iach, -eich, -ear, -eir. Many of them may present a systematic correspondence in modern Galician, but verifying all them systematically is out of the possibilities of this paper. Another source of words of this type comes of the ones that included the letter ì (long i) that is too transformed into ei. We could not, nevertheless, forget one of the most characteristic of all these endings, -ear, -eir, that indicates the agent of a certain action (in English -er, Spanish -ero, Latin -ariu) as in gaiteiro, muinheira, pandeiro, etc., etc., etc; the amount of words associated to this is incalculable. Scottish examples (genitive only): cairteir (Carter); ceisteir (catechist); croiteir (crofter). We insist that this is one of the most basic pillars of the Galician elocution.
Idem, with the corresponding ones to -oi- and/or -ou-. This case is no longer as simple as the previous one, in the first place because the same present Galician-Portuguese does not deal with it in a very uniform way, it even seems that there is not a clear etymological difference between both diphthongs; in fact, in the Portuguese dictionaries, for example, the references appear indistinctly in the two morphologies; for example: touro or toiro, coisa or cousa, couçoeira or coiçoeira, etc., etc. Apparently, the former shapes were always in oi, and evolved to the ou tipology, but the changes were not entirely accomplished, because of ignored reasons. The endings that seem to adjust to this pattern, according to the Scottish Gaelic model, are related to shapes in oi, are: -ou, -oin; -ol, -oil; -os, -ois; -or, -oir. These examples seem to suggest clearly a tendency towards the match o > oi, nominative > genitive, that could indicate the germ of the Galician forms, so frequent, on the other hand. This effect can be noted, for example, in the old toponimy of four little towns near Monforte de Lemos. We can found there some references to an old tower or castle that is alluded by the Irish word tor, toir; tower, castle. Therefore, we have San Xoan de Tor (tor = tower, castle -nominative-) but also Toiriz (=king of the tower; toir = tower -genitive-; riz is the swabian / gothic equivalent for king or chieftain), what seems to indicate also that the of Gallaic cases was still alive in Galician in the middle of the first millennium. On the other hand, more evolved examples from the western coast of Galicia, as Ilha (=island) Tourís (local version of Toiriz); Faro (=light house) Tourinhán, show the phonetic change oi > ou yet done. Another examples (as Goiriz / Gouris -maybe meaning foreign king-) seem to confirm the hypothesis that the change oi > ou was originated in the western areas, but could not supplant entirely the former shapes in oi. As instances of these endings we have, as before, the examples relatives to the agent of a determined action, -adoiro/a: matadoiro, queimadoiro, milhadoiro (or matadouro...). Examples related in Scottish seem to follow the shape of -aor, -aoir: saor, saoir (wright, carpenter); maor, maoir (bailiff, officer of justice) where Gaelic seems to have lost the intervocalic -d- (from a former *sadoir, *madoir, etc. ?) as in this position usually happens to the Asturian and Spanish: baila(d)or, come(d)or. On the other hand, it is necessary to stress two concepts: this ending is exclusively Galician, apparently it does not appear in the neighbouring Romance languages (in Spanish it is confused with the -dor ending; comedor, dining room, or supplanted by the equivalent Latin ending that is -atorium, -sanatorio, reclinatorio-) and usually (but not aways) implies a certain specialization in Galician, in the sense of the place that motivates or causes the action, instead of the personal agent.
As coming from different gentilices (=nouns that relate the people to their a place of origin: Spaniard, Scotsman, Englishman, etc), we have -ego/a, that originally was -aic or -aig (it is attested by the Roman and Greek sources, gallaicus, gallaica, etc.) and that is the base of the traditional shapes of these words. The equivalent in modern Scottish (written) is -ach, -aich (irish, -aigh ), example: Albannach, -aich; scotsman. In Latin, the corresponding form is -escum with an Indo-European morphology closer to the archaic one -aisc, that was used by Celtiberian (and that is conserved in modern central and eastern Spanish -mainly in Aragonese- under the form -asco: peñasco, carrasco, ternasco, Velasco, etc.). The corresponding form in English is -ish, English, British, in Latin -escum, Italian -esco, tedesco, also in cultured Spanish (that is to say, latinized), dantesco. Examples in Galician: galego, chairego, rinlego, labrego; always with the timbre of the broad or open -e- (coming from the -ai- diphthong); Asturian: cabraliego, naviego; Cantabrian: lebaniego, pasiego, etc. In order to avoid the intervocalic situation of -n- or -l- in (situation that the gallaic phonology did not permit), when the root finishes in one of these letters, the -e- falls, and the stress moves to the previous syllable: Viladon(e)ga (=town with characteristics of dùn, don, hillfort; to compare with Donegal), Covadonga (=ídem for cave), and there is also finally the Viladóniga variant, frequent in the far northwestern corner of Galicia. It must be noticed also that, despite the writing, the phonetics are in fact of an -egh type or -ekh, in the zone of the gheada or kheada. Thus, the real pronunciation is galegho, chairegho, rinlegho, labregho and the popular one in the Eastern zone of Galicia would be khalekho, chairekho, rinlekho, labrekho, which must be interpreted in our opinion, as one more Gallaic rest (phonetic and morphologic). We must notice, finally, that this ending is very dominant in the current language in Asturias and the north-eastern zone of Galicia and that as, on the other hand, its tipology has brythonic parallels (examples, brezhoneg, galleg, kerneveureg; however, it is necessary to advice that these are not exactly true gentilices, in fact they allude to the language and not to the origin place that is referred in the root) and considering that this zone was social and politically dominated by the British refugees fled from the Anglo-Saxon invasion between the centuries 6th and 9th, this form could owe a lot of its vitality to their presence. Also the diminutives in -in, -ina, (instead of the gallaic -inho, -inha, coming from -ghinn), that are majority in this zone, could also be due to this fact.
Next, we have the very frequent ending of type -edo/a; Scottish equivalent/origin in -aid. Here also Gallaich -ai- becomes, in way similar to the previous case, Galician-Portuguese broad -e-, and later (?) also, diphthong -ie- in Asturian (Oviedo, Somiedo). It means assembly, distribution with a certain common property that unifies it. The examples are endless here either: arvoredo, brinquedo, rochedo, noceda, maceda, Corrubedo. In Spanish there are some rests, almost always in feminine: alameda (tree-lined avenue), arboleda (woods). In Scottish it is an invariable ending, the meaning does not seem to differ from the Galician one: bagaid, cluster of fruits -a very good and representative example-; acarsaid, anchorage; deacaid, jacket; Pàrlamaid, Parliament (in Galician would have to be Parlamedo!).
