Re: [tied] gwen etymology

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 4919
Date: 2000-12-03

Dear Eris,
 
Lots of questions -- and a vast topic. First, a general remark. You should be careful with diacritics, length marks, etc. They are important when discussing historical changes.
 
The normal transcription of the Slavic "woman" word is z^ena (with an upside-down "^" over z) < *gWena:- . The Polish word is z*ona (with a dot over z) and its present-day meaning is 'wife' rather than 'woman'.
 
The word is also found in Baltic (Old Prussian genno < *gWena:).
 
English queen (OE cwe:n 'woman, queen', Goth. qe:ns, ON kvaen) derives from a lengthened-grade form *gWe:n-i- (":" = vowel length, "W" = lip-rounding accompanying the consonant), while quean 'harlot' (OE cwene, Goth qino:, not originally pejorative -- these words could simply mean 'woman, wife') is from Germanic *kWen-o:n- < *gWen- with a nasal stem termination.
 
The Classical Armenian form is kin < *gWen- (k is a regular reflex of *gW in Armenian, and i < *e before a nasal).
 
The Classical Greek word should be gune: (your h is a misinterpretation of Greek eta <H>). The stem gunaik- (with an *-ik extension) occurred already in Classical Greek (Gen.sg. gunaikos, Voc. gunai < *gunaik).
 
The Sanskrit forms are as follows:
jani-, jani:- < *gWen-i- 'woman, wife'
ja:ni- 'female' (adjective) < *gWe:n-i-
gna:- a goddess or female genius, "superwoman" < *gWn-a:-.
 
The neuter noun ga:na- (N.sg. ga:naM) has nothing to do with the "woman" etymon ans means 'song, singing'
 
The Avestan form is jaini-, cf. Kurdish z^en, Persian zan. All these words begin with consonants resulting from the palatalisation of PIE *gW- before the front vowel *e. Hence also Sanskrit *j- (like English "j") and Slavic *z^ ("zh"). A similar process produced Tocharian s' ("sh"). The palatalisation did not take place in the zero-grade form, when *gW was immediately followed by *n, which is why we get Skt. gna:-.
 
You can see that although PIE *e, *o and *a all became Indo-Iranian *a, the old difference is reflected in the fact that originally velar consonants turn into Indo-Iranian palatals before original *e (this is neatly illustrated by the word *kWekWlom 'wheel' > Skt. cakraM "chakra").
 
The PIE root meaning 'woman, wife' was *gWen-. A root noun *gWons (Gen. *gWenos or *gW@...) may have survived in Hittite and Luwian, but the evidence is very uncertain (in Hittite, only the ending of the word is written phonetically). The most widespread variant in the non-Anatolian languages is *gWen-a:- (or *gWn-a:-/*gW@...:- with a reduced first syllable), which goes back to a form with a "laryngeal" consonant *h2 (pronounced probably like German "ch" in Nacht) in the suffix:
 
*gW(e)n-ah2-
 
The suffix *-ah2 > *-a: is a familiar feminine-gender marker in most IE branches. Classical Greek gune: may continue *gWena: (just like *kWekWlo- and *wedo:r > Greek kuklo- 'wheel', hudo:r 'water') rather than *gW@...:, but the latter form certainly underlies dialectal (Beotian) bana:.
 
A common by-form is an originally adjectival derivative in *-i with a lengthened vowel (ja:ni, queen):
 
*gWe:n-i-
 
Piotr
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Eris  
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2000 8:05 PM
Subject: [tied] gwen etymology

Hi, I just joined today.  Love languages, linguistics, mythology,
etc., and am currently working on getting a degree in ling.  Anyhow,
I
was wondering if any of you could help me out on a particular
etymological problem I'm having.  =)

I'm currently doing a little research (a bit for a class, but mostly
out of personal curiosity) on the IE *gwen.  I'm hoping this will
turn
out alright once formatted - if not, please forgive me.

