Re: [cybalist] Re: Easter

----- Original Message -----

From: Sergejus Tarasovas

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 11:05 AM

Subject: RE: [cybalist] Re: Easter

I agree with Sergei. While a river spirit may be promoted to pantheon-member status as a god or goddess associated with a particular river, the reverse is typologically unusual -- rivers are not normally named after (autonomous) deities. Most European river names (at least those that have accepted etymologies) are just adjectival, with the noun "river" implicit but left out: "the Running", "the White", "the Dark", "the Strong", "the Narrow", etc.; some are even more straightforward: "the River", "the Stream", or "the Water".

But *danu- IS found in continental Celtic rivernames. Apart from Danuvius, another well-known example is *Ro-danu- (the Rhone). Any etymological suggestions?

Piotr

---

John wrote:
>
> Sergei, if the waters took their name from an IE goddess of the
> waters, we have a complete hydronymy going back to PIE based on Danu.
> The explanation then does not have to be Scythian, although the
> Scythians, as Indo-Iranians probably worshipped the same goddess as
> the Hindu Danu (goddess of the Asuras) too.
>
> Thus we don't have to try to connect Iranians to Latin Diana,
> Greek Dione, Welsh Don and Irish Dana.  Rather the connection could
> be
> Indo European generally.
>

If I got you right, you mean that tradition of naming rivers after (reconstructed? it would be interesting to take a look at the * form) PIE goddess is a common PIE legacy of different yet IE ethnolinguistic groups.

That tradition should be proven if not by direct examples (i.e. putative cases of naming river after THIS goddess) then at least typologically. For instance, the Lithuanian and Slavic hydronymy, the first containing rather archaic naming patterns, doesn't contain god's or goddesses names, or at least such examples are unknown to me.

Sergei