Talk:Tasgetius

Badgers in folklore

The section §Name and Celtic badger lore should probably be split off into its own article. Srnec (talk) 22:13, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Name and Celtic badger lore

While I have to give credit to whoever wrote this section on Celtic badger history for their diligence in writing and sourcing such a frighteningly large amount of information, isn't almost all of it extraneous? Logically the article ought to only include the bit regarding his name etymology as its the only part that's relevant. The rest should probably be its own article or in the section of a badger-related article. Shotwells (talk) 05:30, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Cynwolfe, what say you? Srnec (talk) 04:38, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

It could be argued that the broader material might be better in an article on Gaulish personal naming practices, since there are other badger names for prominent men. I'm not persuaded that the linguistic environment belongs in a badger article. It's pretty common to consider what ritual, mythological, or cultural significance a Gaulish name might preserve.

I would note, by contrast, that we don't give an etymology for modern names, like "Victoria Brown". Why? I would suppose because names in antiquity were conceived of differently. With Roman names, even though the name is mostly handed down rather chosen (except for earned cognomina), the person might reference the etymology of one of his names in verbal puns or for his iconography. Like a moneyer named Bubo might put an owl on his coins as a symbol or visual pun.

The names of Gallic leaders mentioned in Caesar often sound so highfalutin (like Albiorix, "sky king" or "king of the [visible] world") that some linguists conjecture that ascending to a position of supremacy meant deliberately choosing an initiation or inaugural name. When you were a little skink age five, did your ma and pa actually holler, "Vercingetorix, you climb out of that tree right now"? So I guess my question would be: what's the point of giving an etymology without a perspective on the cultural context that presumably made the name meaningful? One of the longest entries in Xavier Delamarre's dictionary of Gaulish (pp. 292–293, 2nd ed.) is on tasgos and the personal names from it —not just that PNs derive from it, but surveying the body of scholarship on why the badger might be so prominent in Celtic naming. As I recall these many years later, most of that section comes from following up on XD's references. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:25, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't disagree at all that it's important for an etymology section to provide the necessary cultural context for the reader to understand both what a name means and what makes that name significant, my issue is that only one-fifth of the section actually does so.

The first paragraph does everything you would expect of an etymology section. It explains the root of the name Tasgetios, its meaning, and provides other examples of the root in other names.

The next three paragraphs don't provide any information connected to what's presented in the first paragraph or improve the reader's understanding of the name, they just discuss the applications of badger fat in the Classical medical tradition. A fascinating subject but totally irrelevant to the article's purpose, which is to inform the reader about the Gallic ruler Tasgetius. If it explained how all of this affects our understanding of Tasgetius's name then it might be useful but it doesn't. This is why I say that it feels extraneous. It would be more appropriate for this information to be in an article about Badgers, their uses by humans, or about Classical medicine.

The fifth paragraph is a bit more useful with how it focuses on the significance of badgers in culture and mythology which would have far more obvious implications for how the name should be interpreted but this is still limited by how none of the information actually pertains to Gaul (and is therefore of minimal relevance to Tasgetios). It would be more appropriate for this information to go somewhere in the culture section of an article about Badgers with a link to said article incorporated into the section's text. Shotwells (talk) 16:15, 22 September 2026 (UTC)