Geidumni
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The Geidumni were a small Belgic tribe living in Gallia Belgica during the Iron Age. They were clients of the most powerful Nervii.
They are attested as Geidumni by Caesar (mid-1st c. BC).[1][2]
Jozef Van Loon has proposed emending the name to Geldumni, noting that confusion between ⟨i⟩ and ⟨l⟩ occurs elsewhere in the manuscript tradition of Caesar's De Bello Gallico.[3] On this basis, the name Geidumni has been compared with the toponym Jodoigne (Dutch Geldenaken), attested as Geldonia in 1167 AD, and possibly deriving from an earlier Romance form *Geldumnia, borrowed from either Celtic or Germanic.[4]
If of Germanic origin, the name Geldumni may combine the stem geld- with the Indo-European participial suffix -menos, yielding interpretations such as 'those who make themselves count' or 'those to whom payment is due'. However, since both elements also occur in Celtic, a Celtic derivation remains possible.[5]
