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

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For this lexeme ''Spáinn'':
* At borrowing (Old Irish Espáin < Latin Hispānia): - No nn at all → therefore not geminate; slenderness is whatever the Espáin vowel environment implied, but it’s not marked by doubling.
* When nn appears in modern spelling: - the geminate contrast is already dead as a length distinction; - slender /nʲ/ is determined by the i, not by nn; - nn is orthographic / “fortis” only.

So: at no attested stage of this word’s life do we have “nn” simultaneously doing real geminate length and slenderness.

Geminate + slender did exist in the language historically (for other words), but not as an earlier phonetic stage of Spáinn; here the double n is a late spelling choice laid on top of a pre-existing slender n.