lancĕŏlātus, a, um, adj. [lanceola], armed with a little lance or point, lanceolated, lanceolate: plantago, Macer de Plantagine, 5.
Combined with the 'du Lac' title, I now feel fairly confident in identifying Lancelot (as I did in the past, without benefit of the bit on lanceolatus) with the Irish god Lugh, whose name in Welsh occurs as Llwch, the same spelling found for the word "lake":
llwch2
[cf. e. lle Crn. Looe, H. Lyd. luh ‘llyn’, H. Lyd. lohan, gl. paluster, Llyd. Diw. lo(u)c’h: ?cf. H. Wydd. loch (> S. loch, lough)]
eg. ll. llychau.
Llyn, pwll, merddwr, cors, mignen, siglen, gwern; llaid, budreddi, baw, tom, hefyd yn ffig.:
lake, pool, stagnant water, bog, swamp, marsh; mud, mire, grime, filth, dung, also fig.
Lugh possessed the Gae Assail, a legendary spesr recognized as one of the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann. His Welsh counterpart Lleu kills Goronwy Pebr with a spear, piercing through a stone slab to strike his enemy on the bank of the River Cynfael.
I suspect one of the epithets of Lugh contributed to Chretien's adoption of lanceolatus.
We may begin with Llwch Llawwynnauc, which is probably a Welsh substitute for the Irish Lugh Lonnbemnech. This became Lluch or Lleawc Lleminauc in The Spoils of Annwn. And Lleminauc became Culhwch and Olwen’s Llenlleawc the Irishman.
Lugh Lonnbemnech >
Llwch Llawwynnauc >
Lluch/Lleawc Lleminauc >
(Lluch/Lleawc) Llenlleog
Common copying errors often substituted certain letters for each other, and we can easily imagine a form of an epithet whose first element was mistakenly related to W. llain -
llain
[?bnth. H. Wydd. láigen ‘gwaywffon flaenlydan’; ymddengys mai deus. oedd y gair yn wr. yn ôl tystiolaeth yr enghrau. cynharaf]
eb.g. ll. lleiniau, lleinau, (prin) lleini.
a Llafn, cleddyf, gwayw, gwaywffon:
• blade, sword, spear.
- and whose second element was taken as the standard Welsh diminutive suffix -awc. This is especially true given the god's spear attribute.
If I'm right, then Lancelot of the Lake is Lugh of the Little Lance (which has rather unfortunate Freudian overtones!).
I would add only that Lluch/Lleawc Lleminauc is one of the warriors who accompanies Arthur on an Otherworld raid in the Welsh poem "Spoils of Annwm." One of the names of the castle there is Caer Wydryr, 'Glass Castle.' This name led to an identification with Glastonbury, fancifully interpreted as meaning the Isle of Glass.
That fortunate correspondence would be all Chretien or his source would need for placing Lancelot at Glastonbury Avalon.
For more on this connection, see
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/preiddeu-annwn.html
lluch lleawc may be a garbled version of a name: "the sword of Lluch Lleawch." Loomis calls it "a remarkable muddle" (p. 161): in Culhwch and Olwen we have two mentions of Llenlleawc the Irishman in the list of names Culhwch invokes, plus a Llwch Llawwynnyawc (Llwch "Windy-hand" according to Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, trans. The Mabinogion [London: Everyman, 1975], p. 107). LLenleawc Wyddel is also the warrior among Arthur's men who kills the giant Diwrnach, enabling the cauldron to be taken in Culhwch and Olwen. Both J. Lloyd Jones and Sir Ifor Williams whom Loomis consulted in the preparation of his article (Loomis, p. 135, note 30) take lluch lleawc to be separate adjectives: "flashing" and "death-dealing." Haycock suggests that Lleawc may have been an earlier, or variant form of the name Llenleawc (p. 70). Koch has "a sword of lightning slaughter" (p. 296).
Loomis suggests that Lluch Lleawc is a variant of Llwch Llawwynnawc in Culhwch and Olwen, cognate with the Irish semi-deity Lugh, "who had an epithet which is given in Cath Maige Tured as Lonnbémnech.
