Extrait de l'encyclopédie Marikavel :

* Gabrantovices : nom de peuple celtique non identifié de l'Ile de Bretagne; le nom est seulement interprété par une mention de Ptolémée : GABRANTVICUM ... SINUS.

* Rivet & Smith, p. 363-364 : proposent d'y voir une branche des Brigantes, sur la cote est du Yorkshire.

SOURCE. See the next entry.

DERIVATION. The first part of the name is based on British *gabro-s 'horse' or 'goat' (Old Irish gabor glossed 'caper'; Welsh gafr 'goat'; cognate with Latin caper). This is well represented in toponymy : in Britain, Cabrosentum 'goat-path'; abroad, there is Gaulish *gabro-s 'goat' in Gabromagus (AI 276,9) now Windischgarsten (Austria), *Gabrodunum > Jabrun (Cantal, France) on which Dauzat TF 200 remarks 'sans doute avec la valeur d'un surnom de personne'; Holder I. 1511 adds Gabraeum, Gabregabalio, Gabreta. Jackson analyses the whole first element of the British name (JRS, xxxviii (1948), 57) as *gabranto-, a participial stem from a verb *gabra- 'to ride a horse'.

The second element is that discussed under DELGOVICIA. Hence, for the whole name, 'horse-riding fighters, cavalrymen'. In a note, Jackson thinks none too well of Thurneysen's proposal that -nt- is a diminutive suffix, giving a sense 'kid-fighters' ; but the idea should be retained, in part because *gabro- seems so well documented as 'goat' but poorly as 'horse', and in part because the other elements compounded with -vices and cognates may hae emblematic or totemic connotations rather than literal ones, so that 'kid' is more acceptable than it might be if taken literally. The recent view of H. Birkhan in Germanen und Kelten. . . (Vienna, 1970), 465, is that this tribe consists of 'Ziegenkämpfer' ('goat-fighters').

IDENTIFICATION. An otherwise unrecorded people of Britain, apparently dwelling on the east coast of Yorkshire and presumably included in the federation of the Brigantes.

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Peut-être peuple mineur, client des Brigantes, sur la côte est du Yorkshire, sur la Mer du Nord.

Le thème du nom semble être basé sur la symbolique de la Chèvre (*gabr-) et des cavaliers de combat (-vices).

Question à creuser.

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JCE