ONlwSG

carbhanach  

While SG carbh (discussed below) is most probably from ON karfa acc. m., SG carbhanach appears to be either a derivative of carbh or a by-form of SG garbhanach (see below), perhaps both.

m. [ˈkʰaɾ͡avanəx], -[ ax], -[ ɔx], gen. carbhanaich -[iç], in the sense ‘carp’ is derived by MacBain (1896; 1911) from ON karfi m.; so also Henderson (1910, 214), MacLennan (1925), Oftedal (1956, 55: ON karfa obl. case) and Stewart (2004, 408). MacBain derives Ir. carbhán and Mx carroo ‘idem’ from the same source, although Marstrander (1932, 49) is more circumspect regarding Mx carroo.

McDonald (2009, 369) follows MacBain, but to some extent conflates words for ‘carp etc.’ with words for ‘ship’, s.vv. cairb and carbh.

A number of forms are discussed below: 

English names of fish cited in this article are assumed to denote the following species:

‘basking shark, sail-fish’ = Cetorhinus maximus (formerly Squalus maximus);
‘bream’: 1. ‘(common/freshwater) bream’ = Abramis brama. 2. ‘(red/common) sea-bream’ = Pagellus bogaraveo (formerly Pagellus centrodontus, Sparus centrodontus);
‘carp’ = Cyprinus carpio;
‘Jerusalem haddie/haddock’ = Lampris guttatus (formerly Lampris luna) or Sebastes marinus;
‘lumpfish’ = Cyclopterus lumpus;
‘opah’ = Lampris guttatus (formerly Lampris luna);
‘plaice, spotted flounder’ = Pleuronectes platessa;
‘redfish’ = Sebastes marinus;
‘silver haddock’ ?= Zeus faber;
‘sprat, small herring, garvie’ = Sprattus sprattus.

SG carbhanach et alia

⁖ Hebridean English   ⁘ Anglo-Manx   ⁙ Ulster-Scots

A 1. SG garbhag
For example, in Dwelly 1911: ‘sprat; small herring; garvie; plaice, spotted flounder’.

B 1. SG garbhanach
In Kennedy 1897, 131: ‘silver haddock or sea-bream’, Arran; Forbes 1905, 43: ‘sea bream’, Arran, 352: ‘bream’, 43, 366: ‘silver haddock’; MacBain 1911, s.v. garbhag: ‘sea-bream’, Arran; Dwelly 1911: ‘silver haddock’, after Forbes, and ‘sea-bream’, Arran, after MacBain; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: ‘Jerusalem haddie’.

C 1. SG carbh
In Forbes 1905, 40, 353: ‘carp’, and Dwelly 1911: ‘idem’, after Forbes. AFB^˄ also lists carbh /karav/ ‘fish of the Cyprinidae family; near the sea, usually bream, inland usually carp’, but the association with Lewis is the result of an extrapolation from a Hebridean English form cara[v] 

With cara a misspelling or typesetting error for carav (cf. caravanoch (C 3(v))), pronounced as SG carbh (pers. comm. Maighread Stiùbhart).

‘bream’ contained in a ‘Glossary of Stornoway Slang’ (no date) (pers. comm. Michael Bauer, AFB’s editor).

C 2. SG carbhan
In Armstrong 1825: ‘carp’; Dwelly 1911: ‘idem’, after Armstrong; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: ‘bream’, Tiree.

C 3. SG carbhanach
(i) carmhanach (MacDomhnuill 1741, 72: carmhanach uisge ‘carp’; Armstrong 1825: ‘idem’; Forbes 1905, 40: carmhanach-uisge ‘carp, bream, lumpfish’, 352: ‘bream’, 353: ‘carp’), with nasalisation of the stressed syllable; 

For spontaneous nasalisation in stressed syllables in Scottish Gaelic, see Ó Maolalaigh 2003, 109–17.