Ending in -inho/a: caminho, muinho or moinho, pintinho, rainha, Jairzinho, Serginho, Ronaldinho, etc., etc., etc. These forms are one of the most representative of the Galician language; they would almost serve to give it a definition. The morphology in Scottish is of -inn, for example muilinn (mill). This mythical word corresponds exactly with the phonetic and morphologic laws of conversion that we already know (ui>o, disappearance of the intervocalic -l-, conversion of -nn- in -nh- and incorporation of the vowel of final support) and voilà: moinho. Surely one of the more magician words of Galicia, who has inspired so many legends, based on the sexual feats of the moinheiras (the she-millers) and on their skill when dancing the jig (to which they gave its name in Galician, moinheira, indeed). On the original meaning of this ending, it was very variable in Gaelic; it may be interpreted in Galaico-Portuguese as a diminutive ending (diminutive, but very positive and affective, unlike -elo and -elho that are rather contemptuous), coming probably from the feminine, one of its principal meanings in Gaelic (note for instance: rìgh / rìghinn -> rei / raihna in Modern Galician-Portuguese; king / queen).
Endings in -al, indicating space of a certain property or characterization. It is Indo-European, they also can be found in English (portal, principal, etc.), although the gallaic meaning is a little more specific and oriented towards a space or place. The most characteristic ones are related to the distributions #3 giving results of type -egal: pedregal (place with stones), Ortegal (this important end of the north of Galicia attests the difficulty of the gallaics to pronounce the first latinized words, as it is well-known celtic phonology was originally incompatible with the initial sound of p-, it must also refer to a (P)ortegal, harbor zone, just like the several Ortigueiras -of previous portegueiras- that can be found in the coastal and harbor zones) and, Portugal (this is, as all you know, the name of the most successful country of those ones that were created by the Gaedels, coming from their first place of concentration in Western Europe and that frequently has been misinterpreted. In fact, its meaning is likely, more or less, just as the previous ones, but a little more latinized: port or harbour like place or zone, and not Portus-Calem nor Portus-Callum as it has been tried and even come gathered in very old references -however, these alternatives may render a pretty match of words, that would back stimulate its mention from long time ago, and perhaps the minority that spoke Latin pronounced thus of some way against any etymologic justification, but we cannot hope that Etymology was a matter too much keen in the 5^th century, although we would expect it was in the 21^th-; possibly the popular speakers would pronounce Ortegal, as in the northern end; it alludes to the opening of river Douro in Porto, and others similar to this one that were marked in diminutive in order to differentiate them from the principal or original one: Portugalete in Muros, ídem next to Bilbao, etc., and also Sabugal, Cereixal, Caraminhal or Funchal. To compare to Donegal (interesting reference to a place with don or dun, hillforts), Comgal, Errigal, Balmoral, etc.
Endings related to the -l-; they are: in -il, -el, -alho/a, and more. The corresponding Scottish shapes would be -el (gaidheal, -eil, gael), and -aill (O'Domnaill, buabhall, -aill) and -ail (ceangail). They exist in practically all Indo-European languages, including, for example, Breton, French, etc. The exact correspondence of the Gaelic models is complicated, as it seems that there are Latin and even p-celtic interferences in the modern Galician solutions, in our opinion. The two first ones are of adjective meaning (examples: cantil, touril, carril, Caurel, Pimentel) and seem to be of traditional origin. They are interesting, because its space distribution seems to respond to a territorial discrimination as a result of the yet well-known presence of the britons of Maeloc bishop, phenomenon of extreme interest, in our opinion. To be true this hypothesis, the ones finished in -il would be Gallaic (as a result of a previous one -eil, in which the e disappears due to phonetic reasons) and the -el ones, Brythonic. Finally the third ending is absolutely extended with innumerable examples in both Galician an Gaelic and of traditional origin; its predominant meaning in modern Galician is the one of object related to the concept defined in the root of the word. Examples: cangalho, bodalha, poalho, in Galician; ceangail, amail, barail, in Gaelic. Note that when the last vowel is an a, it may be due to a modern feminine conjugation or, otherwise, originated from -ailean, with a plural meaning. Both meanings are alive in Galician; but the second one -the more traditional- is predominant, for instance: miunçalha (plural from of miunça = little parts or components of one thing).
Endings of territorial meaning, in palatal n: -onho/a, -anho/a. Scottish: -unn, -uinn; -ainn, -ann. They are Italo-Celtics and popular, in general, and must correspond to panceltic effects, because in the South of Italy (almost the only Romance place that can be isolated as completely safe from Celtic influences, and even there...it's not sure !) the change ni > nn or similar, does not take place (Catania, Campania, etc). Examples: Baronha, Bretonha, Coronha (of the former or original shape of Corunna) and Espanha (in Latin shape should be Espania, as in Alemania and Albania). Scottish: Breatunn, -uinn, Britain; Albainn, -ann, Scotland; etc. In Asturian, the diphthong in -ui- stays as -ue-, as we already know: Cabueñes, etc. Consequently, the correct Asturian shapes, corresponding to the Galician examples that we have seen must be: Barueña, Bretueña, Corueña, etc.
Finally we will indicate that there are other endings that are quite suspicious from this point of view, because they are not of erudite formation and/or they do not appear in other Romance languages and/or they appear associated to words of gallaic roots. It would be necessary to verify them by means of detailed studies more and with more resources. Of all of them, the most frequent would be: -endo (Oquendo, very present in old Irish under configurations as -end, -enda), -eso, -an (burrán, leilán, etc.), -onde (Baamonde, Ligonde, Taramundi; this is an ugly and impossible to pronounce orthographic deformation of the beautiful toponymy name Taramonde, that alludes to the location of the mythical stone of Lia Fail, in Tara, that shouts when the legitimate king takes seat on it, to compare with Lomond, etc.), -ito (with the demiconsonant -i- in diphthong: jeito or xeito, ito, teito, barbeito, noite, etc. The corresponding ending in gaelic, -chd, is amazingly productive: nochd, ochd, etc. The Gaelic generates some derived words in which the -ch- is already transformed into -i-), -and(o, e), -elhe (Camelhe, Vilavedelhe, likely coming from the nominative of the Gaelic desinence -eal, -eil), -ada (trapalhada, moinhada, empanada, etc. in Galician; riada, ruada, clannada, in Gaelic), -acha, and modernly also -acho (lobacho, garnacha, vivaracha, amigacho, etc., ending of colloquial use and diminutive meaning, from the unstressed ending -achan, -achain; examples: balachan, little lad; duineachan, little man, etc.; with the usual fall of the final unstressed -n), etc.

