Oie Houney Or Hop Tu Naa

[Albert Tatlock]

"Fin" comes from Latin.

I thought he came from Finland.

[Newsbot]

The Isle of Man's annual Hop Tu Naa celebrations pass without trouble after a warning by police.

 

Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/europe/7704867.stm

[Freggyragh]

Oie Houney means 'Eve of Sauin. Hop Tu Naa is the name for the festivities that take place on Oie Houney.

 

Sauin, in Manx orthography, or 'Samhain' in Irish/Scottish orthography is the Gaelic god of the dead.

 

The Irish orthography (spelling system) indicates that it is from 'Sam fuin' - the 'sam' part being the Ancient Celtic word that gave rise to English 'summer' and the 'fuin' part meaning 'sunset' or 'end' and the origin of European words such as French 'fin' and English 'finite'. I suppose that a reasonable translation for Oie Houney is 'Eve of the End of Summer'.

 

 

"Fin" comes from Latin. It's nonsense to claim the origin is Celtic.

 

S

 

Read again, I am not claiming the origin of 'fin' is Celtic. The origin I would guess lies in Proto Indo-European. I would not claim that the word's origin is Celtic just because there are forms of Celtic that pre-date Latin by millennia, and we know that Latin culture was predated by the Continental Celtic 'Urnfield', Halstatt and La Tène cultures. The oldest written language family in Europe that still has spoken forms is Celtic. The Leptonic Celtic language (spoken in Northern Italy between 700BC and 400Bc) is where you may find the first recorded example of 'fin', but it is probably much older than that, as it has cognates in so many Indo-European languages.

 

Alternatively, I suppose you could just assume it was made up by Romans just before they decided to bring slavery to the rest of Europe.

[Sebrof]

Oie Houney means 'Eve of Sauin. Hop Tu Naa is the name for the festivities that take place on Oie Houney.

 

Sauin, in Manx orthography, or 'Samhain' in Irish/Scottish orthography is the Gaelic god of the dead.

 

The Irish orthography (spelling system) indicates that it is from 'Sam fuin' - the 'sam' part being the Ancient Celtic word that gave rise to English 'summer' and the 'fuin' part meaning 'sunset' or 'end' and the origin of European words such as French 'fin' and English 'finite'. I suppose that a reasonable translation for Oie Houney is 'Eve of the End of Summer'.

 

 

"Fin" comes from Latin. It's nonsense to claim the origin is Celtic.

 

S

 

Read again, I am not claiming the origin of 'fin' is Celtic.

 

"The Irish orthography ...indicates that it is from 'Sam fuin' - ...the 'fuin' part meaning 'sunset' or 'end' and the origin of ..... words such as French 'fin.........'".

 

I've just read it again and it still looks as though you were claiming that the origin of "fin" is Celtic.

 

 

The origin I would guess lies in Proto Indo-European.

 

Perhaps, but you could say that about a lot of words. Problem is, there is no written record of PI-E, so who can say.

 

The oldest written language family in Europe that still has spoken forms is Celtic.

 

Perhaps, but not relevant. It is written forms that concern us.

 

The Leptonic Celtic language (spoken in Northern Italy between 700BC and 400Bc) is where you may find the first recorded example of 'fin', but it is probably much older than that, as it has cognates in so many Indo-European languages.

 

"Probably" is not very convincing. The roots of Latin go back much further than 700BC, and it is unlikely (and impossible to prove) that the Italic languages were descended from Celtic.

 

I don't think your assumptions do the Celtic revival movement any favours. Whilst I am all in favour of promoting the study of Celtic culture and history, I don't think improbable and unprovable claims further the cause. Rather, they suggest a lack of rigorous scholarship.

 

S

[Freggyragh]

QUOTE

The origin I would guess lies in Proto Indo-European.

 

Perhaps, but you could say that about a lot of words. Problem is, there is no written record of PI-E, so who can say.

 

Read again - my rationale for the conjecture is that the word in question has cognates in so many Indo-European languages, particularly in the oldest languages. P-IE is a theoretical construction, constructed from the oldest known forms of language with multiple cognates.

 

"The Irish orthography ...indicates that it is from 'Sam fuin' - ...the 'fuin' part meaning 'sunset' or 'end' and the origin of ..... words such as French 'fin.........'".

