Joao:
>Velchns = Vulcanus ? <*Welk- "to flame, to burn, to shine" cf. Sans.
>varcas-, Ossetic Kurdalaegon (<Kurd-arya-vargon), ON V�lundr
>
>I think all Etruscan theonyms with s-endings are of Italic origin.
>Cf. Fufluns < *Populo:nos
>Velchans < *Velcanos
>Selvans < *Selvanos
>Sethlans < *Se:tlanos?
Hmm. What is *Se:tlanos supposed to mean? As far as I know, there is no IE
god name reconstructable that accounts for Vulcanus. We might derive it from
IE *welk- but what of the rest of the name? Are you suggesting *Welknos
meaning "burned"?? Why burned? How do we COMPLETELY analyze this name in IE
terms so that it makes sense mythologically?
Etruscan itself had a nominative marked in /-s/ or /-s'/ anyways that seems
to be a built-in Tyrrhenian feature. It was used here and there, mostly but
not exclusively for deities. Now, how does one derive /Tins/, the sky god,
from Italic? The IE god is *Dye:us through and through and yet we have the
-s ending here.
Plus, what if Etruscan, being a sister language to IndoEuropean (or is that
a "niece" language?), had inherited an equivalent word *welka "to burn",
based on the IE-Tyrrhenian sound correspondances that I'm aware of? The
association between a borrowed IE name *Perkanas > *Ferkanas (*PerkWnos) and
*welka would be overwhelmingly beautiful and poetic. If so, we might analyze
the eventual name in Etruscan terms *Velkanes "Firer" (a controler of fire)
rather than "Burned" (controlled by his own element!). The *-(e)ne ending is
seen in the ethonym /Rasna/ and so on.
At any rate, even if we could say that deities like /Tins/ are Italic in
origin because of their -s nominative, how 'bout the moon /Tiur/ which
appears to be of the same root that correlates with IE *dei- "to shine", and
yet there are still no Italic or even general IE counterparts that I'm aware
of to explain these names as anything other than native in origin.
And you do have to admit that /Velchns/ and *PerkWnos occupy similar
mythological positions. There's got to be some sort of connection between
the two.
- gLeN
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