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The foster mother in some stories is Acca Larentia. John Tahourdin White and Joseph Esmond Riddle's Latin-English Dictionary seems the only source equating Accalia with the Larentalia - a festival possibly in her honor (it is also related to the Lares, local/household gods). White and Riddle trace it to Sanskrit (at the time every European word was traced to Sanskrit, as the oldest record Indo-European language, but this is now recognised as fanciful, like the current trend for amateur linguists to trace every word back to an African language). Acca Larentia is possibly both the she-wolf and the human foster mother, and at the same time neither. She seems first to be a minor Etruscan deity related the the Lares, with a festival still honored in Rome long after Etruscan influence ended. Subsequently as familiarity with the Etruscan traditions declined, new stories were created to explain the name and festival. In one she becomes the foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, in others a patron of the Roman people. Cato, who examined the origins of many Latin words and names, notes that "lupa" (she-wolf) is a colloquial term for a prostitute (more plausible as a nurse for the twins than an actual she-wolf), linking the story of an Acca who was a prostitute with the human foster-mother (Greek and Roman mythology is rife with retconning). So Acca is probably an Etruscan name (a lost isolate language practically indecipherable so far), and Accalia is "a thing/person related to Acca". Only a few unreliable baby-name sites use it as another name of Acca.

This message was edited 2/18/2020, 6:43 PM

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