Talk:Etna

RFV discussion: July–December 2014

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Etna

Supposedly a female given name Anglicised from the Irish Eithne. w:Eithne lists Ethnea, Ethlend, Ethnen, Ethlenn, Ethnenn, Eithene, Ethne, Aithne, Enya, Áine, Ena, Edna, Etney, Eithnenn, Eithlenn, Eithna, Ethni, Edlend, Edlenn, Ethniu, Ethliu, Ethlinn, and Enya as variant spellings of Eithne, but not Etna. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 12:00, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

List of Irish-language given names includes it, but it may deserve a handful of salt. It would want to be Anglicised, as even in Old Irish it was spelled with "-th-". (And we know it was pronounced with /θ/ because it was borrowed into Old Norse as "Eðna".)

As for "Etna", it gets drowned out by the volcano. There is

• Women Swindlers in America, 1860-1920 p. 39

  "Extending over six years, from about 1895 until 1901, Etna Dungan of Gold Hill in southern Oregon had been in correspondence with a large number of men, all anxious to secure a wife and, under promise to marry every one of them, […] "

And a look in FamilySearch shows a non-trivial number of Etnas in Ireland, where a derivation from Eithne is more likely than from the Sicilian mountain. (Conflation with Edna is always a possibility, though.)

--Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 12:27, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Searching for "Etna + (w:List of the most common surnames in Europe#Ireland)" turns up the citations I've put here. It may be possible to find some of the people named there in genealogical databases and ascertain whether or not they are Irish. In addition to "Eithne" and Mount Etna, variation of "Edna" seems like another possible source of "Etna" (but note that "Edna" says that it itself is used as an anglicization of "Eithne"). - -sche (discuss) 17:35, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

The citations I've found prove that Etna is a name, and the derivation of it from Irish is plausible under the circumstances (Eithne is anglicised a lot of similar ways, and several bearers of the name Etna have last names that are common among the Irish). I suggest closing this RFV and, if desired, moving to WT:ES. - -sche (discuss) 02:37, 1 December 2014 (UTC)