We must note also that there are many other endings in Galician-Portuguese, that are of sheer Latin origin, even in the more popular and traditional expressions of the language. The more usuals are: -(i)ço/a, -eto/a, -ón/oa, and maybe also -elo/a, as we have seen.

As we have seen, therefore, there are enough thematic endings conserved in Galician from gallaic times. Some of them may be considered almost equivalent to their Latin corresponding pairs, but in some others the Latin identification cannot be carried out unless truly grotesque deformations were admitted in the necessary evolutions; finally, in some cases, the equivalent Latin form simply does not seem to exist. On the other hand, as we have been able to verify, the distance between Gael models and the Galician ones is very small; in some cases simply a matter of inclusion of the vowel of support and in others not even that.

Finally, and before concluding the examination of the possible conserved characteristics that remain in modern Galician from the gallaic times, we will do some considerations about the verbal structure and the general morphology of the language. The verbs of Gallaic-Portuguese are very strange within the assembly of Romance languages. The principal elements from this point of view are the strong presence of the subjunctive or conjunctive mood, as well as the conjugation of the infinitive, question that the experts in Romance have not been able to explain within the system derived from Latin (and, in our opinion, could be easily explained from a Gallaic/Galician evolution perspective, as an ultracorrection or ultraextension, consequence of the adaptation of the Latin verbal endings in a linguistic environment that treated the infinitive as one more verbal tense, and not as a special one, as Latin did). Another enormously surprising aspect is the absence of times composed by means of the verb haver (=to have), Romance and Western European shape of absolutely general extension, that even the English has finished acquiring (he has come, you have eaten, etc.; to have done something, in general) and that exposes characteristically the true origin of Galicians and Asturians when they try to speak standard Spanish.

A singular characteristic of Gallaico-Portuguese shared with Gaelic (and Spanish) is the application of two verbs for the sense of to be : ser and estar (bi and tha or ta). The second one has all the aspect of being a coarse adaptation of the Gaelic verb ta, it is even in fact popularly pronounced thus along a large extent of Galicia and Asturias: tas ahí ? (by the Latin or pseudoLatin official: estás ahí?), tou (by the official estou). Similarly, in the verb ser (= bi, in Gaelic), the second and third persons of the present tense (the most frequent ones, and the more difficults for suplant by cultural Latin adaptations, hence) are és and é (the second person is the one with the -s ending in Galician, and not the third one as in English) what seems to be a semiphonetic adaptation of the original Gaelic is, also (we must remember here, the general tendency towards the change i > e), in Galician. Galician has many more things like these ones, exposing a past of deep linguistic disorientation (mental maranha to use a perfectly conserved gallaic word) and of desire of adaptation and normalisation towards the models that were believed as Latin, but totally mixed with important Gallaic analogical rests.

Another example in this sense can be, the (surprising, accidental ?) coincidence between the feminine Galician definite article "a" (according to traditional theses,"a" comes from the Latin demonstrative "illa" ) and the Gaelic "an" that would also condition the transformation of the gender of many words. As we have explained in the paragraph dedicated to phonetics, -n in end of unstressed word disappeared of the elocution long ago. Consequently "a" was the Gallaic version of the Gaelic "an" until the maranha arrived and originated "o" (the masculine form of the galician article) by analogy with the conjugation of the endings a/o in masculine/feminine which as well redistributed towards the masculine/feminine multiple words that in principle were of another gender. In fact, we think it is also possible that the creation of the masculine ending "o" was endogenous, because instead of "a", it is not Latin, not even Romance, for the Latin languages that are in contact with Galician. From this point of view, it can be considered that it does not exist if not in Galician, Castilian and their derived languages. If this is so, possibly it is directly or indirectly associated to the word "O" which, as we know, means man, Mr. (O'Hara, for example; in reality its initial meaning was the one of descendant or grandson) and is related to the masculine concept, therefore.

Other similar cases of confusion and evolution could have affected pronouns and prepositions. The personal pronoun of third person is "é" in gael. Supposing that this was the original form, the Galician corresponding could be created by analogy while hearing time and time again "the cultured" people (this kind of folks would be bilingual) talking about "ellum". Maranha and confusion product of the lack of references would do the rest. It was necessary to add a cultured -l at the end of é, specially when the society, in general, would be absolutely conscious of the "vulgar" Galician tendency to lose the pronunciation of the -l- in many words. This way, on the other hand, the polymorphism of this pronoun would also be explained because its delayed and artificial introduction would not be on time to arrive to generate homogenous criteria in the Galician society and thus we have currently él, ele, il, etc.

Related to the former considerations, the shape of many other suspicious pronouns may help in order to clarify these hidden links; for instance the case of the pronoun se and its phonetic variant si, the case of i (or y) in Asturian (=him, her, it, in dative; i means she, her, it, feminine in Scots Gaelic) or si (=her, in ancient Galician, maybe pronounced as she ?, written ssy, we must remember that si -pronounced she- means she in Gaelic, what suggests also the likely related English she connection) as can be perceived in this old Cantiga of Pero da Ponte : Vel que ousass' en preguntar / a quen me nunca preguntou, / per que me fez en ssy cuydar, / poys ela nunca en min cuydou. / E por esto lazero eu, / porque non poss'eu coyta dar, / a quen mi sempre coyta deu. Source: "Saverio Panunzio (ed.) (1992): Pero da Ponte. Poesías. Trad.: R. Mariño Paz. Vigo: Galaxia, pp. 82-84"; reference extracted from the excellent web site: Orbitus Latinus, www.orbilat.com, © Zdravko Batzarov. Finally there is also, in Spanish, the pronoun se, that in several combinations, preserves the value of him, her, in dative: quitárselo, se la doy, etc.

