Joao, don't confuse Old Russian with Old
Church Slavic, even if the latter's influence is an important superstrate
in Modern Russian. Old Church Slavic derived from the Thessaloniki dialect of
Old Bulgarian, and that's pretty far from Russia and the Vikings.
Slavic *j- could be automatically inserted
before front vowels, which means that *je- may correspond to earlier *e- or *je-
(cf. Polish jest, OCS (j)estI 'is' < *esti). It can even derive from PIE
*o- in some words, as *e- and *o- underwent a partial merger in Balto-Slavic
(with dialectal complications).
The reverse is also true: Russian o- often
corresponds to Polish je- (e.g. R. olen' : P. jelen' 'red deer, stag' <
*el(h)-en-, P. jezioro : R. ozero < *eg^Hero-). Scandinavian eligR >
*elIgU > Russian oleg. The denasalisation in ingvarR took place as the word
was adapted to fit East Slavic phonotactics; the replacement *a > *o is
normal in Slavic.
I don't think there are Old Russian
equivalents of the other names. If Sergei is online, he might help; he knows far
more about Old Russian than I do.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2000 2:24 AM
Subject: [tied] Vikings in Russia
How was the evolution from Norse to Russian names
like...
HELIGR > OLEG
YNGVARR > IGOR, YEGOR
???
What the Church Slavic intermediaries?
HELIGR > *JELIGU > OLEG ?
Norse H- > Slavic J- ?
Are there ChSlavic forms for
HARALD
HERMAN
HAKON ?
Joao SL
Rio