Ligurian ending "-asco"

Hi,

around Turin in north Italy are many toponyms in -asco and -asca. The
general opinion there is that they should come from a Ligurian word
"asc" meaning a fortified village. Others say it be related with
Etruscan "-usco" but there are almost no toponyms in -usco in the
Tuscany and none at all in -asco or -asca.

In France on the other hand there are (in some regions) excessively
many toponyms in -ac and -acq. I thought this _could_ be the same as -
asc because French lost early many "s" before consonant. (In general
they say it comes from Celtic/Roman -acus meaning village, but where
comes -acus from?)

Anyway I got the curiosity and plotted all this kind of french and
italian toponyms, you can see the outcome here: http://pagiberlin.de/sonst/FR-IT800.jpg

I found the coordinates in some semi-official lists, they are not that
accurate and I deleted half a dozen yellow points falling in the sea,
Belgium or the Switzerlands, but the large cities I plotted in red are
more or less where they should be. White points are the rest.

Noticeable is the hiatus south of Brittany around Nantes, but it is
not an artifact I think, as I checked on road maps and indeed there
are no toponyms in -ac between Rochefort and St. Nazaire.

Well, maybe is someone interested. And, can someone give secured
information about this topic?

Ciao
Marco P
.

Loading