Similar mechanisms can be applied for the creation of the modern prepositions de, do, da, dos, das, dun, en, etc., or the pronouns lhe, o, that could start off with slight changes in their terminological senses of the gael ones de, do, dà, in (ancient Irish shape of an or ann), le, o, etc., and in some of them, as in the fundamental one "de", not even would need it.

And, in short, all this type of phenomena of confusion, vulgarisation, lack of understanding and false analogies, is what we call here as maranha effect (plural of sea; seas in gaelic, marannan). Maranha in the sense of the disorientation that was originated, as well as of mixture of diverse cultured and popular components and lack of references in front of an open ocean of possible ways to choose, on the inevitable necessity of maintenance, actualisation and adaptation that is present in any language.

Finally we must conclude, for those that wanted to try to contrast what is been said here, that the evolutions and etymological origins shown in books and published academic works are not in agreement with what we say now. According to our opinion, the usual explanations, which obey to the theories of the traditional Romance linguistics, result in quite complex phonetic evolutions and must be, therefore, at least uncertain. On the other hand, due to the proximity that exists between both Gallaic and Latin languages, it would always be possible to relate the etymologies of the words of the two languages (based on the common origins that invariably will be there) if the opportune distance is traveled backwards, in time and phonetic modifications (that end up becoming morphologic). But this way, it would even be possible to have tried to find the common origin of the present Galician morphologies in any other Indo-European language -for example in Swedish or in Sanskrit, if it was tried-, mainly if what we consider an incredible (in the sense of non credible) and fictitious instrumental concept is created: the so called vulgar Latin.

The base of the formulation of what is said about vulgar Latin stipulates that Gallaic must have disappeared, completely replaced by Latin, in a similar way as it happened with Gaelic in an important portion of Ireland and Scotland, caused by the advance of the English. That kind of Latin would not have been yet the classic shape of this language, but another one, very crude, spoken by soldiers, farmers, slaves, etc.; modern Galician would come, therefore, from the evolution of that vulgar Latin to the present time. In short, we firmly believe that things did not happen thus, or anyway could have happened partially thus, but if the concept of vulgar Latin is replaced by the one of vulgar Gallaic. In fact, if we accepted this (that the vulgar language was Gallaic and not Latin), we think that most of what traditional explanations propose, could be quite likely and permissible by any updated analysis of the question that was eventually made.

Let us take for example, based on which we have explained, the expression a moinheira (=the -feminine- miller). According to traditional explanations, this is 100 % evolved of Latin origin and it is explained the way we will describe next. For the beginning we must start with the molinaria expression that, as may be observed, lacks of definite article, because Latin did not have this grammar feature. The first alteration that would occur, due to the vulgar Latin, would be the one of adding the demonstrative illam that would be this way the germ of the future Romance definite article. Therefore, we would have that supposedly the people of Galicia happened to say illam molinaria (=that -feminine- miller). Next, by means of phonetic changes of reduction of consonants (this one is, in our opinion, the only credible facet of the explanation), -m in end of word and intervocalic -l- disappeared, and, on the other hand -ll- > l-. We have then ila moinaria now. Next, the i passes to e (this also could be credible) and in molinaria the i and the r swap their positions; we already have ela molinaira. Next, there was a new vocal change: the e of ela disappears and the a of molinaira becomes e; it is already la molineira. A new disappearance of the l- and an unexpected change to palatal of the -n- will finally give way to a moinheira. OK. In the next paragraph we will see what could be the evolutionary explanation offered by the Gallaic.

In Gallaic we would begin more or less from an muilinneir, that is the shape that the Scottish Gaelic can provide to us (in the sense of person responsible or owner of the mill, and not the agent of the milling work, there is a little semantic difference between both concepts, and the grammar corresponding constructions also. For the first one the word is muilleir -person who mills-; in Galician it would be moereiro -person who moe-). As we know, the diphthong -ui- would be associated to an -o-, the -n- in not stressed syllable disappeared precociously in Gallaic, and -nn- is pronounced as -nh-. Thus, we already have got a molinheir. Next, being a feminine word, the Galician conjugation provides the vowel of support - a, and also we know that -l- disappears; and here we are: a moinheira. Easy, right ?. In short, we think that any commentary is unnecessary.

While we wait for more data that could allow to perfect our knowledge on such as complex problematic as this one is, our provisional conclusion is the following one, trying to look for an explanation between the alternatives that advise to radically reject the possibility of existence of the vulgar Latin and the ones that would explain the stuff based on the conservation of Gallaic:

During the late imperial age there is no doubt that Gallaic was continuously spoken and was predominant as the most frequent language, at least from the demographic point of view. But, maybe, there was also a vulgar Latin, which was also partially understood by the Gallaics, and shared with other Romance areas, spoken by the low layers of the romanized population: urban slaves, little traders, soldiers, etc., even having many of them a consciously bilingual condition. The use of this language had to be essential for many of them, mainly for whom, because of their type of work, had to take care of a certain geographic mobility within the borders of the empire. This way, the real situation would be of bilingualism (or, if we also counted the official Latin, even trilingualism), and this situation of bilingualism moved more than partially towards the Gallaic, when the empire finished. But in the proceeding phase, Gallaic had been enough mixed with vulgar Latin and, of some way, the mixture did not finished its dissolving process totally, until many hundreds of years later. This could explain the predominance of the linguistic, ideological and religious gallaic world in the rural and separated scopes and, on the contrary, the one of the vulgar Latin in the more urbanized and connected with the rest of the Romance universe areas.