 

I've just read it again and it still looks as though you were claiming that the origin of "fin" is Celtic.

 

Old Irish 'fuin' is Celtic. It means 'sunset' or 'end' in Old Irish, it is cognate with 'Welsh 'pen' ('phenn' in aspirated form), Breton 'penn'/phenn' and Gaulish 'penno'/'phenno'. Gaulish was the pre-invasion language of what is now modern France. It would not be nonsense to suggest that either Latin 'finis', Breton 'phenn' or Gaulish 'phenno' gave rise to French 'fin'. It would be odd to suggest the French learnt the word 'fin' from the Irish, but that is not what I was saying at all, I was not saying that the Irish came up with the word, but that this word, in various forms, spelt in various ways, is very old, certainly older than Latin, and its origins lie in P-IE.

 

It is written forms that concern us.

 

Whoever you mean by 'us' it is certainly not linguists. As it happens, the examples I used are all in written form, in case you didn't notice, you are reading this thread.

 

"Probably" is not very convincing. The roots of Latin go back much further than 700BC, and it is unlikely (and impossible to prove) that the Italic languages were descended from Celtic.

 

Are you Vinnie K in disguise? Are you trying to say I am claiming Cisalpine Gaulish as the progenitor of the Italic branch of Indo-European? You are creating an argument and then attacking it.

 

At the end of the day, I was only trying to shed a bit of light on the meaning of Oie Houney and its almost incredibly ancient roots. Why do you feel the need to attack when you clearly know very little about the subject?

 

edited for spelling

[Sebrof]

QUOTE

The origin I would guess lies in Proto Indo-European.

 

Perhaps, but you could say that about a lot of words. Problem is, there is no written record of PI-E, so who can say.

 

Read again - my rationale for the conjecture is that the word in question has cognates in so many Indo-European languages, particularly in the oldest languages. P-IE is a theoretical construction, constructed from the oldest known forms of language with multiple cognates.

 

"The Irish orthography ...indicates that it is from 'Sam fuin' - ...the 'fuin' part meaning 'sunset' or 'end' and the origin of ..... words such as French 'fin.........'".

 

I've just read it again and it still looks as though you were claiming that the origin of "fin" is Celtic.

 

Old Irish 'fuin' is Celtic. It means 'sunset' or 'end' in Old Irish, it is cognate with 'Welsh 'pen' ('phenn' in aspirated form), Breton 'penn'/phenn' and Gaulish 'penno'/'phenno'. Gaulish was the pre-invasion language of what is now modern France. It would not be nonsense to suggest that either Latin 'finis', Breton 'phenn' or Gaulish 'phenno' gave rise to French 'fin'. It would be odd to suggest the French learnt the word 'fin' from the Irish, but that is not what I was saying at all, I was not saying that the Irish came up with the word, but that this word, in various forms, spelt in various ways, is very old, certainly older than Latin, and its origins lie in P-IE.

 

It is written forms that concern us.

 

Whoever you mean by 'us' it is certainly not linguists. As it happens, the examples I used are all in written form, in case you didn't notice, you are reading this thread.

 

"Probably" is not very convincing. The roots of Latin go back much further than 700BC, and it is unlikely (and impossible to prove) that the Italic languages were descended from Celtic.

 

Are you Vinnie K in disguise? Are you trying to say I am claiming Cisalpine Gaulish as the progenitor of the Italic branch of Indo-European? You are creating an argument and then attacking it.

 

At the end of the day, I was only trying to shed a bit of light on the meaning of Oie Houney and its almost incredibly ancient roots. Why do you feel the need to attack when you clearly know very little about the subject?

 

edited for spelling

 

I was correcting your erroneous assertion that the French word "Fin" came from Celtic. On the contrary, it is known to have come from Latin (and perhaps its antecedents). You now concede that your statement was conjecture rather than fact, and have adduced no evidence in support of it. Instead, there has been a smokescreen of irrelevance.

 

And it's a bit rich of you, after an elementary error like this, to suggest that I am the one who knows very little about the subject.

 

S

[Freggyragh]

QUOTE

The origin I would guess lies in Proto Indo-European.

