Editing Openai/69186d20-2d14-8013-b9c6-c09000f173f6 (section)

===== For Spáinn / Spáinnis: =====
* It’s a modern loan from the España / Hispania family, not an Old-Irish-era word.
'' Orthographic ''nn* at the end doesn’t reflect an old native geminate that went through the full Old Irish cycle. It’s just how Irish chose to spell a slender final n (and probably to echo Spanish ñ).
* Synchronically: - Spáinn is /ˈsˠpˠaːnʲ/. - Palatalization is fully determined by the i; doubling the n is not needed to make it slender. Modern grammarians explicitly note that -nn vs -n doesn’t control palatal vs non-palatal – that’s about surrounding vowels.

So for Spáinn the most defensible statement is:
* Historically, Irish as a language had true geminate nn and palatalized n;
* This particular nn is best analysed as orthographic and analogical (borrowed name, Spanish ñ, existing Irish pattern of -ainn / -eann / -ainn-type endings), not as a direct fossil of a distinct [nʲː]/[ɲː] stage in that word.

My earlier “[nʲː] or [ɲ] somewhere in the chain” should be read as “this is the kind of sound Irish uses for slender /n/” rather than “we have explicit diachronic evidence that Spáinn itself once had a phonemically long palatal nasal.” We don’t. We just know:
* Irish had geminate nn historically,
* Irish has palatal n ([nʲ] ~ [ɲ]) as part of its core system,
'' ''Spáinn* is written with nn but realized as a single slender /nʲ/ today.