Merci pour votre intervention rapide Jean-Louis.
L'association Maël-Lancelot provenait d'un livre ancien qui m'avait été communiqué en 1982, je n'ai le souvenir ni du titre, ni de l'auteur, mais peut être ici :
"The Name of Sir Lancelot du Lake
The name of Lancelot is sometimes found in French romances in the decapitated form of Ancelot, and this, of course, is a diminutive, like 'Jacquelot' and 'Michelot.' It is clear that those authors who wrote Ancelot supposed that they were dealing with a diminutive of the Old French word ancel (Latin, ancilla), and that L was the definite article, and therefore negligible at will. It was with these ideas in mind that the Viscount Hersart de la Villemarqué proceeded to identify Sir Lancelot du Lake with a Somersetshire prince named Maelwas.
Villemarqué gave two reasons for this identification :
1. Maelwas, like Lancelot, abducted King Arthur's wife.
2. 'Maelwas' = mael + gwas, and means 'young servant,' i.e. Ancelot.
The Welsh representative of Irish mael, 'a tonsured slave,' is not 'mael,' however, but moel. The Welsh 'mael' in proper names represents Maglo, and that means a prince, or hero : compare the name of Magilos, the Gaulish king who opposed Hannibal, according to Polybius, III. xliv. Hence Maelwas < Maglouas = 'young prince,' or 'young hero,' and not 'jeune serviteur.' Consequently the opinions of the nineteenth-century savant, and of the twelfth-century French romance writers, are equally unreliable.
The name of Lancelot is Germanic in origin. Its deuterotheme is really -loth, but that had to be accommodated to French pronunciation, in the same way as the names Loth > Lot, and Goth > Ghot. The prototheme Lance- was a dissyllable, and it corresponds with the first part of the name of Lancing, a village in Sussex, which is connected with Wlencing, the youngest son of Ælle, the first recorded king of that province. 'Wlencing' presents an infected form of wlanc, 'proud '; cf. wlenceo, 'pride.' The same root appears as prototheme in many Germanic personal names, e.g. Wlancbeorht, Wlanc-heard, Wlanc-thegn. Among names which rejected the initial w before l are Lanc-fer, Lanc-pertus and Lancino; and an intermediate form between wl and l, namely hl, appears in Hlanc-wulf, the name of a moneyer under Edward the Confessor.
The deuterotheme is the same as that in 'Vinoviloth,' a Gothic name recorded in the Getica of Jordanes (scr. c. 560). The use of this deuterotheme was exceptionally rare among the Anglo-Saxons, and the only instances in insular writings that are known to me are 'Unlot' and 'Guingelot.' Both names come to us through Norman-French writers. 'Unlot' represents Huniloth, and it occurs in Domesday Book, v. Ellis, General Introduction to Domesday Book, Index B. 'Guingelot' represents Winge-loth (cf. Winge, Winge-drud, Wing-beald), and is the name given to Wade's boat by Walter Map (c. 1175); v. 'De Nugis Curialium,' ed. Wright, 1850, ii. 17. Various meanings are assigned in early glossaries to the Old English 'loða' ; sc. lacerna, paludamentum, sagulumi 'a (military) cloak'; it is also equated with Latin lōdix, 'a blanket,' and with Anglian scēte, 'a sheet.'"
'Lancelot,' therefore, represents Lancé-loth < Wlanci-loth.
The Celtic Review, Professor Mackinnon, Mrs W. J. Watson, Volume VIII, 1912-1913, 404 page, pp. 365-6.
Donc, Mackinnon et Watson évoquent une confusion par Hersart de la Villemarqué entre Mael et Moel (serviteur à la tonsure).
Ils auraien t dû publier ça plutôt, cela m'aurait évité une scène de ménage
