Re: Derivation of "king"

At 11:57 2000-03-09 -0800, you wrote:

>

A third source is suggested, *ansu, 'god, spirit; vital force'. This is
said to show up in

>Old Norse via nom Ã"ss ('god'), genitive asir, nom. pl. aesir : the gods,
>the Aesir. D.Q. Adams notes what follows here is quite controversial. C.
>Watkins is said to see an unattested verb *h2ens 'hold, control; to hold
>the reins', and apparently (this article, "King", is obscure) this too
>could also be the source of the Germanic king-word, paralleling semantic
>developments in Hittite and Tocharian.

It is unnecessary to put a star in front of "ansu-", the word is attested
in early Germanic inscriptions.

>
> >From my reading of the literature, most commentators seem to leave the
>Germanic king-word outside of IE. The wanax-word, attested in Greek and
>Tocharian, apparently does not show up in Germanic. It may represent a late
>borrowing. As I posted earlier, the *reg word does show up genetically in
>Germanic, but does not give an attested word for 'king'. Mark.
>

How about Gothic reiks ´ruler´?

> eGroups.com Home: http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist
> www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
>