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Re: YUNA a slavonic name meaning „wished for“?
I had a chance to talk to that mother again. This time she said, JUNA/YUNA was not of Slavonic (she had been mistaken) but rather of Breton origin. The Celtic word iun means "wish", she says.
Can anybody confirm this?
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It's one of the suggestions in the user submitted entry for (St.) Yuna here, but I can't find anything to support it. The obvious candidates for words meaning "wish" are Welsh gwŷn "lust" (cf. "ween"), Irish fonn (with /f/ for Welsh /gw/), gwell "prefer" (Cf. will); the Irish guí is abbreviated from guidhe "bid".
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"Iun" / "Idunet" seems to mean "wilful, desire" in Old Breton, at least according to the Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique: http://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Research/BretonPatronymsBritishHeroicAge.pdfOthers seem to identify the "iun" element as being derived from "*ad-ioun" and compare it to Welsh "eiddunaw, addunaw" ("wish for, desire").I can't vouch for any of those derivations at the moment, though.
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If the latter you refer to is http://heatherrosejones.com/names/breton/daviesearlybreton.html, she seems unsure whether the -iun in the name Adiunus is that same as the Old Breton prefix Iun- in other names, not that -iun is derived from *ad-ioun (rather *Ad-ioun would be derived from *-ioun). Gary German, on the another hand assumes that the prefix Iun- is the same root as the -un- in Idunet (the names cited are actually recorded with -iunet and -diunet), following sources of the Welsh Dictionary, which has eidduned and Welsh eidduno as prefixed derivatives of *-iun- "wish, desire". The relevant Breton onomastic forms are Latinized *Adiunus (recorded in the genitive Adiuni; Welsh adj. eiddun desirable, eager), -iunet, ~diunet (Welsh n. eidduned "a wish, a desire …" from add- + *iuned); eiddunaw, addunaw cited by Heather Jones represent the form with verbal suffix -aw for -o (also -af).
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Finally some etymological resources for Welsh, though not very deep: http://welsh-dictionary.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html which has eiddunaf: eidduno [add- … +uno, *iuno 'to wish, desire', ]. Comparable forms exist in Old Breton as name elements (search for "Breton Patronyms and the British Heroic Age").

This message was edited 8/12/2018, 2:25 PM

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