And, in short, we insist that if the substitution of the concept of vulgar Latin by the one of vulgar Gallaic was accepted, all these difficulties will disappear. The rest seems obvious to us. This way the apparent stumbling block of the lack of correspondence between etymologies and tested evolutions could be saved, and also the rest of the traditional considerations. The vulgar gallaic can be compared this way, from the point of view of its functional situation and subsequent evolution to the Anglo-Saxon during the Norman occupation. As is well-known this language, predecessor of the present English, underwent deep changes of grammar simplification and lexical alteration during this phase. In fact we think that the structure of the English was affected in such an accused way, in addition, to the pressure of the French of the Normans, because the Anglo-Saxon was put under multiple influences, perhaps too many for a language that was not accepted by the social leaders and that included its own dialectal variants, product of the different contributions that in fact had formed the Anglo-Saxon, and finally, by the Viking influence and, very important also, the pressure and influence of Gaelic -we also believe that this was much more strong of which usually has been valued, but this is another subject-. Following this considerations, the results at the end of the two processes, may also be valued as comparable.

Through an analogous way to what happened with Anglo-Saxon, Gallaic ended up losing a lot of its lexicon and its capacities of inflection, specially the declension, as we have seen. Surely also, Gallaic was forced to fit in a phenomenon similar to which the linguists denominate Italo-Celtic “koine” (expression used initially by the Greeks, referred to the artificial dialect used in order to unify the different ones they spoke, that was created in the denominated Hellenistic time), but the words never were said or expressed in other fashion but the Gallaic one. If it was necessary to admit the word estuariu, for example, which used the speakers of Latin, this was immediately adapted to esteir(o), in agreement with the patterns that we have seen and, this way, the word was thus transformed at once and not put under an otherwise impossible process of evolution until being able to acquire the required shape. Is this way, indeed, as almost all the languages usually assimilate the neologisms and barbarisms they have to cope with. Therefore, the process of adaptation to popular language, instead of passing many gradual changes as it has been explained until now, was in fact sudden, without any process of phonetic evolution, but a rather morphologic change, which we insist, had to be practically instantaneous in temporal terms. And, from the word at issue already incorporated to the Gallaic, it continued there with minimum variations so and as it was, until today.

On the other hand, the gallaic words followed their course and normal evolution and thus, for example, rì, that in fact was pronounced approximately like rii, originated rei (king). Something perfectly credible and normal, completely different of the complex evolutions that are explained to describe that rei comes from regis, as is claimed by traditional theories. In a similar way, a preceding Lucus (Augusta) shape never existed for the name of the city of Lugo, but rather on the contrary; Lucus was adapted from Lugh(o) and, also, there was no former Portus-Callum or Portu-Calem before Portugal, but possibly a humble (P)ortegal, and, in short, there was not anything but a pretension of construction of a past that really, never had existed.

Later, the increase of Latin speakers and the depth of the social intrusion of this language in the Gallaic society were allowing that even the words of the basic vocabulary were replaced. And, finally, the decisive increase in number of individuals that spoke Latin (or, better, of the ones that had a bilingual condition) produced a phenomenon of structural dissolution and morphologic simplification that lead to the disappearance of practically all the structures of of the language, being only partially replaced by some of the Latin ones (mainly in verbal conjugation, that is almost the unique one that is conserved, of those of Latin origin). It must be noted the singular parallelism the mentioned example of English offers to us, where, but in some residual details, the old synthetic Anglo-Saxon inflections have been suppressed and replaced by much more simplified features, of a more analytical than synthetic type, as is the case of Galician with respect to the old Gallaic.

Also, as in the case of English, finally the social and economically dominant language lost its power, and the Gallaic, although yet rather deteriorated, (almost) recovered its position as language of absolutely general use in the galician society. Undoubtedly, this moment or process had to take off when the Swabian conquest, the year 409 that, according to the historical sources, and ended up in a harmonic regrouping of the Swabian-Gallaic society around objectives of common interest materialized, in agreement with the bitterest facet of the old Gallaic customs and traditions, in the numerous expeditions of aggression they made against the rest of territories and folks of the peninsula. It must be made notice, also, that the Germanic folks (Swabians or Visigoths) caused some (attempts of) linguistic changes in the Gallaic lexicon, singularly the substitution of rei (=little king, chieftain, currently king) by riz (king, surely pronounced as ric) or the toponymy of type briga, that was germanized in berg (ej: Bergantinhos, Bragança; nevertheless, the little toponymy that had been transformed into -bria or -bre, -we must remember that the intervocalic g was lost frequently in Galician- could be conserved; examples: Dumbria -from *Dunbriga, Coimbra -from Conimbriga -, etc.). These modifications were enough extended and affected almost all the Iberian Peninsula.

And, in short, although as we have said, most of the changes might have been completed for the date of the Swabian conquest, singularly in the most populated, urban and influential zones, that were the ones included between the rivers Minho and Douro (North of current Portugal), in the more separated zones, nevertheless, the process could be much more slow; this can be observed, for example, in the most Northern and Western regions of Galicia, where the Latin toponymy is very sparse and, in addition, many of their specific dialectal particularities seem to aim at a survival of original gallaic characteristics (for example in the phonetic phenomenon of the gheada). In fact, it might be that until advanced the second millennium, the speakers of these zones could have conserved most of the basic gallaic system of inflection. Future investigations will be able, without a doubt, to allow us to improve our perception on the facts, and according to our opinion they will confirm the appreciation that we have made here, or at least, that is what we believe on the subject.

