From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1684
Date: 2000-02-25
----- Original Message -----From: Dennis PoulterSent: Thursday, February 24, 2000 10:25 AMSubject: [cybalist] Pelasgians, Tyrrhenians, and now TrojansDennis writes:
Rex,
I've been reading up on your Pelasgian scenario and came across this snippet. It appears that Troy was never the name of the city, but was derived from an adjective "troies". The city itself was called Ilion/Ilias/Wilusa. It struck me that here could be some more of your "Tyrrhenians". I don't know how plausible this is - Troies, Tyrsenoi, Tyrrhenoi. ...
This is V. Georgiev's etymology. He regards Etruscan and Lemnian as VERY closely related to Lydian (a connection which makes Etruscan an IE language stricto sensu). He etymologises troy as *Tro:s-j-a: with a close o: interpreted as u in some writing systems and, if I remember correctly, actually shifted to u in Lemno-Etruscan. *Trus- in the name of the 'Trojan' ethnos would have yielded metathesised *Turs- > Tyrrh- in Greek and developed a prothetic vowel in Latin E-trus-. For my taste, there's an immoderate amount of fanciful speculation based on meagre linguistic evidence in Georgiev's scheme (though he IS admittedly a knowledgeable linguist, not a maniac like some other self-styled 'Etruscologists') but you should be able to asses the evidence for yourself, as he has published his theory in English and German (I can check the references and post them later). Few Indo-Europeanists seem to have bought his Trojan = Etruscan equation, not to mention the identification of Etruscan as IE.
Piotr