(ii) carbhanach (Shaw 1780: carbhanach-uisge ‘carp’; Mac Farlan 1795: ‘carp’; Armstrong 1825: ‘idem’; HSS 1828: carbhanach-uisge ‘idem’; M^cAlpine 1832: ‘idem’, Islay; MacLeod & Dewar 1831: ‘idem’; MacBain 1896 and 1911: ‘idem’; Forbes 1905, 40: ‘carp, bream, lumpfish’, 352: ‘bream’, 353: ‘carp’; Dwelly 1911: ‘sea bream’ and, after MacEachen 1902, ‘carp’, also carbhanach-uisge ‘carp’ and, after Forbes, ‘freshwater bream’; Henderson 1910, 214: ‘carp’; MacLennan 1925: ‘idem’; Oftedal 1956, 55: /kɑrɑ̀vɑnəx/ ‘a red sea-fish (?marine perch)’; McDonald 1972: ‘a lightish-red sea-fish with strong scales; bream’ (his editor John Lorne Campbell suggesting Sporus [leg. Sparus] centredontus); Grant 1987 I, 107: carabhanach /ˈkʰɑrɑvɑnɑx/ ‘bream’, Islay; Garvie 1999, 83: ‘carp, Cyprinus carpio; bream’); Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: ‘[a fish with a] scaly, reddish, rounded body: ?bream’, Tiree, ‘bream’, Islay, ‘common sea-bream’, Lewis; Wentworth 2005, 112: /kʰ[ɑrɑ]vɑnɔx/ ‘sea-bream’, Gairloch; AFB^˄: /karavanəx/ ‘fish of the Cyprinidae family; near the sea, usually bream, inland usually carp’, carbhanach-mara ‘sea-bream, porgy (Sparidae family)’, carbhanach-uisge ‘(common/freshwater/bronze) bream (genus Abramis)’;
(iii) carabhanach (Forbes 1905, 40: ‘carp, bream, lumpfish’, 352: ‘bream’, 353: ‘carp’), for carbhanach (ii);
(iv) carranachaich (Forbes 1905, 353: ‘carp’; Dwelly 1911: ‘idem’, after Forbes), possibly a gross miscopying of or a typesetting error for carbhanach-uisge or similar (i);
(v) caravanoch (‘Glossary of Stornoway Slang’ (no date): ‘sea-bream’), a Hebridean English form of carbhanach (ii). 

And pronounced as SG carbhanach (pers. comm. Maighread Stiùbhart).

D 1. Mx carroo
In Cregeen 1825: ‘carp’; MacBain 1911: ‘idem’; Borgstrøm 1932, 49: ‘fiskenavn [“a fish name”]’; Kelly 1991: ‘bream, sea-bream; carp’; and Lewin 2020, 108: (pl.) kerriu /kerʲu/ ‘carp’. Note that Moore (1924, 29) lists Anglo-Manx carp, cahf [ka(r)p], [kāf] ‘sea-bream, Pagellus centrodontus’.

E 1. Ulster-Scots carp, corp, carf
Day 1884, 66: carf, carp ‘sea-bream’, north-east of Ireland; Patterson 1880: carf, carp ‘the sea-bream, Pagellus centrodontus’, Antrim and Down; so also EDDo^˄; Macafee 1996: carp, corp, carf ‘the red sea-bream, Pagellus bogaraveo’. Note that Buckland (1881, 146) lists carf as ‘a local name for opah’, but with no locality specified; he writes that ‘[i]t is rather an inhabitant of the northern than the southern seas’, which may suggest that carf is the Ulster-Scots word here.

E 2. Ir. carbhán
(i) carbhán (e.g. Ó Dónaill 1977: = carbán ‘carp’);
(ii) carbán (e.g. Ó Dónaill 1977: ‘carp’).

E 3. Ir. carbhánach
(i) carbhánach (e.g. Ó Dónaill 1977: = carbánach ‘carp’);
(ii) carbánach (e.g. Ó Dónaill 1977: ‘carp’).

F 1. Ir. garbhán
(i) garbhán (e.g. Ó Dónaill 1977: = carbhán-carraige ‘sea-urchin’; Ó Baoill 1994, 184: ‘red sea-bream’, Ulster);
(ii) gearbhán (e.g. Ó Baoill 1994, 184: ‘red sea-bream’, Ulster), a dialectal form of (i).

F 2. Ir. garbhánach
(i) garbhánach (e.g. Ó Dónaill 1977: ‘sea-bream’; Ó Baoill 1994, 184: ‘red sea-bream, Pagellus bogaraveo’);
(ii) gearbhánach (e.g. Ó Baoill 1994, 184: ‘red sea bream, Pagellus bogaraveo’, Ulster), garbhanach, garmanach (e.g. Holmer 1942, 199: ‘a fish’, Rathlin; Ó Baoill 1994, 184: ‘red sea-bream’, Rathlin) and gairmneach (Dinneen 1947: ‘sea-bream’, Rathlin), dialectal forms of (i).

While SG garbhag (A 1) in the sense ‘sprat’ is derived from Scots garvie ‘idem’ (MacBain 1911; SND^˄), garbhag in the sense ‘plaice’ is possibly a derivative of SG garbh in the sense ‘scab’, referring to the fish’s spots. SG garbhanach (B 1) and Ir. garbhán (F 1), garbhánach (F 2) in the sense ‘red sea-bream’ potentially go back to SG and Ir. garbh also, 

< EG garḃ + suffixes -én (+ -ach); cf. MacBain (1911).

considering its conspicuous black spot, cf. the alternative English name: blackspot bream.

