Re: [tied] gwen etymology

Dear Eris,

Lots of questions -- and a vast topic. First, a general remark. You should be careful with diacritics, length marks, etc. They are important when discussing historical changes.

The normal transcription of the Slavic "woman" word is z^ena (with an upside-down "^" over z) < *gWena:- . The Polish word is z*ona (with a dot over z) and its present-day meaning is 'wife' rather than 'woman'.

The word is also found in Baltic (Old Prussian genno < *gWena:).

English queen (OE cwe:n 'woman, queen', Goth. qe:ns, ON kvaen) derives from a lengthened-grade form *gWe:n-i- (":" = vowel length, "W" = lip-rounding accompanying the consonant), while quean 'harlot' (OE cwene, Goth qino:, not originally pejorative -- these words could simply mean 'woman, wife') is from Germanic *kWen-o:n- < *gWen- with a nasal stem termination.

The Classical Armenian form is kin < *gWen- (k is a regular reflex of *gW in Armenian, and i < *e before a nasal).

The Classical Greek word should be gune: (your h is a misinterpretation of Greek eta <H>). The stem gunaik- (with an *-ik extension) occurred already in Classical Greek (Gen.sg. gunaikos, Voc. gunai < *gunaik).

The Sanskrit forms are as follows:

jani-, jani:- < *gWen-i- 'woman, wife'

ja:ni- 'female' (adjective) < *gWe:n-i-

gna:- a goddess or female genius, "superwoman" < *gWn-a:-.

The neuter noun ga:na- (N.sg. ga:naM) has nothing to do with the "woman" etymon ans means 'song, singing'

The Avestan form is jaini-, cf. Kurdish z^en, Persian zan. All these words begin with consonants resulting from the palatalisation of PIE *gW- before the front vowel *e. Hence also Sanskrit *j- (like English "j") and Slavic *z^ ("zh"). A similar process produced Tocharian s' ("sh"). The palatalisation did not take place in the zero-grade form, when *gW was immediately followed by *n, which is why we get Skt. gna:-.

You can see that although PIE *e, *o and *a all became Indo-Iranian *a, the old difference is reflected in the fact that originally velar consonants turn into Indo-Iranian palatals before original *e (this is neatly illustrated by the word *kWekWlom 'wheel' > Skt. cakraM "chakra").

The PIE root meaning 'woman, wife' was *gWen-. A root noun *gWons (Gen. *gWenos or *gW@...) may have survived in Hittite and Luwian, but the evidence is very uncertain (in Hittite, only the ending of the word is written phonetically). The most widespread variant in the non-Anatolian languages is *gWen-a:- (or *gWn-a:-/*gW@...:- with a reduced first syllable), which goes back to a form with a "laryngeal" consonant *h2 (pronounced probably like German "ch" in Nacht) in the suffix:

*gW(e)n-ah2-

The suffix *-ah2 > *-a: is a familiar feminine-gender marker in most IE branches. Classical Greek gune: may continue *gWena: (just like *kWekWlo- and *wedo:r > Greek kuklo- 'wheel', hudo:r 'water') rather than *gW@...:, but the latter form certainly underlies dialectal (Beotian) bana:.

A common by-form is an originally adjectival derivative in *-i with a lengthened vowel (ja:ni, queen):

*gWe:n-i-

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Eris

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2000 8:05 PM

Subject: [tied] gwen etymology

Hi, I just joined today. Love languages, linguistics, mythology, etc., and am currently working on getting a degree in ling. Anyhow, I was wondering if any of you could help me out on a particular etymological problem I'm having. =) I'm currently doing a little research (a bit for a class, but mostly out of personal curiosity) on the IE *gwen. I'm hoping this will turn out alright once formatted - if not, please forgive me. IE *gwen- woman IE *gwen-a- woman? (suffixed form) IE *gwen-i- woman? (suffixed lengthened-grade form) IE *gwn-a- woman? (suffixed zero-grade form) Common Germanic *kwen- woman Old High German cwán/quina woman/wife/queen Old Norse kwaen woman/wife/queen Old Norse kvinna/kvenna ? Old English cwen woman/wife/queen (from *gwen-a-) Old English cwene woman/prostitute/harlot (from *gwen-i-) Middle English quene woman/prostitute/harlot Modern English queen queen Swedish kvinna woman Icelandic kona/kvennmaor woman Faroese kona woman Danish kvinde woman Old Dutch quene old cow/barren cow Dutch kween old cow/barren cow Frisian kwyn old cow/barren cow Gothic qino woman Gothic qens wife Common Slavic *z'ena woman Belorussian z'ana woman Bulgarian/Polish/Slovak/Serbo-Croatian/Slovene/Cze ch/Ukrainian/Russian z'ena woman Sorbian (Wendish) z'ona woman Old Greek gunh- woman (from *gwn-a-) Modern Greek gunaik- woman/wife (from gunh-) Modern Greek gunaio tart/jade/strumpet (from gunh-) Sanskrit jani wife Sanskrit gana/gna woman/goddess Common Celtic *ben-/*bena- woman Old Irish ben Modern Irish bean Modern Scottish bean woman/wife Scottish queyn queen Modern Welsh benyw wife Cornish benen wife Manx ben woman/lady/wife Persian zan woman Persian/Kashmiri zanana woman (from zan) Phrygian bon-ekos wife (with a suffix) Armenian kin/gin woman/wife Tocharian A s'än woman Tocharian B s'ana woman The problems I'm having: In some reference materials I've looked in, it says that in Sanskrit, "gana" means "woman", in some it says "gna", and in others it says "gani" - and in with the latter two, it often says "gana" means either "song" or "cast". Any ideas as to which one is correct, or which is/are more correct? Also, I couldn't find the J letter/grapheme in the dictionaries anywhere - I thought Sanskrit had a J and pronounced it the same as PDE? At any rate, I couldn't find any information on "jani", so I don't know if that's supposed to mean "wife" or not. Could someone please explain any of that to me, and how, if "g*n*" and "jani" are related, why they differ so? Further, could someone explain to me certain sound changes that occurred from the "gw" onset in IE - to, say, the "z" in Persian, the "s" in the Tocharian langs/dialects. I can somewhat see how "gw" changed to "b" and so on, but even though I don't know many of the IE sound-change laws, the s/z thing just seems strange to me. I find it very interesting that from the original IE meaning of "honoured woman", in some of the languages amelioration occurred, making it more of "goddess" or "queen", and in others pejoration occurred, degrading it into "hussy"/"cow"/"harlot" etc. Apparently English developed two words from the same basic root in order to distinguish between the two distinct meanings. It could all bring up some lovely historical social commentary. =) Also, OT, I was wondering about the Welsh name Cai, as in Sir Kay and such. I'm assuming it's related to the Latin Caius/Gaius. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the "ai" in Latin pronounced /e/ early on and later changed into sounding like their "ae", /ay/? The Welsh Cai is pronounced /ke/, right? Did they change the sound of it, and if so, why didn't they just stick with the /kay/ sound when the Romans brought the name over? I'm probably way off here, but nonetheless very curious. Further, what did the name mean in Latin? I've heard various sources claim it meant "man" (as in the slangish PDE "guy"), some say it meant "happy", etc. Would be interested to know that as well. Thanks a bunch, and sorry for the massive post. - Eris