On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Piotr wrote:
>Germanic *i:sa(r)na- (Eisen, iron), most likely borrowed from Celtic (*eisarno-),
>may be a derivative of *isxro- 'strong, powerful' rather than of *xajes-.
Another possibility is that it's from Basque izar /isar/ "star" (the
connection would be meteoric iron), with the IE/Celt. suffix -no-.
Note taht the Basque for "iron" is <burdina> (no connection).
>Greek has si:de:ros/-on is no doubt a loanword, perhaps somehow related to Latin
>si:dus, -eris 'constellation, star(s)' (magnetite = star-stone??).
Latin <si:dus, si:deris> is from *sweides-, and I doubt Greek borrowed
it from post-rhotacism Latin. Again the Basque connection is
interesting: Basque <zilar>, <zirar>, <zidar> "silver" are derived by
Michelena from Pre-Basque *zirar, but I think that in fact Bizkaian
<zidar> /sidar/ is the most archaic form. There are a number of such
words, e.g. <belar ~ berar ~ bedar> "grass", <belarri ~ berarri ~
bedarri> "ear", <elur ~ erur ~ edur> "snow", where the normal
development *-d- > -r- either failed to take place (Bizkaian) or where
-r- was dissimilated to -l- (Central dialects) before final -r.
>Baltic and Slavic have related terms: Lithuanian gel(e)z^is, OPrussian gelso,
>Slavic z^elEzo < B-Sl *gele(:)Zo-. I'm not sure how to analyse them (*gWelh-eg-??).
C.D. Buck suggests a connection with the root *g^hel- "yellow; gold"
(Slavic *zol-to > zla:to ~ zoloto "gold"). Maybe a borrowing from a
centum word akin to Greek khalkos "copper".
>Latin ferrum is sometimes connected with the verb root *dHers- 'dare, be bold,
>violate' (English dare, durst, Sanskrit dharSa-).
Sometimes it's connected to Semitic Akk. parzillu, Arabic farzil
"iron", which seems dubious. The Semitic word may itself be of
Sumerian origin (although no Sum. *bar.sil(u) is attested). Note that
if we turn *bar.sil(u) around we get *sil(u).bar, just like reversing
Sum./Akk. anna.ku "tin" gives us ku.anna (Hitt. kuwanna "copper").
Other interesting metallurgical connections: Sumerian <urudu> "copper"
from PIE *h1reudh- "red; copper"? Basque <berun> "lead" < *belum-,
cf. Lat. <plumbum>, Greek <molubdos>, <bolibos>, etc., possibly
connected to pre-/para-Celtic *plowdo-, Celtic *laudo- > Gmc. (Eng.)
"lead" and/or Celtic *bli:wo > Gmc. (Germ.) "Blei" by way of an
Iberian language lacking /p/ and /w/ (plowdo- > belubdo ~ belumbo ;
bli:wo- > bolibo).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...