There are plenty of distinctly Iranian (as
well as demonstrably pre-Iranian) loans in Finno-Ugric. For example, the Finnish
word for 100 is <sata>, cf. Hungarian száz, both from Iranian
*sata-. Iranian loanwords are not peculiar to Finnish but are shared with
the other Finno-Ugric languages, which means that the contact zone was not
located in Scandinavia (or Hungary, or NW Siberia) but close to the
Finno-Ugric homeland, e.g. in and round the middle Volga basin. Raids upon
foreign territory were a source of captives who became slaves (cf. the
Indo-Iranian use of *da:sa-), The use of a foreign ethnonym as a common noun
meaning 'slave' has ample precedent: Eng. slave itself derives via OFr. esclave
from the Byzantine and late Latin adaptation of 'Slav' as Sklabos, Scla:vus; in
early Latin comedies Da:vus 'Dacian' was a stereotypical name of a Roman
slave.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 4:27 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Accepted cognates of Arya?
A cognate of the word 'Arya' is present in Finnish, according
to Dr. Asko Parpola, and means a 'slave' in that language. Aparently, some
'Aryans' landed up in Scandinavia and became underdogs of the
society.