"Meliginna" a female name used by the Galatians, an ancient Celtic people in Asia Minor (now Turkey), illustrates the problems that etymologists sometimes have in determining the meaning of a name or a word.  According to one German author I read, the name may be connected with Welsh ‘melyn’ and Breton ‘melen’ both meaning "yellow" ; or it may be related to Irish milis (pronounced mill-ish) meaning "sweet".  

According to one German author I read, the name may be connected with Welsh ‘melyn’ and Breton ‘melen’ both meaning "yellow" ; or it may be related to Irish milis (pronounced mill-ish) meaning "sweet".

Are these words related to French miel, meaning "honey" - which is yellow and sweet..?

Ed

I suppose we should start with Sanskrit: madhu is ‘sweet’. The Greek must have been fond of sweet wine: methys ‘wine’. Honey would probably have been the first sweetener, and so ‘bee’ is melitta in Greek, which explains Latin mel, Fr. miel as well as Sw. mjöd and E. mead, Old English meodu, for a type of alcoholic drink distilled from honey and water.

The word milis could probably have developed from sweet as well as bee or honey. Celtic melen/melyn could refer to the colour of honey.

I leave the "g" in the name for Garzo to explain. I don’t trust Celtic consonants. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if it turns out to be a morpheme for making nouns out of adjectives. The -inna is of course as feminine as can be.

What is the source of the name? If it is a Celtic name that has been washed through Greek, Latin and English before appearing on this site, we can be sure that some information has been lost. However, if it has been lifted from an inscription, and rendered in perfect transliteration there is less of a problem.

I just had a "duh" moment, but is English melon derived from/related to Celtic melyn...?

[edit]And is this ancient root also the basis for the mel- in Greek melody?[/edit]

-Tim
...who has yet to try mead, but will someday!

Believe it or not, but the *mêlon is a linguistic apple. The Linnaeus apple is Pyrus malus. The oldest attested form is Hittite mahla ‘grapevine, branch’. Not necessarily PIE; might have been borrowed from/originated in a Mediterranean languge.

PIE *mel- ‘a limb’ > Gr. melos ‘limb’; hence a musical member or phrase, hence music, song, melody.

Another *mel- is ‘of a darkish colour’, giving Gr. melâs ‘black. Compare Herr Philipp Schwarzerd > Melanchthon.

And yes, ‘melt’ and ‘mild’ are yet another *mel-: ‘soft etc.’

A fifth *mel- is responsible for Lat. malus ‘bad and male ‘ill’.

(As ususal, mainly Am. Her. Dict. of IE Roots.)

Fascinating!  Well, to me anyway…

[quote author=anders link=board=etymology;num=1104055484;start=0#5 date=12/29/04 at 19:54:28]Believe it or not, but the *mêlon is a linguistic apple. The Linnaeus apple is Pyrus malus. The oldest attested form is Hittite mahla ‘grapevine, branch’. Not necessarily PIE; might have been borrowed from/originated in a Mediterranean languge.

Wow!  So, not related at all…?

anders:

PIE *mel- ‘a limb’ > Gr. melos ‘limb’; hence a musical member or phrase, hence music, song, melody.

Which would have been related to that grapevine…

anders:

Another *mel- is ‘of a darkish colour’, giving Gr. melâs ‘black. Compare Herr Philipp Schwarzerd > Melanchthon.

Which sounds logically connected (in the European/Western mind) to the concept of bad (dark = bad).

anders:

And yes, ‘melt’ and ‘mild’ are yet another *mel-: ‘soft etc.’

Hence, mellow, I take it…

anders:

A fifth *mel- is responsible for Lat. malus ‘bad and male ‘ill’.

As a natural development of the dark->bad evolution.

Hmm…

-Tim

I am no expert on the *mel- roots, and would have liked to see how the multiplicity was arrived at, but there must have been homonyms in PIE times as well. I have to trust the authors, because university courses on comparative linguistics are very few and far between in Sweden those days. It seems to be almost non-PC.

Nowadays, you should be into things like non-verbal communication, psycholinguistics, cross-cultural communication, second language acquistion and similar things. Why are there never any courses on tenth language acquisition (or even adults’ language learning)?

It is also almost impossible to find sensible courses on the theory of translation, and even harder to find books in this area that approach reality (except, perhaps, for the odd book on literary translation, of which I know nothing).