From: Antonio Sciarretta
Message: 14741
Date: 2002-08-29
Toponyms are potentially useful additional information in the study
of which languages were spoken where and when. However, in order
for any proposed etymology to be of any use at all, there needs to
be some sort of correlation between it and the physical peculiarities
of the place involved. For example, what is sacred about Aesernia, or
white about Albinia? As you will appreciate, the roots that the place
names have been associated with are short and sometimes vague, so
I dare say anything could be made to fit any theory.
I agree with you. The semantics of the place names cannot be extended indefinitely, but meanings have to be searched that are proved to be productive for real place names. This is the method that have been used - not by me - for many of the most known and accepted place-name etymologies (like Aesernia, Aesis fl., Isaurus fl. from *eis- is, actually, or Aufidena, Aufinum from *eudh-, etc.), when we don't have known appellatives to sustain them. This is not the case of the substratist theories, which do the contrary, going from the place-names to the appellatives, inventing them and their languages. To use your own example, the root *albho- 'white' seems to be rather common for river names, for the 'clear' color of water. This use is attested in many Romance stream-names derived from Latin claru(m) 'clear', for instance. Also in place-names it can be easily explained from the concept of 'clearance' as opposed to the uncut wood.
I am more interested in your section on Etruria, but take anything
Georgiev says about Etruscan with a BIG pinch of salt.
If you want to know more about the Etruscan language, I suggest you read
somebody sober and thorough like Joseph Pfiffig or Helmut Rix.
Most other people are just talking through their hats. And contrary
to what some people on this list would have you believe, it isn't
closely related to IE, but I wouldn't have expected it to have much
impact on place names in Etruria because Etruscan was only around
for a thousand or so years and most of the people who spoke it were
recently descended from former speakers of Umbrian.
Ed Robertson
Actually, for the Etruscans I follow the Erodotean migrationist thesis, as the majority of the linguists including Rix do, I don't know Pfiffig, as opposed to the Dionysian autochthonous thesis, mainly introduced by the archeologists and by Pallottino, who founded the Etruscology, in chief. But I don't really take the Etruscan as an Anatolian language (the theory of Georgiev, Durante, Adrados, now Pittau, etc.). I still think of it as a non-IE language, but with a non-IEness that has nothing to do with an unreal "mediterranean" substratum or things like this.
I just think that the toponymy of the Etruria can be explained without the need of the Etruscan language itself, that is to say, it is more ancient than the arrival of the Tyrrhenians-Etruscans, as you seem to take also. But I am following what Georgiev postulated about pre-Greek or Pelasgian (actually, I admit I love his method), and here I think I have found a correspondence with some phonetic features of the (Southern) Etrurian place-names. That would fit the notion of such Pelasgians wandering in the Western Mediterranean and particularly in Etruria during the Bronze age.
Best regards,
Antonio Sciarretta