--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> The varians are due to the varying quality of the suffix vowel -- a
frequent phenomenon in Germanic. Pre-Germanic alternation of the type
*-mon-/*-men-/*-mn- resulted in the Germanic variants *-man-/*-min-/*-
mun-, levelled out dialectally in various ways (cf. *-ing-/*-ung-
etc.). *er-min-a- > irmin- with the regular raising of *e (thus often
in West Germanic; also OE eormen/yrmen < iurmin < *irmin-); *er-man-a-
> Goth. ermana- (as in Ermana-ri:ks); *er-mun-a- > ermun- (> ON
jörmun-).
>
> The gloss "common, general" bends the meaning towards the concept
of sharing or companionship, thus bringing it closer to IIr. *aryaman-
. But the latter is a social concept par excellence, and there's
nothing conspicuously social about the use of "irmin". It does seem
to mean "universal" in some instances, but in the sense "pertaining
to the universe or the earth, worldwide", not "shared by all".
>
> Piotr
But see my earlier posting on Old Danish <almin> etc of that which is
not owned by anyone, hence by everyone (by force of the negative
definition), thus "pertaining to the non-owned, collective or
uncultivated land", hence "frontier land, what remains to be subdued".
Torsten
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 3:45 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: "Irmin" and Hermes
>
>
> No doubt the OE list "eormen" things was quite enorme (another
scribal error?), but was <ermana-> what the lesser Goths said too? In
the end they (presumably) came up with the <irmin> of <Irminsul>. The
Latin translation seems to have been equally formulaic; from your
examples one gets the impression "common, general" would have been a
more suitable one, which would fit in nicely with some meanings of
<aryaman>?