 

Perhaps, but you could say that about a lot of words. Problem is, there is no written record of PI-E, so who can say.

 

Read again - my rationale for the conjecture is that the word in question has cognates in so many Indo-European languages, particularly in the oldest languages. P-IE is a theoretical construction, constructed from the oldest known forms of language with multiple cognates.

 

"The Irish orthography ...indicates that it is from 'Sam fuin' - ...the 'fuin' part meaning 'sunset' or 'end' and the origin of ..... words such as French 'fin.........'".

 

I've just read it again and it still looks as though you were claiming that the origin of "fin" is Celtic.

 

Old Irish 'fuin' is Celtic. It means 'sunset' or 'end' in Old Irish, it is cognate with 'Welsh 'pen' ('phenn' in aspirated form), Breton 'penn'/phenn' and Gaulish 'penno'/'phenno'. Gaulish was the pre-invasion language of what is now modern France. It would not be nonsense to suggest that either Latin 'finis', Breton 'phenn' or Gaulish 'phenno' gave rise to French 'fin'. It would be odd to suggest the French learnt the word 'fin' from the Irish, but that is not what I was saying at all, I was not saying that the Irish came up with the word, but that this word, in various forms, spelt in various ways, is very old, certainly older than Latin, and its origins lie in P-IE.

 

It is written forms that concern us.

 

Whoever you mean by 'us' it is certainly not linguists. As it happens, the examples I used are all in written form, in case you didn't notice, you are reading this thread.

 

"Probably" is not very convincing. The roots of Latin go back much further than 700BC, and it is unlikely (and impossible to prove) that the Italic languages were descended from Celtic.

 

Are you Vinnie K in disguise? Are you trying to say I am claiming Cisalpine Gaulish as the progenitor of the Italic branch of Indo-European? You are creating an argument and then attacking it.

 

At the end of the day, I was only trying to shed a bit of light on the meaning of Oie Houney and its almost incredibly ancient roots. Why do you feel the need to attack when you clearly know very little about the subject?

 

edited for spelling

 

I was correcting your erroneous assertion that the French word "Fin" came from Celtic. On the contrary, it is known to have come from Latin (and perhaps its antecedents). You now concede that your statement was conjecture rather than fact, and have adduced no evidence in support of it. Instead, there has been a smokescreen of irrelevance.

 

And it's a bit rich of you, after an elementary error like this, to suggest that I am the one who knows very little about the subject.

 

S

 

The French word 'fin' is the same word as the Celtic variants 'fuin', 'phenn' 'phenno' and the Latin 'finis' (the 'is' added in classical Latin to signify that it is a masculine noun). You are asserting that this noun is 'known to have come from Latin' - where is your evidence? French orthography (and Middle Irish) is based on Latin, but not it does not follow that every word in either language originated in Latin - that would be like claiming Nintendo 'comes from English' because it is written in English orthography. You seem to be claiming that 'fin' / 'fuin' / 'phenn' / 'phenno' all 'come from Latin' - this is a stunning claim that turns current thinking on Indo-European etymology on its head. You obviously know something about the origin of Indo-European languages that no other scholar has seriously considered. For example, do you also hold that all the Indo-European number words also 'come from Latin'? Let's take the example 'three' (English) / 'tree' (Gaelic, Manx Orthography) / 'trois' (French/ '३' (Devangari) / त्रि (sanskrit) три (Russian) - all essentially the same word, with slight variation in the vowel sound - do these also all 'come from Latin'? Did the people who erected the stones at Stonehenge have no word for 'sunset' or 'end' until the Romans showed up, and then, did they ditch whatever word they were using and adopt an entirely different Latin word, not only in Gaul, but in Brittany, Wales and Ireland too? Did the word 'fin' / 'fuin' / 'phenn' / 'phenno' never exist until the Romans started using it? Or is the very similar sound and identical meaning of each version entirely co-incidental and all current theories of Indo-European language development are therefore bogus because 'it is known to have come from Latin'. I admit I know very little of such ideas - could you suggest some further reading?

[Skeddan]

it is known to have come from Latin (and perhaps its antecedents). You now concede that your statement was conjecture rather than fact, and have adduced no evidence in support of it. Instead, there has been a smokescreen of irrelevance.

