Re: -leben/-lev/-löv and -ung-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>
> > There's an article by Tomasz Czarnecki dealing with Gothic loans

in

> > Polish [http://www.fh.ug.gda.pl/images/Czarnecki.pdf%5d. He lists
> > Polish Gdan'sk and Torun' under the category of "mögliche
> > Entlehnungsfälle" (pp. 11-13). Now if these settlement names are
> > indeed Gothic, they must have survived the later Slavic

colonization

> > of what is now
> > Poland.
>
> The question was whether we should expect there to be -leben on

Polish

> territory. I don't think the presence of two possible surviving
> Germanic placenames forces us to expect that.

I agree.

> As for Torun´, it might have to do with the many Tor-/Tur- names in
> the rest of Europe, and thus be pre-Germanic (experience advises me
> against venturing into speculations again about the god Þórr being
> earlier than Odin).

The explanation of Torun' from (East) Germanic cited by T. Czarnecki
is rather obscure as Piotr has pointed out. Probably you are right
about some other source for the Polish toponym. The name of Thor can
be reconstructed for Gothic as *Þunrs or something like that. No
traces of a dropped nasal (and why?) in Torun' as far as I can see.
Or should we assume a metathesis of some sort? *þunaraz > *torunI? I
think all this is very very shaky, to say the least.