I thought that
the word "birch" was related to "bright", ie, the
light-coloured tree. Is this so? Then it is unambiguous, isn't
it? --Marc
"Salmon" is indeed tricky, but
I'd say that the meaning 'birch' for *bHerxg- is hardly controversial. The word
means 'birch' in Germanic, Slavic and Baltic. Old Indian bhu:rja- (<
*bHrxgo-) is the name of a birch-like tree. Latin fra:xinus, while probably
related, is not really the same word, and can't be the original 'ash-tree' term
either; it's quite clearly an innovation. To conclude, *bHerxg- may be dialectal
but is quite unambiguous as a
tree-name. Piotr