[tied] Re: Saxon wanum "bright"

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 15-01-04 18:40, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> > s.v. <wânam>. (Warning: This is quite a large file.) There
> > are also entries for <wânami> str. fem. 'Glanz' ('shine')
> > and an adverb <wânamo> 'glänzend' ('shiningly').
>
> But this word comes from *we:numa-, related to Middle English ween
> 'beautiful' < *we:njo- and perhaps to the 'hope, imagine' word-

family

> (Goth. we:njan, OE we:nan, OS wânjan, ON væ:na, ...). It can hardly

be

> related to the name of the Vanir (unless both are somehow connected

with

> *wenh1-, but that, while supported by some dictionaries, requires a

lot

> of semantic prestidigitation).
>
> Piotr

I was simply wrong. The source on which the quote was based was
apparently very rough, and without any indication of vowel length.
Being /wa:num/ with a long vowel, the only possible ancestor
is /*we:num-/, that is in any case pre-IE. Interesting is the
suffix /-um-/.
So I can now only affirm that the nearest possible cognate of Vanir
is Greek /(w)anakt/. The central meaning is not "bright".

Marco.