Yes, of course. That’s why I opened the post saying that Joyce invented the word “with a new meaning itself.”*
The milk product has no bearing on the etymology, although in the spirit of all’s fair in Wake glosses, have at it if you think you can come up with one.
What’s interesting is that the near-super human fluidity with which Joyce plays with words, in so many languages, is that people assume not only that he was aware of, but employed all possible meanings of every word and phrase and their sound association in creation.
Of course, that very fluidity is what allows new insight and pleasure in exploring Joyce’s meaning and the reader’s creative response to it–such as what you may come up with “quark,” as I suggested above.
In fact, a game Wakeans play (I forget what it has been dubbed) is to find, and make bullshit glosses, on words that didn’t exist nohow nowhere when the Wake was written. For example, the word “Emalia” appears, usually glossed as a play on Emilia, the character in Othello (why the name is changed is not important here). But it has joined the list of pre-figurations by Joyce.
I have often thought about, and may publish yet, the idea in literature criticism the idea of Joyce as the Hebrew God of creation. Case in point: a hoary and holy exegetical practice in Judaism is the freedom to connect every and any word in the Bible to each other. Why? Since the Torah is from God, is perfect, meaning among other things no word would be used by Him in it if something could not be gleaned from them. This exegetical freedom includes using sound changes (easy enough when you consider that the Torah, like modern Hebrew, has precious few vowels)–from it’s first name of “Adam” (“earth/dirt”) as well as and puns, a practice Rabbi Jesus was fond of, “Petrus” (“stone”). (In the case of Petrus Jesus made the connection clear.)
At base is that God’s literate/literal framework of existence is of profound significance: the Book–written text–is the vehicle for the very existence of God’s created reality, or of God himself (later specifically conflated with nonliteracy with Christians’ conception of Logos).
For good reason the idea of “Midrash as literature” flourished in the 1980s as French lit crit had its fluorescence. Derrida has a (typically irresponsible) essay on Joyce and the Torah. (Joyce is the happy hunting ground for post-modern crit “all meanings are good cuz I say so.”)
*This reply, by using a cite quote, makes it sound more aggressive/defensive than it is. Not meant, just habit of scholarly reply. Which indeed often is aggressive/defensive. 