The progressive backwards movement of the lexicon and structural characteristics, as well as the increase of the confusion, as far as the need of arranging the linguistic models to follow the rules considered as the good ones to increase the suitable use and social yield of the language, had to increase, with time. On the other hand, the leaders of the Galician society would feel much surprise and enough frustration with the strange configuration of Galician, even with relation to the rest of the Romance languages, also “incorrect” undoubtedly, but not as much as Galician, evidently. The large amount of divergences on lexicon, phonetics and morphology with respect to the latinized models would be perceived, from this point of view, as something almost shameful, for the cultivated classes. This is so much so, that Gallaic-Portuguese did not get to be used, for example, in written documents until much later (almost 300 years) of the time at which documents in the neighboring languages began to be compiled. And even, when it began to happen, certain models were used a little bit as a borrowing from the Asturian or Castilian ones, that would appear as a little more correct and acceptable from the point of view of the few that knew writing, at that time. As an example that illustrates what we say, even the independent Portuguese, for example, respectfully continued calling their king by the Asturian way, that included the definite article “el”, much more homological to Latin models than the “vulgar” “o” of the popular elocution (“el rei” and not “o rei”, “= the king”), and that has even continued so to the present time. In certain way, it seems necessary to try to understand what the cultivated gallaics would feel in front of this type of annoyances, whose cause was to them absolutely impossible to explain. Sure, they felt themselves a little bit as condemned to be the ugly duckling of the world of the Romance. Perhaps today we could finally understand that the troubles suffered by the poor duckling were caused to him because he was not a duck, in fact, as in the Andersen's story.

We must also conclude that the processes followed by English and Galician (this can be also applied for other Romance languages) demonstrate that the classic Indo-European dialects accumulated an excessive grammatical complexity, that were not suitably remunerated by the benefits or compensations of expressive wealth they offered. It originated, therefore, the accumulation of simplification potentials that were freed in the presence of the stressed situation that the mentioned languages had to cross and, for that reason, when they reached the exit of the tunnel, the structures of their capabilities of inflection had been remarkably reduced, as we have said.

In fact, in addition, the unharmed portions of Gallaic, that are many more more than it seems at first sight, are often unrecognizable, because of normative traditions totally distanced, and are disguised by orthographic conventions completely different from the Gael ones. To establish a comparison, Gaelic would be like one of those historical cities that have maintained their aspect and the antiquity of their constructions, so and as they were many centuries ago. Galician would be like one more a modernized city, but in which the old layout of the original streets can still be distinguished, as well as many remarkable buildings that have been conserved. In order to illustrate this subject, we will next show a phrase that exemplifies how texts of nearly 100 % of gallaic content can be completed, and also tries to illustrate the aspect the writing had had if the spelling had been similar to the gaelic one, and had reflected, therefore, the practical totality of the phonetic content of the elocution:

Normative: A luz de Lugo está moito meiga.

Popular, gallaic: Ta moito meigha a luth de Lugho.

English: The light of Lugo (Lugh) is (now) very cheerful.

This example, perhaps a little forced, can help to illustrate what we try to express.

In order to finish the conclusion of all this mare magnum, of all this maranha or marannan, it seems to us conclusive that present popular Galician is not a Latin dialect but a Gallaic one, very influenced by latinized pressure. It must be considered thus, from a genetic point of view, of conservation of its phonologic structure and an important part of its inflections (the endings of words that we analyzed, for example) and original lexicon. The same can be said, for the same reasons, referred to the whole Gallaic-Portuguese language, even considering the later evolutions that are separating progressively the modern Portuguese of Gallaic original models. In the case of Asturian, there is also a majority of Gallaic content that, surprising, sometimes includes elements that have not been conserved, at least on a majority way, in general, in Gallaic-Portuguese (the gentilices -names related to places-, for example). In fact nothing impedes the Gael transplanted to the islands could have been more similar to the Asturian than to Galician, because there are several morphologic characteristics in which Asturian and Gael are jointly against Galician: the conservation of intervocalic -l- (it disappears, in Galician), the preservation of the ui/ue diphthong instead of the new broad -o-, the frequent loss of the intervocalic -d- (Galician maintains it with firmness), in fact, even, the Gael disposition of -nn- in end of word, is not very clear if it follows the norm or the Asturian, or the Galician one. And, in the rest of the questions that the Galician conserves itself in a more stable fashion than Asturian (diphthongs ei, oi, ou, general structure, lexicon, etc.), it may have happened simply by its lesser exhibition to the advance and the influence of Latin, because of its separated and isolated geographic situation. In fact, there is, for example, a small zone in the West of Asturias (between the rivers Navia and Nalón) that has preserved all the complete collection of diphthongs, the characteristically Galician, and the Asturian ones. In the case of the Castilian (official Spanish) it specially seems to us that the Gallaic influence has been very intense, on the north strips and the west, mainly in Cantabria and Andalusia, in general, although it would be necessary to study the other contributions that, as the verified of the Celtiberian, and the one of preIndo-European origin -Euskera and also ancient Astur, Cantabro, etc.- (in addition to the tremendously obvious one of Latin, much more intense that the one that underwent Galician, naturally), can have lead to other results, as we have already commented. We also think that it is to study a powerful mutual influence English-Gael, notable in many aspects, as for example in the verbal conjugation and the personal pronouns, first of all.

Old Gallaic is therefore here in truth, mocking, masqueraded behind the apparent and deceptive Latin similarity of many of its expressions, on the one hand, and partially buried under other ways and words that, this time yes, must be considered totally Latin, that went progressively replacing the Gallaic ones. This seems an absolutely strange concept to maintain, mainly after having listened time and time again admitted by everybody, expert and profane, that Galician was a Latin language. But in short, it may be that the Galicians had the stuff well hidden and as they are very meigos, very mìogh, very sly, did not wanted to tell it anybody; perhaps this is not, in the end, but another gigantic joke, absolutely gallaic, of those that they do to us sometimes, when we are not very clever in realizing the stuff. Umha caralhada mais?.=========

Conclusion

The situation of Galicia separated from the Spanish channels of communication and extremely difficult to reach, caused that traditionally its functionality and economic viability have been more similar to the one of an island than a continental zone. Perhaps for that reason since navigation became possible by the Atlantic, its population has been quite more similar to those of the true Atlantic islands than to a continental one. From 1100 B.C. (?), Galicia already experienced the colonization of its territory by the components of the denominated culture of the Atlantic bronze, completely different to what happened in the Central and Eastern Iberian peninsula. When Paddy Moloney, in his Santiago disc, asked himself if the Galician piper Carlos Núñez could be considered the seventh chieftain, it could also have raised if perhaps Galicia could be the fourth British virtual island (the third position belongs by own right to the peninsula of Brittany). Nevertheless, the conquests of Breogan and Mil deeply altered this regime of things. Since then, the islands, and even the Iberian peninsula, would be a species of reflection of Galicia, and will create the three greater ultramarine empires that have ever existed. Good school the one of the Phoenicians and good advantage the one of the Gaethae, that amalgam of Celts, Keltoi, Gallaicoi, fortune hunters, at heart perhaps only humble cores in search of a refuge, of a home to find a little peace, that negotiated a presentation letter with the Scythes, the fierce soldiers of the steppe, to initiate one of the most amazing journeys that the humanity has been able to know.

