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This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot17:18, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My own view differs from this article somewhat. Nechtan is related to Neptune from a Proto-Indo-European *Nep-to-no-s. The word is clearly related to Proto-Indo-European *nepôt, nephew, and *nept-, niece, and the root *nep- may have meant ‘flow down, derive, issue forth’ so that *nepôt literally meant ‘issue, derivation, descendant’ and *neptonos would be a common adjective of appurtenance in *-no- meaning ‘of the derivation/issue.’ Surely, it makes more sense to say that, in the Italic religion, the reflex of this adjective, Neptune, is applied to a god of bodies of waters that ‘derive,’ that is, flow down in Latin, and that, in Celtic religion it is applied to Grannus-Belenos, the god of shimmering brightness, where this god is deemed to be manifest in shimmering waters. The common Proto-Indo-European element of ‘fire in water’ probably originated in idolisation of the seeming splendour of light reflected in rippling water. G.M.Gladehall (talk) 20:26, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
By reading the literature on Iranian and Greek mythology, I would say that the "fire in the water" is the thunderbolt. The identification with naphta is simply laughable.
Concerning the name Apam Napat, the first part clearly relates to water (Sanskrit आप āpa "water"), but the second part does not have anything to do with *nept-, niece.
As Occam would say, since we are talking about a water-god, and since the "fire in the water" has been since long time identified with the thunderbolt, I would say that Napat comes from the same PIE root which has given Latin nūbēs, "cloud", and Greek nephos (νέφος), also "cloud", and Sanskrit itself with nabhas (clouds) and nabha (sky).
I would therefore say that Apam Napat means "water in the sky" or "rain-cloud".
For strange it may sound, the root from which all of those terms have originated in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and all other PIE-derived languages is *snewbʰo- (“to marry, to wed”), from which Latin nūbō, nūbere has come, with the original meaning of "to cover, veil", then "to marry, to wed (to put a veil on a woman)", and finally ", "to become cloudy (to cover, to veil the sky)". (lastshaman)
