Re: [tied] Gerrhos/Kerros, Seim, and Desna

Actually, if you want my opinion, the name Desna is quite certainly Slavic. Otherwise we would have *des^Ina or *dos^Ina instead. Perhaps the Slavic name is is the semantic calque of something older (and presumably similar), but that will be hard to prove if the original form is unattested. After all, Desna (or at least its lower course) can't be more than a few bowshots away from the Proto-Slavic homeland.

The sole (but interesting) piece of _indirect_ evidence that "Desna" might be the Slavicised version of an originally non-Slavic name is the fact that the Desna is "the River on the Right" only if you look at the tributaries of the Dnieper facing upstream, i.e. from the Scythian end.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 10:42 PM

Subject: [tied] Gerrhos/Kerros, Seim, and Desna

Earlier [3 Dec. 21:08:52] Piotr wrote: "There's no need to assume that <desna> is a Baltic name. Reflexes of PIE *dek^s-(i)no- 'right (= not left)' occur throughout the family, _including_ Slavic, as you probably don't realise (OCS desnU 'right', desnica 'right hand'), and Indo-Iranian (Skt. daks.in.a-, Av. das^ina-)." ****GK: Actually I did know about "desnytsia", but thought that in historical context it was more likely that a big river like the Desna would have been named by the Proto-Balts since the area is otherwise filled with Baltic hydronyms and has practically no Old Slavic ones. But your point about the Indo-Iranian reflex, and especially your suggestion that "Gerrhos" might well be a Thrakoid form "Kerros" (the "black"[river]) got me thinking.== There is another major river here, which flows east-west, has its source in Russia and joins the Desna in Ukraine. That river is the Seim (or Sejm, Sem', Syam'). The Seim has been etymologized as an Indo-Iranic name: "syAma"= "dark", hence the "dark" river. Now if you gaze not as today west-east but east-west this Seim or "dark river" looks like it might just continue on towards the Dnipro and eventually flow into it. At its confluence with the Desna, it is the Seim and not the Desna which has the larger channel (judging by a couple of maps I've consulted). What if the original "Desna" was also an Iranic name as you've suggested above? That would make perfect sense geographically. As you go westward along the "dark river" (the Thrakoid "black river") at one point you have this "right" or "das^ina" inflow. There is some backing for this in the Herodotan passage about the Gerrhos. This was an important river where the Royal Scythians buried their dead. And quite a few Scythian kurgans and "castles" are to be found along the present Seim (but not along the Upper Desna from the point of confluence). Perhaps in the 5th c. BC the Kerros/Syama was today's Lower Desna-->Seim. Only later under different circumstances was the name Desna, which originally only applied to the branch from the spot of the confluence come to mean also that portion of the older Kerros/Syama which flowed on into the Dnipro, and where the eventual "black" city of Chernihiv/Chernigov arose.******* __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Buy the perfect holiday gifts at Yahoo! Shopping. http://shopping.yahoo.com

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