Boii - Etymology and Name

Etymology and Name

From all the different names of the same Celtic people in literature and inscriptions it is possible to abstract a continental Celtic segment, boio-. There are two major derivations of this segment, both presupposing that it belongs to the family of Indo-European languages: from 'cow' and from 'warrior.' The Boii would thus be either "the herding people" or "the warrior people."

The "cow" derivation depends most immediately on the Old Irish legal term for "outsider:" amboue, from proto-Celtic *ambouios, "not a cattle owner." In a reference to the first known historical Boii, Polybius relates that their wealth consisted of cattle and gold, that they depended on agriculture and war, and that a man's status depended on the number of associates and assistants he had. The latter were presumably the *ambouii, as opposed to the man of status, who was *bouvios, a cattle owner, and the *bouii were originally a class, "the cattle owners."

The "warrior" derivation was adopted by the linguist, Julius Pokorny, who presented it as being from Indo-European *bhei(ə)-, *bhī-, "hit;" however, not finding any Celtic names close to it (except for the Boii), he adduces examples somewhat more widely from originals further back in time: phohiio-s-, a Venetic personal name; Boioi, an Illyrian tribe; Boiōtoi, a Greek tribal name ("the Boeotians") and a few others. Boii would be from the o-grade of *bhei-, which is *bhoi-. Such a connection is possible if the original form of Boii belonged to a tribe of Proto-Indo-European speakers long before the time of the historic Boii. The Celtic tribe of central Europe must in that case be a final daughter population of a linguistically diversifying ancestor tribe.

The same wider connections can be hypothesized for the "cow" derivation: the Boeotians have been known for well over a century as a people of kine, which might have been parallel to the meaning of Italy as a "land of calves." Indo-European reconstructions can be made using *gʷou- "cow" as a basis, such as *gʷowjeh³s.

Contemporary derived words include Boiorix ("king of the Boii", one of the chieftains of the Cimbri) and Boiodurum ("gate/fort of the Boii", modern Passau) in Germany. Their memory also survives in the modern regional names of Bohemia (Boiohaemum), a mixed-language form from boio- and Proto-Germanic *haimaz, "home": "home of the Boii," and 'Bayern', Bavaria, which is derived from the Germanic Baiovarii tribe (Germ. *baio-warioz: the first component is most plausibly explained as a Germanic version of Boii; the second part is a common formational morpheme of Germanic tribal names, meaning 'dwellers', as in Anglo-Saxon -ware); this combination "Boii-dwellers" may have meant "those who dwell where the Boii formerly dwelt".