Greek wanax and basileus: A final solution finally? :P

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 7459
Date: 2001-06-03

Hey everyone,

I searched the archives of the list to make sure that this wasn't
mentioned before at great length and I couldn't find anything,
so here goes...

I can't help but notice that Greek /wanax/ and /basileus/ "chief"
are without any secure etymology. For a person obsessed with
deduction and extrapolation, I wanna take a crack at it and see
if we can't come to an appealing solution for everyone.

I recently was given a message from another, avidly interested in
comparative linguistics who had came across my new page on Hattic.
We shall call this person "Ned". I was glad that my site evoked
some great questions within him. This was one of his ideas,
which I consider thought-provoking:

"Is it possible the Homeric Greek 'wanax', king, could be
derived from Hattic 'wurun-katti', used not as the proper
name of the war god, but as a literal meaning of 'ruler
of the realm' (and if not from wurun-katti,
wurun-<some other suffix>?"

At first glance, it's easy to dismiss such a suggestion since
it is clear to anyone with enough understanding of
historical linguistics that Hattic and Mycenaean could not have directly
affected each other, nor could I see any likelihood that
Hattic could have possibly lent such important words to a
language so far away to the west within historical times. It
seems commonly accepted that /wanax/ and /basileus/ must be from
a native tongue and not one from something so afar as Hattic.

However, this perspective changes drastically if we consider the
possibility that the Hattic language is a prehistoric immigrant
from the west. This is in fact what I've just recently concluded
after, for the longest time, taking it for granted that Hattic is
related to the Nakh-Daghestinian (NEC) language instead of the
Abkhaz-Adhyghe (NWC) languages.

If we take Ned's suggestion further and add it to the hypothesis
that Hattic had migrated around the west side of the Black Sea,
through the Balkans, before arriving in its historically attested
location in Anatolia, we obtain a new interpretation of both
/wanax/ and /basileus/ that might prove profitable.

Here's what I'm suggesting and I welcome whatever criticism on
this idea one can find. Let's say Proto-Hattic is situated along
the Mediterranean coast line from Greece to the Balkans at about
the same time as the entry of the proposed Semitish language into
Europe starting c. 6500 BCE. This hypothetical language has a term
*kWati "chief" (Hattic /katti/ "king") which is used in compounds
like *wunun-kWati "king of the realm" (Hattic /wurun-katti/).

When the Tyrrhenians arrive on scene from 5500 to 5000 BCE, they
borrow some terms from Proto-Hattic. Thus, we have Tyrrhenian
**kWati "chief" or *kWati-lewe "chief of the people" (Note the
characteristic reverse ordering of the Tyrrhenian compound, an
IndoTyrrhenian phenomenon discussed at length in previous posts!)
and also we have Tyrrhenian *wenakti/*wenatti "chief; God of War" (Etruscan
Vanth). After that, the Hattic tongue is gradually
pushed into Anatolia by the growth of Tyrrhenian languages as I've
already proposed.

It is only after the spread of Indo-European that Hellenic
finally arrives in Greece, but by this time, surely any traces of
Hattic would be minimal to non-existent. Rather, Tyrrhenian and
Anatolian would have the greatest influences on Hellenic. Thus,
Hellenic borrows the Tyrrhenian terms *wenakti and *kWati-lewe
as *wanakt-s and *gWatileu-s. This is then inherited
into Mycenaean, written as [wa-na-ka] (wanax/wanakt-) and
[qa-si-re-u] (gwasileus) respectively.

Summary:

PHattic Tyrrhenian Hellenic ----> Mycenaean
------- ---------- ------------------------
*kWati > *kWati-lewe *gWatileus [qasireu]
*wunun-kWati > *wenakti *wanakts [wanaka]

Hopefully I haven't frightened yous too much with my theorizing.
Please respond. I'm lonely <:(

- gLeN


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