Re: Sandomierz

On 2008-11-13 01:37, tgpedersen wrote:

> from an earlier post:
> 'The name is actually a possessive form of the once popular personal
> name <Se,domir> (*soNdo-mirU), like Kazimierz <-- Kazimir, etc. In Old
> Polish (and still dialectally) <e,> = [aN], hence Latinised
> <Sandomiria>. The first element is *soNdU 'judgement'.'

> And now it's -mirjI?

Well, yes. The personal name was *soNdomirU, and the derived possessive
adjective was *soNdomirjI > OPol. Sa,domirz > Sandomierz. That's how
hundreds of placenames in Poland have been derived, and that's why the
town is Sandomierz (a place), not Sandomir (a person).

> quote again:
> '1007 vU Sanu, vozle^ SanU, v sjanu, sjana, 1152 na SanU, re^ku SanU,
> k Sanovi, nad SanomU, po sjanu, do Sjanu, 1249 re^ky Sjanu, re^ce^
> Sjanu, 1287 sjana, 1676 San, 1375 San, 1377 Szan.'
>
> What's the -ja-'s from, if not from -e,-?

The spontaneous palatalisation of the initial consonant in Ukrainian
upon borrowing from West Slavic. It happens sporadically, as in
<r'atovaty> 'save' from Polish <ratowac'>. Perhaps the quality of OPol.
/a/ was fronter than that of the corresponding OUkr. vowel, but I'm no
expert on Ukrainian historical dialectology. If you assume old *eN, how
will you account for Pol. San?

> Oh? Where J. Rieger then pick up those forms quoted above?
>
> > No palatality is indicated in Polish sources of any age, and in
> > Ukrainian the /s'/ seems to be late and secondary.
>
> 1007 is late? Compared to what?

What the quote fails to indicate, the manuscripts in which the
palatalising spelling is found are not original -- they are late
(15-17th c.) copies. In primary documents we find only San(U) still
throughout the 14th century. A full list of references can be found in
Babik (2001). Rieger, by the way, has been one of the critics of
Udolph's etymology.

> How about *(bh)s-ánd-/*(bh)s-énd- "sandy river"?

The San is not conspicuously sandy, but it does cause heavy flooding
quite regularly (that's why I thought of *sah2(i)-). Anyway, what is
this *-a/end- suffix? The Germanic reflex of *-e/ont-? Then what
happened to the final *-d- in Slavic? To be frank, such a reconstruction
has all the faults of Udolph's *sindHu-.

Piotr