I don't know much more about this topic than I've gathered from dipping into Cavalli's Sforza's 'Languages, Genes and Peoples', but as I understand it it is 'conjecture' - not hard fast documentary evidence and 'fact', but language trees, modelling etymologies, stems, phonemic orthography, etc. - pretty much as Freggyragh is describing. This does not mean 'wild conjecture', but rather like reconstruction of an unknown face from a skull type conjecture.

 

Sebrof - you say "it is known to have come from Latin". This is giving it as a 'fact', but you have 'adduced no evidence in support of it'. I don't mean to be rude, but is your source some work from pre-1960s? (Such over confident assertions of 'fact' with Roman Empire centric view sound to me as if they come from an earlier era). If so, it might be worth revisiting what you suppose is 'known'. Otherwise could you give the references to where you get this 'fact' from.

[Sebrof]

The French word 'fin' is the same word as the Celtic variants 'fuin', 'phenn' 'phenno' and the Latin 'finis' (the 'is' added in classical Latin to signify that it is a masculine noun). You are asserting that this noun is 'known to have come from Latin' - where is your evidence?

 

OED. It stands for Oxford English Dictionary, as I expect you know. But there are many other sources that say the same.

 

French orthography (and Middle Irish) is based on Latin, but not it does not follow that every word in either language originated in Latin - that would be like claiming Nintendo 'comes from English' because it is written in English orthography. You seem to be claiming that 'fin' / 'fuin' / 'phenn' / 'phenno' all 'come from Latin' - this is a stunning claim that turns current thinking on Indo-European etymology on its head.

 

I didn't make that claim, and it is dishonest of you to suggest I did. I said Fin came from Latin. I make no claims as to whether it existed in a pre-Latin language because I don't know. However, from all I have read, Celtic is not the origin of Latin.

 

You obviously know something about the origin of Indo-European languages that no other scholar has seriously considered. For example, do you also hold that all the Indo-European number words also 'come from Latin'? Let's take the example 'three' (English) / 'tree' (Gaelic, Manx Orthography) / 'trois' (French/ '३' (Devangari) / त्रि (sanskrit) три (Russian) - all essentially the same word, with slight variation in the vowel sound - do these also all 'come from Latin'? Did the people who erected the stones at Stonehenge have no word for 'sunset' or 'end' until the Romans showed up, and then, did they ditch whatever word they were using and adopt an entirely different Latin word, not only in Gaul, but in Brittany, Wales and Ireland too? Did the word 'fin' / 'fuin' / 'phenn' / 'phenno' never exist until the Romans started using it? Or is the very similar sound and identical meaning of each version entirely co-incidental and all current theories of Indo-European language development are therefore bogus because 'it is known to have come from Latin'. I admit I know very little of such ideas - could you suggest some further reading?

 

You are rambling again.

 

S

[Sebrof]

it is known to have come from Latin (and perhaps its antecedents). You now concede that your statement was conjecture rather than fact, and have adduced no evidence in support of it. Instead, there has been a smokescreen of irrelevance.

I don't know much more about this topic than I've gathered from dipping into Cavalli's Sforza's 'Languages, Genes and Peoples', but as I understand it it is 'conjecture' - not hard fast documentary evidence and 'fact', but language trees, modelling etymologies, stems, phonemic orthography, etc. - pretty much as Freggyragh is describing. This does not mean 'wild conjecture', but rather like reconstruction of an unknown face from a skull type conjecture.

 

Sebrof - you say "it is known to have come from Latin". This is giving it as a 'fact', but you have 'adduced no evidence in support of it'. I don't mean to be rude, but is your source some work from pre-1960s? (Such over confident assertions of 'fact' with Roman Empire centric view sound to me as if they come from an earlier era). If so, it might be worth revisiting what you suppose is 'known'. Otherwise could you give the references to where you get this 'fact' from.

 

I have already said that I don't know where Latin gets the word from, but it is abundantly clear that Fin came directly from Latin when the Romances languages diverged from Latin a little over a thousand years ago. The same word is found in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, and it can be traced back to the dawn of those languages.

 

If Freggyragh had said that it MAY ultimately have come from Celtic, I would not have argued, because that is not impossible (though I believe it to be improbable). But his unqualified assertion that it WAS Celtic merited a challenge.

