Re: Werewolf

So the question is

2006/9/16, R A Brown <ray@...>:

> All the modern Romancelangs have formed some sort of compound, whether
> of 'man' + 'wolf' as in Spanish _hombre lobo_ (Thinks: that is a counter
> example, isn't it?) or Portuguese _lobisomem_. Or an special epithet
> added to wolf to make it clear that it's one of those 'humanoid wolves',
> like French 'loup-garou' or Italian 'lupo mannaro'.
>
> > But if it is used in Vulgar Latin,
>
> It wasn't - you're compound is likely, given the scenario of your language.
Might LUPONE be a possible formation?  I guess one might get
_lobóu_ from LUPU HOMO in R3, but how realistic would *that* be?

An alternative possibility is _lobom_, provided that
HOMINE would become _huom_ (where _h_ is merely a diacritic to
show that |uo| was /wo/ and not /vo/ in medieval orthography! :-),
assuming HOMINE > *omne > *omme > /uom/, provided that
M'N > mm *is* a realistic change for a Romance language
-- I want it to be but I'm not so sure!  What's the track by which
HOMINE became _homme_ but HOMO became _on_ in French?
And what's the story behind DOMINU > _Dom_ as an ecclesiatical
appellative (if that is the right word?)  I'm not even sure in what
language DOMINU > _Dom_ might have happened!  AFAIK the
regular outcome is _don_ in both Spanish and Italian, with
_doña/donna_ < DOMINA.  Is _Dom_ archaic French?

In case someone wonders, plain LUPU becomes _lop_, later spelled
_lob_, in both periods pronounced /lop/, and since it's R3 i guess
I'll have to give the plurals too:

lobóu : lebéy
lop/lob : lep/leb
huom : huem  /H2m/ (later spelled _hueum_, since postconsonantal
/H2/ was monophthongized to /2/, which continued to be spelled _ue_).

--
/BP