about the name of God in IE languages

From: alexmoeller@...
Message: 16869
Date: 2002-11-23

I will try to present here some ideas from the work of C.
Poghirc regarding the name of God in some IE languages.
I used for slavic sign meaning the weak "i" the letter "U"
I will excuse myself here for the eventualy misstypings and if
there are some things where you think I did a mistake by
typing, please feel free to ask me.

Poghirc shows the known thing , some IE languages have as
root for the name of GOd the IE root *deiwos where from we
have in skr. "devah", in "avest"., "daeva", lat. "deus", osc.
"deivai", messap. "zis", ven. "deivos", gaul "devo", old isl.
"tivar" (pl), old engl. "tig" ( genit. tiwes), v. all. "zio"
The root should mean day or light.

The name of God became some regressive in certain languages
like in germanic languages and it was replaced by a derivat
from of the root *gheu= invocation
got. "guß", old isl. "gud", engl. "god", germ. "Gott"

In the slavic languages there are traces of the old IE *deiwos
just in "divo", "divinU". Generally, the name of God in slavic
languages is a derivat from the IE root *bhag= divide. Ol. slv
"bogU", bulg, russ, srbcr "bog", pol. "bog", czech "buh".He
thinks these is an iranian influence from the language of the
scythians like avest "baya", old. pers. "baga", skr "bhagah".
He inform us that the origin autochtones of the slavic word
was presented by M. Vasmer in the Russisches Etymologisches
Wörterbuch , Heidelberg 1958

There are some isolated cases in the IE languages where the
name of God doesnt appear to belong to none of these roots.

He takes a look here at the name of the greecian god "Zeus"
which is the cognate of the latin Deus.the greek "Theus" (
with theta) .This word has an obscure etymology cf. H. Frisk
Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg 1958 and P.
Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque,
Paris 1968
for thracian language Pogirc give us the name "zalmos" where
he thinks it should have meant "protector" and try to make the
conection with the sanskrit: "sarman" which is supposed to
mean protection.for the dacian one, there is Zalmoxis .
Regarding the albanian language, the name for God is
"per(e:)ndi. Pogirc presents the connection skr=Parjanya-,
sl. Perun, lith. Perkunas and he thinks it can be rapported to
the thracian toponyme "perkote".
The construction " The God Father" is to find in several IE
languages:
skr. "dyaus pita", grk. "zeus pater", archaic latin
"Diespiter", fallowed by "Iuppiter", umbrian
"Iupater"(vocative), illirian "delpaturos".At the origin it
should have meant " the father of the day or the father of the
sky" ( divum pater atque hominum rex, hominum sator atque
deorum

Further Pogirc take a look at the modern world and the name of
God which is used today by several folks .
Regarding the Romanian language Pogirc shows that the current
word is Dumnezeu (literary) which represents the latin
expresion Dominus Deus like in the old french "Damnedeu", , it
"Domineddio", prov. "Dormedieus".The other romance languages
took a medieval word like it. Signore, fr. Seignor, sp.Senor.

By myself , I find very interesting this article of Pogirc,
and I have some toughts about.
The greek word for God= zeus
The IE construct "the God Father" in greek = zeus pater
I know, many people here will smile, but If i aacept the rom.
word Dumnezeu I accept it as a combination of Dominus (
religios word ) and the old word for God, zeu
I do not try to show now why rom. Zeul ( the god) is not a
continuation of latin deus.
The popular form for zeu ( go) is zãu, with article "Zãul".
It seems to me very interesting the construction Zeus pater .
Pater in romanian is like every lal-word "tata". But when rom.
speaks about an old male man , they call it "mo$".This word
is used for grand-father and for ancestors. The word
"ancestor" is a neologism, when rom. people speaks about their
ancestors they use " din mo$i strãmo$i, mo$ii $i strãmo$ii
nostri".
I tought, what does it happen if I replace "pater" with
"mo$"?It seemed to be still corect to use mo$ for pater, the
semantical difference beeing just formal.
So if I translate Zeus Pater in romanian I get "Zeul Tatã" in
literar romanian.. Replacing "tata" with "mo$" I get "Zeul
mo$", in folks mouth "Zãul mo$"
That was pretty strange. The thracian word for God is
"zalmos". We do not know if this is a combination of "zeus
pater" or just "zeus". The only thing we know is that word
"zalmos".
Is so wrong to see zalmos=zãul mo$? I guess is not so wrong.
Not because so I want. But the resemblance is indeed almost
perfectly.Foneticaly and semanticaly.

with best regards,

alex