From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2175
Date: 2000-04-23
----- Original Message -----From: Gregory L. EyinkSent: Sunday, April 23, 2000 2:27 PMSubject: [cybalist] Re: EasterI second Piotr's wish of a Happy Easter to everyone!
By the way, a web search turned up some information on the
origin of the term "Easter" and its various traditions (mostly,
however, from New Age and modern pagan websites). According
to these sources, the word arises from the Anglo-Saxon "eostre"
cognate with Old High German "ostara". This seems to have been
the name of a Germanic goddess of the spring and dawn, and also
employed for the spring equinox festival celebrated in her honor.
This theory of the origin of the term apparently goes back to
the Venerable Bede, writing in the 8th century. Some wild-looking
cognates were suggested by the New Age sites (such as Egyptian
Astarte) but also some reasonable ones, such as Aurora , from
PIE "aus-", for "east".
Is all of this reliable?
Best, Gregory
It is, except the Astarte part; Bede's etymology is generally accepted by modern linguists. Eastre goes back to Proto-Germanic *aus-r-on-, a feminine stem with a nasal extension (the change *sr > *str is regular in Germanic). The Lithuanian word for 'dawn' is aušra; the same form gives Slavic *ustr- (often simplified to *utr-) meaning 'dawn, morning; tomorrow' (*au > Slavic *u, and *sr > *str as in Germanic). Also the Avestan word for 'dawn' is related (ušrah-).Another common extension of the same root (PIE *xaus-) is *x(a)us-os- yielding the name of the Dawn Goddess in several branches (auro:ra with Latin rhotacism, Greek e(:)o:s < *a:wo:s < *xaus-o:s, Sanskrit uša:h < *xus-o:s).I think the original meaning was 'dawn'; 'east' as a direction is a semantic extesion of that.Piotr