IE  *gwen-  woman
IE  *gwen-a-  woman?  (suffixed form)
IE  *gwen-i-  woman?  (suffixed lengthened-grade form)
IE  *gwn-a-  woman?  (suffixed zero-grade form)
Common Germanic  *kwen-  woman
Old High German  cwán/quina  woman/wife/queen
Old Norse  kwaen  woman/wife/queen
Old Norse  kvinna/kvenna  ?
Old English  cwen  woman/wife/queen  (from *gwen-a-)
Old English  cwene  woman/prostitute/harlot  (from *gwen-i-)
Middle English  quene  woman/prostitute/harlot
Modern English  queen  queen
Swedish  kvinna  woman
Icelandic  kona/kvennmaor  woman
Faroese  kona  woman
Danish  kvinde  woman
Old Dutch  quene  old cow/barren cow
Dutch  kween  old cow/barren cow
Frisian  kwyn  old cow/barren cow
Gothic  qino  woman
Gothic  qens  wife
Common Slavic  *z'ena  woman
Belorussian  z'ana  woman
Bulgarian/Polish/Slovak/Serbo-Croatian/Slovene/Cze
ch/Ukrainian/Russian
z'ena  woman
Sorbian (Wendish)  z'ona  woman
Old Greek  gunh-  woman  (from *gwn-a-)
Modern Greek  gunaik-  woman/wife  (from gunh-)
Modern Greek  gunaio  tart/jade/strumpet  (from gunh-)
Sanskrit  jani  wife
Sanskrit  gana/gna  woman/goddess
Common Celtic  *ben-/*bena-  woman
Old Irish  ben
Modern Irish  bean
Modern Scottish  bean  woman/wife
Scottish  queyn  queen
Modern Welsh  benyw  wife
Cornish  benen  wife
Manx  ben  woman/lady/wife
Persian  zan  woman
Persian/Kashmiri  zanana  woman  (from zan)
Phrygian  bon-ekos  wife  (with a suffix)
Armenian  kin/gin  woman/wife
Tocharian A  s'än  woman
Tocharian B  s'ana  woman

The problems I'm having:  In some reference materials I've looked in,
it says that in Sanskrit, "gana" means "woman", in some it says
"gna",
and in others it says "gani" - and in with the latter two, it often
says "gana" means either "song" or "cast".  Any ideas as to which one
is correct, or which is/are more correct?  Also, I couldn't find the
J
letter/grapheme in the dictionaries anywhere - I thought Sanskrit had
a J and pronounced it the same as PDE?  At any rate, I couldn't find
any information on "jani", so I don't know if that's supposed to mean
"wife" or not.  Could someone please explain any of that to me, and
how, if "g*n*" and "jani" are related, why they differ so?

Further, could someone explain to me certain sound changes that
occurred from the "gw" onset in IE - to, say, the "z" in Persian, the
"s" in the Tocharian langs/dialects.  I can somewhat see how "gw"
changed to "b" and so on, but even though I don't know many of the IE
sound-change laws, the s/z thing just seems strange to me.

I find it very interesting that from the original IE meaning of
"honoured woman", in some of the languages amelioration occurred,
making it more of "goddess" or "queen", and in others pejoration
occurred, degrading it into "hussy"/"cow"/"harlot" etc.  Apparently
English developed two words from the same basic root in order to
distinguish between the two distinct meanings.  It could all bring up
some lovely historical social commentary.  =)

Also, OT, I was wondering about the Welsh name Cai, as in Sir Kay and
such.  I'm assuming it's related to the Latin Caius/Gaius.  Please
correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the "ai" in Latin pronounced /e/
early on and later changed into sounding like their "ae", /ay/?  The
Welsh Cai is pronounced /ke/, right?  Did they change the sound of
it,
and if so, why didn't they just stick with the /kay/ sound when the
Romans brought the name over?  I'm probably way off here, but
nonetheless very curious.  Further, what did the name mean in Latin? 
I've heard various sources claim it meant "man" (as in the slangish
PDE "guy"), some say it meant "happy", etc.  Would be interested to
know that as well.

Thanks a bunch, and sorry for the massive post.

- Eris