From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17921
Date: 2003-01-22
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 9:01 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Primordial Man, Ymir, *Yemos, PIE cosmogony
> The issue I have here is that Ymir and Yama spring from the name *Yemos. Now, granted, the functions of *Yemos and those of Ymir and Yama could have evolved over the years but where is there any trace of a cosmic motif behind Yama? At best, he might be seen as chthonic... but is he truely "cosmic" (ie: the _entire_ universe)?
I doubt if even a formal connection between <ymir> and anything like *jemos is tenable, pace Pokorny's tour-de-force derivation: ymir < *jumja- < *jm.-ja- (with a question mark, to be fair; I find the syllabification unlikely). Norse <y> represents umlauted *u, and since <ymir> might easily go back to *jum-ja-z < *jumjos, I think a connection with Jumis, the Baltic harvest deity, represented as a double ear of corn, is more compelling than any other etymology. The root is (presumably) Pokorny's *jeu- 'join, bind together', which fits the twin aspect of Ymir very nicely.
Piotr