Abandinus
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In Celtic mythology, the god Abandinus is mysterious, currently known only from a single inscription from Cambridgeshire, England in Godmanchester; specifically, an inscribed bronze votive feather is dedicated to him with the text to the god Abandinus, Vatiaucus gave this from his own resources. Some believe that he was associated with the river Ouse (formerly known as Abona or Afon), though Celtic river deities were almost always female, so this may be unlikely; he may also have been associated with a local spring. Others have suggested that is related to Mabon, a more popular Celtic deity; though it seems unlikely, Abandinus and Mabon have linguistic characteristics that make this theory possible.
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Etymology of the name
The reconstructed lexis of the Proto-Celtic language as collated by the University of Wales (http://www.wales.ac.uk/documents/external/cawcs/pcl-moe.pdf ) suggests that the name is likely to be ultimately derived from the Proto-Celtic *Ad-bandinos. This Proto-Celtic word connotes the semantics of ‘Melodious One.’ This apparent semantic connotation has led Dr. John Koch at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies to propose that the original nature of this deity may well have been a personification of “melodious resonance” . This theory would account for the deity’s associations with the sound of running water.
Diachronic changes in the form of the name
Following the known laws of Celtic diachronic linguistics as elucidated by Marian B. Hughes at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies, the Proto-Celtic name *Ad-bandinos would have been inherited into Brythonic in the form of * Abandinos.
Bibliography
- Ellis, Peter Berresford, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology(Oxford Paperback Reference), Oxford University Press, (1994): ISBN: 0195089618
- MacKillop, James. Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0192801201.
- Wood, Juliette, The Celts: Life, Myth, and Art, Thorsons Publishers (2002): ISBN: 0007640595
External Links
[1] (http://www.mythome.org/celtic.html) [2] (http://www.paralumun.com/celticgod.htm) [3] (http://www.daire.org/names/deities.html) [4] (http://www.wales.ac.uk/documents/external/cawcs/pcl-moe.pdf)