The future of Gaithegal

Gaedel's History is, on the other hand, the one of people that have had to be always justifying the way they were to ignorant but bully people, that also forced them to justify themselves. Needed of deep handles, of concepts solidly propped up, they have not been too in favor to accept sudden changes or snob fashions to use. This way, they had to explain first why they were not Greek, and soon, why Gallaic (this had become shameful condition, it was necessary to deny it) next, why not Roman or Latin (it was necessary to try it), or at least, spoke a Latin or a descending of Latin language (it was necessary to look like it), next, why they were so pagan and why followed Priscilian (all of it, after nearly obtained the reinvention of the Christianity, with the Trinity and the divinity of Mary as adapted quota of Celtic proportionality to the bases of the common faith), why they did not accept the customs, dresses and, in short, why they did not want to be protestants, next, why did not want to be English, why they insisted on dressing skirts (this subject, for example, has been discussed over and over again, until the tongue of some folks had become bare of as much speaking and speculating on an absolutely simple subject: it is the more appropriate dress for the combat of infantry, fundamentally in the time of the sword, in fact these kilts can be seen in the old statues of gallaic soldiers even with the rhombic tartan engraving in the stone), why are they so impertinent and noisy, always singing, clapping, stamping and bothering with their bagpipes (also this bother is tremendous, mainly against the Scottish, they are practically forced to confess that bagpipes are in fact a foreign instrument, not older than the XVth century, all it against the more dazzling evidence that aims that, in fact, all the name of the instrument and its zone of vitality fundamentally agree with the Gaedel area, and cannot be explained otherwise, but well associated from almost the origin of all the stuff), why they are so superstitious and, in short, even now, why they are not so Celts as it was to be desirable (indeed, their culture was in principle essentially of Hallstatt type -old Celtic and not La Tène, that is the one that now is considered as classical Celtic-) and why are, in short, the ugly duckling of all the Indo-European family.

But now it seems that the duckling are growing a bit, perhaps becoming swan, as the sons of Lir. The Gaidels, with the Irish at the top, are finally -no previous prognosis could have anticipated it- making their culture profitable, a facet that in previous passages of their vital trajectory had been counter-productive to them. In a world where the production in mass is carried out by machines, and where the added value, and the power, therefore, is more and more located in the world of the conceptual shapes and the extensions of the imagined compositions, there is no barrier that can resist them. In the uncertain scene that waits for us, when the trees do not grow if they are not artificially cultivated, the plants find their genetics monstrously manipulated, the cows eat either the more hormones than grass and the beaches do not have the more alternative that the one to progress as sewers or urbanized suburbs, the future belongs completely to the virtual reality. The Gaedels already know, since a long time ago, that it always remains unalterable, and it deserves to be trusted, because they also realize very well that the material world is too terrible, mainly for a bunch of dreamer soldiers, that had to cope almost every day, face to face, with death. But death does not exist, in fact, all the Gaedels know that it is no more but a change of dimension. The life is drawn, created, sketched, from music and geometry, architecture and plastic, and nobody can be compared with the Gaedels in these fields. The Gaedel virtues that seemed to leave them helpless in the past, they that perhaps participated direct or indirectly of all the empires that were known, from the Egyptian, the Scythian, the Phoenician, the Carthaginian, the Roman, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English. They always felt a little disoriented, as the empires seemed to crumble in their hands, without any explanation on how could that happen to them, the best soldiers that have ever been. Possibly, those same characteristics, that made them be so attentive, until the exhaustion, by the really tragic passages of life, by those that really deserve the existence, made them also appear a little distracted and disoriented in front of the simple and intranscendent questions of day to day. But, we insist, things are changing vertiginously and the sons of Mil are again arranging themselves to cope with the current evildoers, real or imagined.

Epilogue

The story is finished. Today, where the maranha dawned calm, we are clearly perceiving the characters who have excited the imagination of the Gaedels. Slowly, they are appearing ahead in our mind. There they go, orderly, Gaedel or Gaythelos Glas, holding the hand of his wife Scota, the beautiful daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt, goes Breogan, the hero, with his sons Ith and Mil, goes the God Lugh with his spear, Dagda with his cauldron and Nuada with his sword. Also arriving are Macha, quicker than the wind, Cu Chulainn and the sons of Lir, the treacherous Tuatha De, with their evil druids. Later, the beautiful Inés, who reigned after her death, and king Sebastião; all we go on with waiting for his return. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Kenneth McAlpin with her wife, the beautiful pictish princess, William Wallace, and king Robert the Bruce with his axe, queen Mary, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Maria Pita, the pirate Morgan, the explorer Livingstone who returned to the sources of the Nile, 2000 years after Gaythelos, count Dracula, Holmes & Watson, El Marqués de Bradomín, A Garota de Ipanema, Mafalda & Manolito, the quiet man, and the long, long, way to the shrine of Saint James apostle, and his alter ego the heretic Priscilian; Nessie, Saint Andrew with his cross, John F. Kennedy. All of them observe us with the glance of meigo, of mìogh, of sly, among glad, mocking, malicious, or enchanted; dancing tirelessly the jig, a moinheira, the polca, the reel, accompanied by great, enormous, gaethas; enormous piob mór, enormous pipes, stamping even until falling laios, falling laigheil, falling K.O., to feel themselves a little bit leilans, a little more leigeil, a little more free, among glasses and glasses of uisce and steams of queimada.

THE END

Mail to acarbonelllombardero@gmail.com to send constructive comments, bugs, patches, etc.

