Re: [tied] Scythian Cognates

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 11919
Date: 2001-12-25

(1) You might perhaps claim the licence to stretch the attested form just a little once per etymology if the remainder matches perfectly, but if you have to do it twice (for "oior" = "vir" and "pata" = "biti, batog" independently), the exercise begins to resemble the etymological achievements of our great Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, who, for example, explained Nebuchadnezzar as Slavic "ne boh odno tsar" ('no god but the emperor'). My gut feeling is that Herodotus recorded the names more or less correctly but that his etymologies are completely fanciful and based on (his own or someone else's) preconceived ideas about what they "should have meant".
 
(2) I ventured some guesses about the Arimaspoi when we discussed the question some time ago. They were based on the observation that Iranian dialectal aspa- < *acwa- < *ek^wo- 'horse' was a common onomastic element. <arim(a)-> could be interpreted in more than one way in Iranian terms. Tentative, to be sure, but what else is possible here? You didn't like that particular etymology because it didn't reproduce the Herodotean meaning 'one-eyed'. I have no good theory about <oiorpata> to offer, but if something plausible occurs to me, I'll put it forth for discussion.
 
Cheers,
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: george knysh
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian Cognates
 
(1) Is it really that difficult to find a way of reconciling "oior" with "vir"(or perhaps "uir" in some lips)?

(2) It would be more interesting, e.g., to have theories about what could be hidden behind Herodotus' "spu" "arima" "pata" "oior" etc.. than to state (no doubt correctly) that these words are not compatible with certain reconstructed sound changes. If they are mangled words what might the correct form be? If Thrakoid, as I suspect on other grounds, I appreciate the difficulty of the task.