The evolution of the surname Gamgee is fully explained in its anglicised form as deriving from the village of Gamwich thusly: Gamwich > Gammidge > Gammidgy > Gamgee. We do not, however, have exact correspondences for all these forms in the original Hobbit-speech, but merely the village name Galabas and the derivatives Galbasi and Galpsi (which equated to Gamgee).
It is thus unclear exactly which precursor to the name Gamgee is represented by Galbasi; in principle, it might be either Gammidge or Gammidgy, or a combination of the two. It is perhaps notable that the name Gamwich is introduced as 'Gamwich (pronounced Gammidge)' (in Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings), so we might reasonably treat those two versions as equivalent. On this model, Galabas might be anglicised as either Gamwich or Gammidge, and therefore Galbasi would be more directly equivalent to Gammidgy.
|
SHARE