TODO:

-Investigate Rumania. The origin of all the stuff will be there. It is necessary to find out if Dracula danced the jig.

-More language research. The Asturian is a relatively unknown language, with many potential surprises, for instance.

-Investigate the Galician-Portuguese verbal system and distribution. The same with the prefixes of common words.

The following Bibliography was consulted to write this paper:

A cultura castrexa, by Francisco Calo Lourido; Edicións A Nosa Terra, 1993, (ISBN 84-604-5909-8), an explanation of the hillforts's culture, from an archaeologist's point of view; in Galician language.

A romanización de Galicia, by Felipe Arias Vilas; Edicións A Nosa Terra, 1992, (ISBN 84-604-3279-3), a description of the incorporation of Galicia to the roman culture; in Galician language.

Historia de Galicia, by Francisco Carballo and others; Edicións A Nosa Terra, 1991, (ISBN 84-404-97-42-3), an introduction to the History of Galicia; in Galician language.

Los celtas: Hispania y Europa, by Martín Almagro Gorbea and others; Actas, Madrid 1993, (ISBN 84-87863-20-5), papers of the summer courses dedicated to the celts in 1992 by the university of Madrid but without any references to the gallaics; in Spanish, with summaries in English.

Los celtíberos, by Alberto José Lorrio, publication of the University of Madrid, 1997, (ISBN 84-7908-335-2), a description of the celtiberian civilisation, without references to the gallaics; in Spanish, with summary in English.

Le guide de la Bretagne, by Gwenc'Hlan le Scouëzec, Édition Beltan, 1989, (ISBN 2-905939-12-5), little encyclopedia about Brittany; in French.

Histoire de Bretagne, by Henri Poisson and Jean Pierre le Mat, Coop Breizh, 1993, (ISBN 2-903708-15-0), introduction to the History of Brittany; in French.

Diccionario Galego-Castelán, by X.L. Franco Grande, Editorial Galaxia, 1968-1980, (ISBN 84-7154-024-X), Galician - Spanish dictionary.

Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, by J. Almeida Costa and A. Sampaio e Melo, Porto Editora Lda., 1979; no ISBN, useful Portuguese dictionary, includes etymologies of the words.

Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise, by Xavier Delamarre, Editions Errance, Paris, 2001, (ISBN 2 87772 198 1, ISNN 0982-2720), the most recent lexical compilation in celtic lexicography. An indispensable reference.

Curso de Portugués: Questões de Gramática, Noções de Latim, 5ª; Edição; by Américo Areal and others, Edições ASA, 1980; no ISBN, small but excellent Portuguese grammar, including etymologies and a lot of useful information about the origin of the language, from the traditional point of view, of course. In Portuguese.

Diccionario de uso del Español, by María Moliner, Editorial Gredos, 1991; (ISBN 84-249-1344-2), useful Spanish dictionary, includes etymologies of the words.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman; (ISBN 0-582-55608-2), English dictionary.

Geriadur Bihan Brezhoneg-Galleg Galleg-Brezhoneg, Mouladurioù Hor Yezh, 1993, (ISBN 2-86863-081-2), Breton - French and French - Breton little dictionary.

Diccionario Ilustrado Latino-Español Español-Latino, by José María Mir, SPES, Barcelona 1969, no ISBN, Latin - Spanish and Spanish - Latin dictionary.

Historia de España 2, colonizaciones y formación de los pueblos prerromanos (1200-218 a.C.), by Ángel Montenegro and others, Editorial Gredos, 1989, (ISBN 84-249-1386-8), Prerroman Spanish History, some references to the gallaics; in Spanish.

Historia de España, I Introducción, primeras culturas e Hispania Romana, by Manuel Tuñón de Lara and others, Editorial Labor Galaxia, 1983, (ISBN 84-335-9421-4), first steps of the history of Spain, none or very little reference to the gallaics; in Spanish.

A History of Scotland, by J. D. Mackie, Penguin 1991, (ISBN 0-14-013649-5), introduction to the History of Scotland. In English.

History of Scotland, by Cliff Hanley, Lomond Books, (ISBN 0-86124-299-8), a graphical introduction to the History of Scotland, with many pretty photographs. In English.

The messianic legacy, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, Jonathan Cape Ltd., spanish translation by Jordi Beltrán, Ediciones Martínez Roca, S.A., 1987, (ISBN 84-270-1112-1), interesting investigation about the origins of Christianity, including some references about the crucial role that the Gaels played in this subject.

Web pages with useful information on the subject, consulted to write the page:

http://www.ceantar.org/

This page includes some interesting links to on-line gaelic grammars and dictionaries, specially the MacFarlane's one that has been the base of the gaelic lexical references of this paper.

http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MF2/index.html

Here is the base of the lexicography references of this paper. The web page references are:

MacFarlane's (Scottish-) Gaelic-English dictionary

Out of copyright.

Keyed in and verified at Sabhal Mór Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Island of Skye, by Caoimhín P. Ó Donnaíle and Ruth Melton.

HTML version by John T. McCranie, San Francisco State University.

Prepared for the use of learners of the Gaelic language

by Malcolm MacFarlane

Eneas MacKay, Bookseller

43 Murray Place, Stirling. 1912.

http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/index.html

This is the link to a very fine version of the MacBain's dictionary, that was also very useful for us. References:

MacBain, Alexander

Gairm Publications, 1982

Published by Gairm Publications, 29 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6BZ

Tel. 041-221 1971

Printed by Clark Constable (1982) Let, Edinburgh

ISBN 0 901771 68 6

1st edition - 1896

2nd edition (revised) - 1911

Photolitho Reprint of 1911 edition - 1982

Keyed in by Caoimhín P. Ó Donnaíle, Sabhal Mór Ostaig.

HTML version by John T. McCranie, San Francisco State University.

http://members.aol.com/lochlan2/lebor.htm

Excellent compilation of the Leabhar Gabhala Earrainn in English language, by the members of the clann McLochlainn or McLoughlin (many spellings are possible here). Site maintained by John D. McLaughlin.

http://www.esatclear.ie/~pirrakas/mil.htm

Interesting information about the Irish refugees, that settled in Spain the after the battle of Kinsale.