There is no reason to doubt Strabo's
opinion that the Daci (Greek Dakoi/Dakai, probably with the first "a" long,
Latin Da:ci, Da:cia, Da:ciscus) and the Getae were linguistically identical
(<homoglo:ttoi>). The early peoples living on the Upper
Danube and in the Carpathian region apparently constitute a separate branch
of IE. They spoke a Satemic language known from fragmentary evidence such as
toponyms, names cited by ancient sources, and a handful of substrate loans in
Romanian. It was not directly related to Celtic, though some lateral Celtic
influence would not be surprising. Its relationship to Thracian is
unclear. My personal opinion is that Albanian belongs to the Dacian/Getic branch
as its only surviving member. There are some phonological arguments in favour of
such a view (syllabic *r > ri, *e: > *a:). It's hazardous in the
extreme to speculate about the etymology of an ethnonym if the corresponding
language is almost unknown, but let me just point out that a derivation from
*dHe1- is also possible. Dacian compound placenames very often contain the
element -da:va- (evidently 'town, fortress' <
*dHeh1-wah2-?).
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 4:20 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Daci
If Dacia was an IE name there's a lot of possibilities. Are
the Daci Celts?
Slavs? Balts? Thraco-Phrygians?
Has Dacia short or
long "a"?
*d(H)ak-? d(H)ag-? d(H)ayak-? d(H)asak-? d(H)asnk-?
d(H)ok-?