Re: Frankish origins

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farang
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farangi
> >
> > I was wondering if perhaps it's the other way round, that the
> > *frank- word is originally Iranian (Yazygian)?
>
>
> I don't think so. Consider the following:
>
> 1) A word for 'Franks/Germans' is attested in Byzantine Greek as
> Frankoi (pron. <frangoi>, given that the "g" pronunciation of [k]
> is a standard phenomenon in Greek in the context n-k). In early
> Byzantine sources (from the 6th to 11th centuries), the use of this
> ethnic was extended, in conformity with the principles of late
> antique ethnology, to the whole of the former Germanoi, namely, to
> the western Christian peoples then living north of the Alps
> (roughly, the inhabitants of today's Germany, Switzerland, France,
> and Benelux).
>
> 2) The meaning of the Byzantine Greek ethnonym Frankoi changed by
> the end of the 11th century, at which time it came to designate the
> Normans of South Italy (whose previous homeland had been, after
> all, Normandy in what the Byzantines knew as 'Frankia'). This
> particular grouping of Frankoi penetrated Byzantine military
> service en masse in the course of the 11th century, when Norman
> mercenaries assumed a leading role in the Byzantine army.
>
> 3) After the beginning of the Crusades, the generic term Latinoi
> was increasingly employed by the Byzantines to denote people of
> Western European origin, yet the term Frankoi continued to be used
> by them to denote those groups of Crusaders who came from 'Frankia'
> and/or the Norman Kingdom of South Italy (who, among all Western
> European peoples, played a major role during the early Crusades).
> The term Frankoi now chiefly expressed the religious and cultural
> identity of such 'Franks', all of whom were Latin-rite Christians
> who accepted the spiritual jurisdiction of the pope.
>
> 3) The Frankoi (pron. <frangoi>) of the Byzantines then became the
> Faranji (var. Ifranji) of the Arabs of the Levant (Syria, Palestine
> and Egypt), who first confronted them during the early Crusades.
> Medieval borrowings into Arabic from languages with [g] often show
> up as Arabic "j". Moreoever, Arabic has no initial consonant
> clusters, hence the variation <faranj>/<ifranj>. In Syriac, the
> Aramaic language used in some Middle Eastern churches, the term was
> borrowed as Frang (meaning 'a European; Latin language or church').
> The source of the loan -- Byzantine Greek <frangoi> -- seems clear
> enough.
>
> 4) Persian Farangi/Firingi 'a European' (> Hindi/Urdu Feringi
> 'Id.') is, thus, a loan from Arabic. The Arabs of the Levant came
> in contact with the Crusaders directly and they had to name those
> intruders, while the Persians weren't in any closer contact with
> Western Europeans than the Arabs were.
>

In light of that, I'll rephrase and ask again:
Is the following scenario possible:

0) Yazygian has a root *far- (< *par-, f- < p-, cf (Alanic? and) Ossetic) "hostile, other" (cf. Pokorny
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65037
) and the derivative *far-áng- "enemy, one of the others". Yazygians in Pannonia use them to designate the Romans and those who enter their service. In the language of those people this becomes their self-dignation and *faráng- becomes pre-Frankish *fráng- (or, if p- was preserved in Yazygian, *par-áng- > *fr-áng-, cf. Avestan); when they adopt PGmc as language it becomes with Grimm *fránk-.

1) *fráng- is loaned into Greek

2) and extended to designate Normans

3) Arabic faranj/ifranj is borrowed from Greek (if not already from Yazygian)

4) Persian Farangi/Firingi 'a European' (> Hindi/Urdu Feringi 'Id.') is borrowed from Alanian/Ossetian/Yazygian


Now tell me why this couldn't have happened.



Torsten