Re: [cybalist] Balto-Slavic gud-

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2058
Date: 2000-04-07

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 3:55 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Balto-Slavic gud-
 

Dear Sergei,

First, some supplementary toponymic evidence for Baltic *gud- from NE Poland (along the Lithuanian and Belarusian borders):

  • Gudabele
(forest), cf. Lith. gùdobelė ‘hawthorn’;
Gudaki (marsh), *gud-āk-ai; Gudalepiec (marsh); Gudarajscys (meadow and marsh), cf. Lith. raĩstas ‘marsh’; Gudziszka (meadow and marsh), *gud-išk-a; Gdakowo (a village near Prabuty, Old Prussian territory); the name seems to be of Baltic origin (*gud-āk-), though Polonised at an early date. In 1285 the owner of the village was a Pogesanian (*pa+gud-j-an-) knight, one Dieterich Stanko.

Secondly, on the Slavic side:

My interpretation:

Baltic and (to a lesser extent) Slavic show reflexes of *gud-, which played an adjectival function especially in names of woods and marshes. ‘Wild’ (also ‘inaccessible, impenetrable’, and, by implication, ‘swampy; overgrown with bushes’), sems a reasonable reconstruction of its semantic range (gud-obel- ‘hawthorn’ is then literally *‘wild apple-tree’). Some of the toponyms derived from it are analogous to other de-adjectival formations, e.g. *gUd-ynja *‘thicket’ is like *pust-ynja ‘wilderness’ (from *pust- ‘empty’).

I have a private theory about the origin of this toponymic *gud- and its relation to Lithuanian gùdas, but this posting is already too long, so I’ll save the rest for later.

Piotr