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Neither do I. Forstemann plausibly suggests most of these names are from Ancient Germanic *agwjo (lit. "watery" in reference to land by or surrounded by a body of water), Ouw-, Aw-, Au- in High German, and Ig- (ighere, Igulf) in English (with is- to represent *iȝ- in island); however a few of these names may be a root only recorded prosaically in Gothic Awa, Norse Ai "grandather" (the other languages have the suffixed form represented by English eam "maternal uncle", but reportedly an unspecified German dialect also has Awwe "grandfather" and there are cognates in Hittite, Armenian, Latin, and in the sense "uncle" in Celtic and Balto-Slavic), which could also supply the extended forms Awan- and Awin- from the oblique declensions.

This message was edited 8/15/2018, 3:36 PM