Re: The Birds - etymology found

1. There is a tendency in some modern Indian languages to substitute
the Sanskrit 'ph' with 'f', and vice versa the Persian/Arabic
borrowings with 'f' in the same languages can be pronounced
with 'ph'. Is there something like that regarding Slavic/Proto-
Slavic/Greek connections?
2. According to the enthusiasts of Russian neo-paganism, there are
also variants Strafil, Strahvil, Estarfil for Stratim, all of which
seem to be later and corrupt versions to me.
3. The word gamayun actually appears to be perfectly Sanskrit. Was
there root 'gam', 'ga' meaning 'to move' or the like in Proto-Slavic?
Regards,
Marina Orelskaya

--- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Some of them are no doubt Greek names of "international" currency.
It's easy to see that "finist" or "grifon", for example, can't be
Slavic (with their f's that can't be derived from anything Proto-
Slavic). Stratim, however, looks 100% Slavic to me, while mogol (and
maybe nogai) might have been inspired by Mongolic or Turkic folklore
(though this is just an impressionistic guess). Gamayun sounds quite
enigmatic; I wonder if it isn't of Indo-Iranian origin. I'll try to
help, but it will take a little research.
>
> As far as I know, none of these birds occurs in West Slavic
folklore (except for obvious western borrowings like "gryf" < Latin
gryphus "griffin", the heraldic beast of the dukes of West Pomerania).
>
> Piotr
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: m_orelskaya@...
> To: cybalist@egroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2000 7:37 AM
> Subject: [tied] Re: The Birds - etymology found
>
>
> They are not the original characters of Slavic mythology then?
>
> All these birds are found in the old Russian literary
> source "Golubinaya kniga" and in the Slavic myths as reconstructed
by
> A.Asov. I am interested in the etymology of the names themselves.
It
> appears to me that while some of them are possibly corrupt Greek
> words (alkonost - halcyon, finist - phoenix etc.), the others could
> be of Slavic origin (stratim (which is also called nogai/nagai),
> mogol, gamayun). What would experts in the Slav languages say?
> Regards,
> Marina Orelskaya
>
> Dr Marina Orelskaya
> c/o Department of Sanskrit
> and Prakrit Languages,
> University of Pune,
> Pune 411007
> India