Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names

The Latin form is <ala:nus> (I've just checked it in Lewis & Short), which suggests *arya:nah to me. A form based on vrddhied *a:rya- is also thinkable, but I don't think the contrast between Ir and Alan can be due to different stress placement or vowel quantity in pre-Ossetic. All the examples I have seen suggest that the Alanic/Ossetic changes of *ri > *li and *ry > *l were not restricted to a particular environment. It seems to me that Ir, Iron must be Persian loans (ultimately also from *arya-, *arya:na-, of course, but with the non-Ossetic development *ary- > airy- > e:r- > i:r-, as in the name Iran).

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: liberty@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 10:43 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names

I'm not an expert in Ossetic so I'm asking not telling. Is the first 'a' in 'Alan' short? I thought that it was long. John Colarusso derives the Ossetic 'Alægatæ', a Nartic clan name, from *a:rya-ka:ta-. If this is accurate then the stem would be *a:l- with the derivatives **a:la:n > *a:lon (collective plur. and adject.) and **a:lata > *a:lætæ (plur.). And isn't the ending -on < *-a:n supposed to be from the Indo-Iranian genit. plur. ending -a:na:m? If so then it seems that you could have *a:lætæ and a:lon alongside each other but no further -tæ plural built on the -on form. However if -on is a word-building suffix and not originally a case ending then a plural like *a:lættæ < **a:lanta seems possible as it is with Oss. don (pl. dættæ) < *da:n (pl. *danta) "river, water". Although I don't know that -on from an original case ending couldn't have been reanalyzed and then treated as any other suffix. Also I want to ask how certain is it that 'Ir' and 'Iron' are recent formations? Don't the Vedas have the three words ari-, arya- and a:rya- with similar meaning? Ari- and arya- are identical in most of the oblique cases. I'm not sure exactly what the shades of difference in meaning are but as I understand it they're all based on the same root. I don't have any sources on the sound changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian to Ossetic so I can't say authoritatively, but I wonder if Alan couldn't come from *a:rya:na:m or *a:rya:na- and Ir from *ari- or *arya-. This would explain why 'Alan' fell out of use. It was synonymous or nearly so with Ir and therefore redundant. Also it seems to me that 'Ir' for Ossetia is secondary, based on the collective plural sense of 'Ir' for the inhabitants, since the word Iryston 'place of the Ir' is also used for Ossetia. Also the Ossetians' Iranian cousins the Persians used to call themselves 'Ir' with the adjectival 'Iran' beside it. So I wonder if Ir and Iran/Iron aren't the true ethnic names for both Persians and Ossetians in unbroken use going back to *ari- or *arya- and if Alan isn't just a vrddhi form that went out of use or is just one Sarmatian tribal name out of many with no connection whatsoever with *arya-. -David *a:rya- > a:la- *arya- > ala- or i:r- ? *ari- > i:r- ? Maybe original position of accent influences whether *-ry- results in -l- or -r-? ??????????