Re: [tied] Poseidon

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

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 9:17 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Poseidon

Joao:
>My idea:
>POSEIDAON < *NEPOSEIDAON < *NEPOT-SEIDAON, changed by association with
>POTIS.
>
>I mean: the "mix" of IE *Nepot with an obscure *Sidaon or Tsidaon.

Okay, here's a second attempt... How about:

      *Potis-Da:nuom "Master of the Waters" (?)

The last word is *da:nu + the plural genitive. Everyone like?

 

---

 

Not bad, though it should be *da:new-o:m in Hellenoid IE. At any rate a fossilised phrase works better that a true compound (in which *potis should come second: **da:nu-potis 'river-lord' or the like).

 

Let's experiment with inverse reconstruction:

 

*potis da:newo:m > *potisda:newo:n > *posiZe:neo:n ?? (a blind alley, it seems)

 

Or maybe a vocative (cf. Latin Iuppiter):

 

*poti da:newo:m > *potida:newo:n (> *poside:neo:n)

 

This is much better -- quite close to attested Poseida:o:n/Poti:da:o:n (< *-da:wo:n), though it would be nice if we could predict the long vowel (ei ~ i:). The normal Greek vocative ending for i-stems is -i (poli! 'O city!'). However, we can conjecture that Greek preserved here the original IE vocative *potei as in Skt. pate (nothing unusual: the lonely vocative Bozhe 'God!' survives in some Slavic languages that have otherwise lost the vocative case).

*potei da:newo:m > *poteida:(ne)wo:n

The only remaining problem is the syllable *-ne-, for the loss of which an ad hoc solution must be proposed, and which may be difficult to get rid of, though it is such a small thing. Still, Glen, your proposal is much better than many I've seen. A precedent from a different IE language would greatly strengthen it, if you can think of anything.

 

Piotr