Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 August 20

= August 20 =

Origin of the name-form 'Geloan' with an O
Why are the people etc. of Gela in Sicily called 'Geloans,' spelled with an O? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.209.196.223 (talk) 15:00, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

The equivalent word in the Aeneid III is Geloi [masculine plural], but this is of course not the ultimate answer to this question. Maybe some light could be gained by finding out the declining-stem of the name Gela in ancient Greek? --72.209.196.223 (talk) 17:03, 20 August 2016 (UTC)--72.209.196.223 (talk) 17:03, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
 * As nobody answers I'll try to explain what I've found. The name of the city of Γέλᾱ came from the name of the nearby river Γέλᾱς, both with long -ᾱ which implies the Greek first declension with the underlying root vowel -ᾱ. The adjective in Greek is Γελῷος or Γελαῖος . Both the forms imply the adjective suffux -ῐος. However, while the latter form seems to be normal, the former implies the root Γελω-, which is not normal. It is not clear why it is such, but the LSJ gives an interesting example Νειλῷος = Νειλαῖος . According to the Greek grammar α/ᾱ becomes ω only in a handful of rare cases (particularly, α + οι = ῳ,  but we have ᾱ + ι = ᾷ/αῖ{ος} here). Most probably it is a dialectal form. Subsequently it was later borrowed into Latin as Gĕlōus, a, um  and then into English.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:12, 25 August 2016 (UTC)