🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 24 Apr 1999, Miguel Ibarra wrote:

> It has recently been suggested to me that the Basque placename and
> surname Urrea is actually a mutation from Visigothic Urias, evolving
> as Urias-Uria-Urria-Urrea, being therefore a Germanic name.  I am
> ignorant about the possible direct influence of germanic languages
> on Basque, and I do not know to what extent or degree the Visigothic
> culture might have interacted with Basque lingüistics, genetics, or
> culture in general, or if it did, in which regions of the Basque
> culture this might have happened.  As far as I understood, Urrea is
> a derivative from the basque root Ur, which is used in many basque
> words. Can anyone help me on this?

The surname Urrea is regarded by Michelena as of obscure origin.
A seemingly obvious source might be <urre> `gold', but such a formation
would be completely out of line with normal Basque naming practices.
It is quite possible that the surname derives directly from the place
name, which would be normal enough.

But a Gothic origin for the place name seems implausible to me.

First, an original *<Urias> should not develop into <Urrea> in Basque.

Second, there is no known case of a Gothic word or name being taken
directly into Basque.

Third, it is far from clear that the Visigoths were still speaking
Gothic when they settled in Spain.  They were still using Gothic
personal names, but some specialists believe they had already switched
to speaking Latin by that time.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt@cogs.susx.ac.uk