 

And frankly, this whole thing about PI-E and the prehistoric language tree relies an awful lot on supposition and guesswork, often based on some pretty tenuous links. In some of the Indian languages, water is "pani". That's quite a long way from "ushtey", yet scholars claim they are descended from the same word. In this case there are probably a number of other links that lend support to the contention that the word for water has a common root, but I don't think it is always so clear.

 

S

[Skeddan]

Your 'abundantly clear' sounds to me like 'supposition' and 'tenous links'. Scholars have dine a great deal of work in this field, and it is a solid and advanced area. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss scholars at top universities in favour of what is 'abundantly clear' to you.

 

Personally I'd put more faith in that them than it being 'abundantly clear came direct from Latin' and what the OED might classify it as. Old French might have taken it from Latin (or maybe not) perhaps it came from Breton and Gallic-Gaelic. Norman English might have taken it from French (or via Rus-Norse). It may have come from Germanic. Joining the dots from Latin to English isn't always clear, even if English history starts with Julius Caesar. Indo-European predates Latin by a long chalk.

 

Do you think the Gaelic 'fuin' (sunset / end) came from Latin? Or is it just coincidence?

[Sebrof]

Your 'abundantly clear' sounds to me like 'supposition' and 'tenous links'. Scholars have dine a great deal of work in this field, and it is a solid and advanced area. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss scholars at top universities in favour of what is 'abundantly clear' to you.

 

Personally I'd put more faith in that them than it being 'abundantly clear came direct from Latin' and what the OED might classify it as.........

 

Freg has been unable to show any support from all these eminent scholars to contradict the OED, which itself is the product of many eminent scholars who are experts in the field. And I can think of few areas of academic study that are less "solid and advanced" than the prehistory of unwritten langauges.

 

Do you think the Gaelic 'fuin' (sunset / end) came from Latin? Or is it just coincidence?

 

I really don't know, and nor does anybody else. It might possibly go back a very long way (as Freggyragh himself suggested) to an earlier root of both languages. Or Celtic may have got it from Latin. I doubt if there is a written record of the word in Celtic that goes back very far, and certainly not one that predates Latin. Celtic was not a written language until much later than Latin.

 

The Celtic claim is supposition at best, and this whole argument arose because Freg presented it as fact that Fin came from Celtic. It isn't fact, and should not have been presented as such.

 

S

[Freggyragh]

Freg has been unable to show any support from all these eminent scholars to contradict the OED, which itself is the product of many eminent scholars who are experts in the field. And I can think of few areas of academic study that are less "solid and advanced" than the prehistory of unwritten langauges.

 

You seem to think your own study (the OED!) is solid and advanced. I thought it strange that the OED would concern itself with the etymology of French words, and I haven’t been able to trust your scholarship so far, so I called your bluff. The OED actually mentions the following cognates: ‘Old English fin(n), Middle Low German finne, Middle Dutch vinne, Dutch vin’ and ‘probably ultimately related to Latin pinna’. Notwithstanding that Gaulish penno aspirates to phenno and that it actually means ‘end’, whereas Latin pinna does not aspirate and means ‘feather’, even this brief entry supports my thesis of common P-IE origin (the Celtic, Itallic and Germanic variations are all ultimately related’) a little better than it does your ‘Nonsense – it comes from Latin’ statement. The majority of entries in the OED, by the way, were made in the nineteenth century, based on the conjecture of that century's scholars. Judging from the entry, it looks like it was made by Henry Sweet who specialised in Germanic languages, alternatively it could have been made by William Minor whilst an inmate in Broadmoar, sometime before he cut off his own penis (another noun no doubt related to 'fin').

 

Do you think the Gaelic 'fuin' (sunset / end) came from Latin? Or is it just coincidence?

 

I really don't know, and nor does anybody else.

 

So why the original attack - and why do you keep coming back to it?

 

It might possibly go back a very long way (as Freggyragh himself suggested) to an earlier root of both languages.

 

Thank you. Argument over?

 

Or Celtic may have got it from Latin.

