Voici un article tiré de Rivet & Smith, et intégré à notre encyclopédie des noms de lieux, lettre S :


* Sena : rivière non identifiée, apparemment située sur la côte sud de la G. Bretagne. (cf. Rivet & Smith. p 455)

Source

- Ravenna, 10830 : LEUCOSENA

- Ravenna, 10841 : SENUA

As argued under LEUCA, Ravenna's first form is a conflation; and the name is duplicated, from a second map-source. In Ravenna's second form, the u probably arose from a mistake in copying *Senna (compare TP's Caunonio under Canovium).

Derivation. The name is the feminine of the British adjective *seno- 'old' (Welsh hen , Cornish and Breton hen; Old Irish sen, later sean; Latin cognates are senex, senior, Seneca, etc.). Applied here to a river, 'no doubt the word was a title of reverence' (Williams); indeed, 'Old Man River' is a parallel. Watson CPNS 474 finds the same word probably in the name of a Sutherland river, Abhainn Sin 'old river', and it is the basis of the name of the Shannon in Ireland, Senou (gen., = Senos; nominative *Seni), Ptolemy II, 2, 3. Holder II. 1464 cites Sena as a river of Umbria and as the name of a town upon it, in the land of the Senones (now Sinigaglia). The word is found compounded in a number of place-names, notably *Senomagus in our next entry and similar names abroad; also in personal names such as Cantosenus, and either alone, adjectivally, or as part of a compound, in the legend of a coin of the Coritani (Mack No. 461; also D. F. Allen, The Coins of the Coritani (London, 1963), p. 29 and note 3).

Identification. Unknown, but apparently on the south coast of Britain.

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Note JCE : ne pas rechercher à partir du nom de la Seine, qui est d'une racine différente : Sequana.

JCE