> Your DEX reference derives Rom. 'mare' probably from the Latin
> 'mas, maris' "male". Buck explains further "in designating the male
> animal of a species and consequently the larger", with refs. to
> Puscariu and Tiktin. Certainly the Rom. would derive from a oblique
> case of rhe Latin word, probably the Acc. 'marem' with the final m
> elided. I'd say that's a pretty good fit phonetically and quite
> reasonable semantics. What are your objections?
> Dan Milton
No. Romanian DEX 'tries to manage' two possibilities (-> following
different Romanian important linguists):
1. mas, marem 'male'
2. maris 'sea'
But in my opinion, the semantism didn't fit in both cases.
1. From 'male', to arrive to derive such a generic and basic term
like 'big'? I could expect an inverse situation (-> to design 'the
male' as 'a big being'), but not such a huge generalization 'male'-
> 'big' (where here, this 'Romanian big' is really applied for any
kind of physical object and represents also the most general term
for 'big').
In addition, why the notion of 'male' wasn't preserved, at all in
Romanian?
Also phonetically, (as you have already observed) we need to
suppose here Only the preservation of the oblique case, in order to
explain the Romanian phonetism: this is a weak point too.
2. For 'maris' 'sea' the phonetism fit perfectly (Lat i > Rom e )
and no suprise the word 'sea' really exists in Romanian as 'mare'
('sea') too : Ex: 'Marea Neagrã' -> 'Black Sea'.
However any Romanian native speaker has in his mind a clear
distinction between 'mare' 'big' and 'mare' 'sea'.
The semantism of the two concepts is not at all superposed in
Romanian.
Even, when we used a methafore like 'a sea of people' 'o mare de
oameni', everybody identifies inside that the word 'mare' is the 'sea'
and not the word 'big' (-> even the 'global' sense of this expression
is 'a huge crowd').
On the other hand in the Rom. phrase 'un om mare' -> 'a big man':
no concept related to the 'sea' could be imaginable.
So, to suppose that a 'non-maritime' people arrive to use the
concept of 'sea' to describe 'any kind of big' -> with no trace of a
methaforic sense seems impossible for me.
3. Finally the Irish (Celtic) word 'mor' exists too, and its
semantism is 100% the same with that one of the Romanian
word 'mare': : the general notion of 'big' with no additional
constraints in its sematic field.
In addition, the phonetisms of these 2 words fits perfectly too.
Best Regards,
Marius