 

What? The earliest record of Sauin (Gaelic Samhain) that I am aware of occurs in the Coligny Calendar which dates from the first century BC, but according to eminent Italian astronomer Adriano Gaspani in ‘Astronomy in The Celtic Culture’ is based on empirical astonomy going back a further 4,000 years. http://www.brera.mi.astro.it/~gaspani/celtcab.txt. At what point do you suggest the Celts 'got it from Latin'?

 

I doubt if there is a written record of the word in Celtic that goes back very far, and certainly not one that predates Latin. Celtic was not a written language until much later than Latin.

 

'Your doubt' is not exactly based on any particular knowledge of the subject is it. The ancient Celts used the Phoenician, Etruscan, Greek, and Latin writing systems. The oldest inscriptions using the Etruscan writing system date to the late sixth century BC. Thirty three such inscriptions have been found in Northern Italy, and two in Austria. There are over sixty examples from Gaul of Celtic, some dating to the third century BC, written using the Greek writing system. The earliest examples of Latin, as far as I am aware, also dating from the sixth century are the Lapis Niger, in which the Latin is written a greek style script, and inscription of a manufacturer’s name on a fibula. Other examples of Latin dating prior to 300 BC are extremely scarce – the Romans tended to write in Greek. Written Latin doesn’t appear to have really taken off until comic dramatists such as Caecilius Statius (a native Celtic speaker from Cisalpine Gaul) popularized Latin vernacular towards the end of the third century BC. I suppose he was the Dara O Brien of his day – a native speaker of a Celtic tongue, and a master of wordplay in his other language. Celtic poets, writers and philosophers continued to contribute massively to the corpus of Latin literature throughout the age of the Roman Empire. Celtic monks also of course played their part in preserving Classical Latin texts - the earliest extant copy of Julius Caesar’s ‘De Bello Gallico’ which narrates his war against the Celts of Gaul, and in particular his passion to destroy the intellectuals of the Druid class, dates only from the ninth century AD.

 

The Celtic claim is supposition at best, and this whole argument arose because Freg presented it as fact that Fin came from Celtic. It isn't fact, and should not have been presented as such

.

 

No – I, yet again, I have to point out that I am not claiming that ‘fin’ / ‘fuin’ / ‘phenn’ ‘came from Celtic’. I am saying that whatever letter value you ascribe to it that it is a Proto Indo European word, a conclusion I come to on the basis that it has cognates in the Celtic Germanic and Italic languages. On the other hand, your obsession seems to be a desire to airbrush the Celts completely out of the picture. Why do you find it so incredible that Celtic might have a relationship to Modern French? After all Paris, Lyons, Léon and Belgium are all derived from Celtic words.

 

 

S

[Sebrof]

Freg said:

 

"this brief entry supports my thesis of common P-IE origin"

 

You only came up with this after I challenged your statement that Fin came from Celtic rather than Latin. It's not this statement that I took issue with.

 

"The earliest record of Sauin (Gaelic Samhain) that I am aware of occurs in the Coligny Calendar which dates from the first century BC, but according to eminent Italian astronomer Adriano Gaspani in ‘Astronomy in The Celtic Culture’ is based on empirical astonomy going back a further 4,000 years."

 

Fascinating, but irrelevant. Nowhere does it mention a written record of a Celtic word relating to Fin.

 

"The ancient Celts used the Phoenician, Etruscan, Greek, and Latin writing....."

 

But this still doesn't answer my statement: "I doubt if there is a written record of the word in Celtic that goes back very far...."

 

Sorry, but you have been scouring the Internet to find some facts to back up your original claim, and failed totally. And since you keep trying to wriggle out of it, let me remind you what you said: "The Irish orthography ........... indicates that it is from 'Sam fuin' .......... the 'fuin' part meaning 'sunset' or 'end' and the origin of European words such as French 'fin'.

 

Pretty clear, I think.

 

I am not against Celts, even professional Celts who see the world through Celt-coloured spectacles, but I do think you should be a bit less fanciful with your claims.

 

 

S

[DjDan]

Thought I'd bump up this topic to ask a question about hop tu naa rather than start out a new one.

 

What is considered a more traditional Hop tu naa costume? (both originally... and in past years 70s/80s/90s)

 

I remember we used to go out as little vampires or witches. I'm trying to be careful that the children and I will be more 'hop tu naa' than 'halloween' this year!