Old swedish tungel, old english tungol

From: Carl Hult
Message: 45221
Date: 2006-07-04

I´ve started a discussion about the moon with my mother on how old the
worship of the moon may be. Halfway into this discussion I reminded
myself of a word I saw in Hellquists linguistic dictionary over the
swedish tongue, namely tungel.

This word tungel meant star or moon in older swedish and can still be
found in dialects all over Sweden. I was very intrigued to find that
both german and english had had this word too, in the same meaning. In
old german it can be found as Zungal, old saxon as tungal and in old
english as tungol. It seems to have died out on the continent. Anyone
who can explain this word to me? It does not correspond with any of
the other words for moon or star or even heavenly body, which was the
main meaning in old swedish.

Carl Hult