Re: Something for Sergijus

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

> While leafing through the first chapter of my
> "Hydronymia of Ukraine..." (1981), in that part which
> analyzes hydronyms from the classical Scythian epoch,
> and more specifically the older name of the
> Dnister/Dnestr, which was TUR`ES (the ` on top of the
> E) [Herodotus], TURAS (Strabo), TYRAS (Ovidius), I
> note that there is a very positive reference to (and
> abbreviation of) the argumentation developed by
> V.Petrov in his "Slavic Ethnogenesis"(pp.69-70). Here
> is that argumentation:
>
> "As in other instances, the river name Tira is usually
> explained by reference to Iranic appellatives. F. Brun
> linked the rn Tira with Persian "tir" (=arrow)...
> O.I.Sobolevskii refers to the "Old Bactrian and also
> Old Persian name of the people Tura. .. M. Vasmer, and
> following him V. Abayev and T. Lehr-Splawinski point
> to Kurdish Tur ("wild" "untamed", and to Iranic turas
> ("swift").=== A.O Biletskyj advanced a correction of
> the etymology of TURE`S from Iranic Turas. In such a
> comparison "the equivalence of Greek and Iranic 'U' is
> doubtful" he said... Therefore in his opinion, the
> name of the r. Tira is not Iranic but "pre-Iranic". We
> must accept this note of caution. Indo-Iranic
> languages have given us practically no convincing
> topo-or hydronymic analogies for this area. But if we
> turn to the Baltic languages, we find : Lith. tyras
> ("wilderness, mud, swamp"; tyras ("free(of trees),
> desertlike, wild"; tyrus, the same; tyrybe, tyrumas
> "wilderness, desert, steppe"; tirelis, tyruliai "deep
> and great muddy area". Compare Latv. tirelis, tirulis
> "mud, muddy 'luh' ; tirums "field", tiriba (something
> I can't translate without a dictionary) tirs ("clean,
> cleared of forest".) Cpre also Lith. hydronymia:
> Tyrelio upelis, Tyrelis, Tyr-upelis, Tyrupis."
>
> And "Hydronymia..." contends: "we are looking here at
> new Baltic (Balto-Slavic?) perspectives for the
> understanding of the hydronymics of Herodotus'
> Scythia."(p. 21)
>

Herodotus calls it <Tu're:s>, Strabo - <Tu'ra:s> (dialectal
variations in endings). There are some reasons to assume <-u-> was
short. Though in Attic Greek /u/ was fronted at Herodotus' times, I'm
not sure it was fronted in Herodotus' Ionic dialect, and, in any
case, was closer psychoacoustically to [u] than to [i], so Baltic
*ti:'r- 'mud,slop;marsh;clear place;pure' (or, probably, *ti:'r1-
'mud,slop;marsh' and *ti:'r2- 'clear;pure,innocent', cf. Latin ti:ro
'inexperienced, greener') < *tiHr-? is a much worse solution that
Vasmer's Iranian *tu(:)ras 'swift'. Note also (etymologivally, in all
positions) long Baltic *-i:- and most likely short -u- in the Greek
rendering of the Scythian hydronym.


Sergei

Sergei