Mugurutza, Gorrotxategi eta beste etimologia zenbait: eskuinak ez dakar zorionik

Abstract

In Mitxelena’s analysis, the names Mugurutza and Gorrotxategi are based on mukuru ‘filled’ and gurutze ‘cross’ respectively. This paper offers an alternative etymological account of these surnames, by linking them to Mugaburu and gorri ‘red’. The next sections evaluate the Basque interpretation of the text contained in the hand of Irulegi. To this end, detailed etymologies of Lekuine and eskuin ‘right’ are provided; the goal is to build a precise history of the lexicalized adjectival phrases that have on ‘good’ as a head, in order to compare it to that of zorion ‘happiness’. The comparative method is thus revisited, by comparing elements that belong to different stages of the same language; this illustrated with a Latin-Romance example. The result is that the evidence is not sufficient to identify the 2.100 old segment string sorion with the Basque phrase zorion, and that without additional evidence their apparent similarity is nothing but a linguistic pareidolia.