From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 6077
Date: 2001-02-12
----- Original Message -----From: S.Tarasovas@...Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 3:21 PMSubject: [tied] Re: Digest Number 337--- In cybalist@......, tgpedersen@...... wrote:
> > (*Dvina, eventually of Baltic origin).
> Please tell me more about the Baltic *dvina.
You've caught me here. It's a usual statement that this Slavic
hydronym is of Baltic origin just because it's hard to offer a
plausible Slavic etymology and because it's basin was mostly Baltic
(Finno-Ugric in it's north part) before the Slavs settled there
(though there're some rather dated theories [eg, that of Shakhmatov]
whose point is the Dvina:Daugava:Duna basin was the Slavic homeland).
But I am not aware of a plausible Baltic etymology as well. May be we
deal with a representative of the Old European hydronymy (of IE
origin, but not associable with specific IE branches) - that's what
you would probably like to here. Interestingly enough, the Balts
themselves call it Daugava (sorry for the typo in one of the last
postings) (< Proto-Baltic *Daug-va: 'great, abundant').