Hej Torsten,
>I still think a god of anger sounds strange. It might have been reshaped
from something non-Germanic. I mean, the Romans didn't have a god named Ira,
did they? ;-)
I think too much emphasis has been placed on the name. You seem fixated on
etymology. *Dyuas Pater was reconstructed from comparative mythology, of
which etymology was only one part. The Romans need not have had a god named
Ira for Odin to have a Roman cognate, or for that matter an Indo-European
cognate.
The general taboo against naming a diety directly may explain the name
change. As I said before, a ritualized epithet or designation repeated often
enough could well have become a proper name over time. It's interesting to
me that Tacitus doesn't give the Germanic name for "Mercury" especially when
he elsewhere gives the Germanic names of at least 4 gods: Nerthus, Tustio,
and the Alcis.
Wassail, William
"I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory';
but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the
other in the purposed domination of the author."
J.R.R. Tolkien