Ir. carbhán (E 2(i)) and carbhánach (E 3(i)) ‘carp’ seem likely to be loan-shifts from Eng. carp, modelled on the pre-existing garbhán and garbhánach – there may also have been influence from the Scottish Gaelic forms carbhan and carbhanach (see below), while the stops of the more recent Ir. carbán (E 2(ii)) and carbánach (E 3(ii)) more closely reflect carp itself.

Ó Baoill (1994, 175: carban) suggests that Ir. carbán may be a literary construct based partly on Thomas Pennant’s (1774, 193) form for ‘sail-fish, basking shark’, viz cairban. Ó Baoill (≈p. 174) notes that cairban ‘was perhaps an Englishman’s attempt to spell SG cearban ‘idem’, but it seems to have been taken up in error by Shaw for his 1780 Scottish Gaelic dictionary, where we find cairban “sail-fish”; this in turn is doubtless the basis for the cairbhan of O’Reilly (1817) and the cairbean of Armstrong (1825).’ On the other hand, modern Ir. cearbhán and SG cearban may go back to EG cairb in the sense ‘jaw, gums’ (cf. EG cairb ‘set of teeth’, carpat ‘gum, palate etc.’ (eDIL^˄), Ir. cairb ‘jaw and teeth’, carball ‘jaw’, carballach ‘toothless, having gums exposed’ (Ó Dónaill 1977), and SG cairb ‘jaw, gum’, cairbinneach ‘toothless (person)’, carbad ‘jaw etc.’, carbal ‘roof of the mouth’ (Dwelly 1911)) + the suffix -én, with cairb- subsequently conflated with EG cerb, cerḃ (originally cerb (> SG cearb), but later also cerḃ (> Ir. cearbh) by analogy with words such as garḃ, serḃ etc. (Vendryes 1996, s.v.)) ‘keen, sharp, cutting’ (eDIL^˄). Shaw’s and Armstrong’s SG cairb[e]an, then, may represent an original EG *cairbén ‘toothless one’, before the change via conflation to SG cearban. O’Reilly’s Ir. cairbh[e]an may indeed be based on Shaw’s form, but incorrectly transcribed – in O’Reilly’s dictionary, it follows the entry for cairbh ‘ship’. Additionally, for the sporadic change from bh > b in a small number of Irish dialects, see Ó Maolalaigh 2003, 129–30.

Mx carroo (D 1) and SG carbh (C 1) ‘sea-bream’ appear to go back to ON karfa acc., with apocope in Gaelic.

Cf. Mx scarroo and SG sgarbh < ON skarf acc. (see below).

However, ON karfi has the sense ‘redfish, Sebastes marinus’ (NO), OIce. karfi the sense ‘redfish, red sea-perch’ (Zoëga 1910) and modern Ice. karfi ‘idem’ (Íslensk-ensk orðabók^˄), and Cleasby’s definition of Ice. karfi as ‘carp’ may be an adaptation from Eng. carp. Consequently, Mx carroo and SG carbh in the sense ‘carp’ may also be an adaptation from Eng. carp; contrast Hebridean Eng. cara[v] ‘bream’ (C 1), Ulster-Scots carf, carp (corp) ‘sea-bream’ (E 1) and Anglo-Manx carp, cahf ‘sea-bream’ (D 1).

While Hebridean Eng. cara[v] is taken to be for SG carbh (cf. Hebridean Eng. caravanoch ‘sea-bream’ (C 3(v))), Ulster-Scots carf and Anglo-Manx cahf seem likely to be from an unattested northern English form *carf (also from Old Norse); cf. ON skarf acc. *[skarv] ‘cormorant’ (Norw. skarv), which, besides SG sgarbh and Ir. scarbh (s.v. sgarbh), yields Scots scarf in Ulster, Orkney, Shetland and Northern Scots (SND^˄; Macafee (1996): also scart), and Eng. (Cumberland) scarf (EDDo^˄). Fortition in Ulster-Scots carp (corp) and Anglo-Manx carp may be due to the influence of Eng. carp.

SG carbhan (C 2) and carbhanach (C 3) may have originated either as derivatives of carbh or as by-forms of *garbhan and garbhanach (via g ~ c alternation 

Cf. SG geuban ‘craw, crop’ > ciaban (Robertson 1908a, 279), and cartan ‘heath tick’ > gartan.

), perhaps both.