No, perhaps I didn't express myself clearly
enough. The only area where *da:nu- still meant 'river' about the time when the
Germanic languages were formed was the Iranian-speaking or Iranian-influenced
lands. The historical river Tanais was of course the Don, and Danastris was the
Dniester, both running where expected. If the Danes were to have received their
name from the Don or the like, you'd have to explain how they ended up as one of
the North Germanic tribes.
A new thought: the river name Tanew in SE
Poland MIGHT suggest that the earliest Germani preserved the IE term *da:nu-
(VERY speculative, this, but not impossible); on the other
hand, Tana(w)i- can't be their translation of the Iranian name of the Don
-- it's simply too old (Herodotus, ca. 440 BC), and the vocalism doesn't quite
work. Germanic is not the only group with a Grimmian phonation-mode shift
(Armenian is another, and some people think Thracian or "Cimmerian", whatever
the latter really was, had something like it too).
At the other end of Indo-Europia, *da:nu-
occurs as a river-naming element in the parts of Europe settled by the Celts;
*Da:neu-jo-s 'the (Upper) Danube' is of course the most celebrated example.
No matter how old this element is, it would't work as the etymological
source of *Dani- -- a badly matching root vowel, a different
stem-termination -- not enough substance for an argument one might wish to
invest much enthusiasm in.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 1:08 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: etruscan
If my memory serves me right, one of the IE groups that
preserves
*danu- (occurring not just in "Don" but in "Dniepr" and "Dniestr"
too) is Indo-Iranian, and they were present in the vicinity.
You assume
that by "Tanais" Pytheas means
Jutland.