--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
>
> > *****GK: Good opportunity to ask. Baltic Perkunas is usually
identified with Slavic Perun and with one of the alternative
appellatives of the Indic Indra. But whence the "k" in Perkunas?
******
>
> There was a long discussion of this long, long ago, in Middle
Cybalist times. Plague upon Yahoo groups and the "search archives"
restrictions.
>
> There must have been some confusion between the PIE Rock/Thunder
God whose name or epithet was based on *per- (or *perg-) 'strike,
pierce' (*perwo:n and the like), and a (North European?) deity
associated with oaks and/or other tall trees (and whose functions had
to do with life and fertility), *perkWu-h1(o)n-. To aggravate
matters, there were several *per- roots in PIE, especially the ones
meaning 'pass, lead, bring across' and 'forward, through' (quite
possibly some of them were ultimately members of the same polysemous
etymon). Their homonymy facilitated various folk-etymological
associations and secondary identifications, at the same time
obscuring the actual etymology of various "Per-" theonyms.
>
Peschel: Anfänge germanischer Besiedlung im Mittelgebirgsraum
mentions an old German name 'Furguna' (the name may not be right, I'm
quoting by memory, since I don't have the book handy, I'll check it
for tomorrow) for the Hercynian forest (plenty rocks and trees
there!). The assumption is then that 'Hercynia' is Celtic (*p (>? *h)
> null, u > ü is plausibly Celtic too), and the Germani would then be
autochthonous to the region (ie. there from before Grimm shift, but
the same argument would apply to ON 'Harfada' "Carpathians").
Cf 'Fjorgun' an epithet of Thor (or was it Odin ?).
Torsten