Re: [tied] Etymology of "Warsaw"

On 9/3/04 3:37 PM, alex wrote:

> the name in Rom. has stil the "o" there since the name is "Vars^ovia".
> Apparently the name "krakaw" is too young in this constelation, the old form
> being "Krakovia"( at least so is it "freezed" in Rom. Lang)
> .Interesting to me appears the sufix "-ovia" here. If I try to connect with
> the ancient names I can think just at the note of Trajan which mentioned the
> city/village "Bersobia" in Dacia. The "bers-" remain "bârs-" in Rom. (See
> county of Bârsa) and I have no ideea iv the -obia here can be connected with
> Latin "ovis" beeing kind of "owia" which can be translated as sheep. Which
> is the usual explanation of "-ovia" in Slavic ( special Polish?)

It's a fancy Latinisation (plus femininisation, if not already feminine)
of Slavic placenames with the well-known possessive suffix -ov-/-'ev-
(as in Russian patronymics). For some reason Mediaeval Latin writers
preferred Varsovia, Cracovia, Tarnovia etc. to *Varsova, *Cracovus or
*Tarnovus (which would have been more faithful to the original names:
Warszowa, Kraków, Tarnów, etc.). The existence of "Classical" placenames
in -ovia certainly played a role in this remodelling.

Piotr