How bizarre! I wonder how the Ossetes came to acquire another
group's ethnic name. They were historically attested as "Alans"
and/or "As" prior to settling in the Caucasus and for some time
afterwards but then at some point began calling themselves "Ir".
Did they mingle with a Persian colony in the Caucasus or something?
Could the similarity in Iron < *Iran "Ossete" and Persian Iran be
pure concidence with the former being just another tribal name
without any connection to *arya-? What Proto-Iranian form would
Ir come from, *i:r(a)-, *ayr(a)-? Could they be the long lost
followers of a chieftain from Eire who crossed paths with Odin on
their way to the Caucasus? Hmmm..., both the Irish and the Ossetes
like dark beer. If I can locate at least one red-headed Ossete
(or enough Guinness) there'll be no stopping me! ;-)
-David
--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> The Latin form is <ala:nus> (I've just checked it in Lewis &
Short), which suggests *arya:nah to me. A form based on vrddhied
*a:rya- is also thinkable, but I don't think the contrast between Ir
and Alan can be due to different stress placement or vowel quantity
in pre-Ossetic. All the examples I have seen suggest that the
Alanic/Ossetic changes of *ri > *li and *ry > *l were not restricted
to a particular environment. It seems to me that Ir, Iron must be
Persian loans (ultimately also from *arya-, *arya:na-, of course, but
with the non-Ossetic development *ary- > airy- > e:r- > i:r-, as in
the name Iran).
>
> Piotr