Re: [tied] Costoboci

----- Original Message -----

From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 9:50 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

> GK: What is your view on the Costoboci? As Horia Vlad pointed out a couple of days ago, the name [COSTOBOCI]originally appears in a list of Don basin Sarmatian tribes (PLINY, Nat.Hist.,VI,vii,19) Would a plausible Iranic explanation be available? On the other hand the group's 2nd c. AD royal family bears Thracian (Getic?) names. Is  a Thracian (alternatively Getic) explanation also possible? Perhaps the Iranic and Thracian/Getic would converge?

 

On material and onomastic evidence, a connection with the Getae seems rather well-founded. The royal names are definitely of a "Carpatho-Balkan" type, with recognisable name-forming elements (-por- 'son?') and what seems to be Getic diphthongisation (*tet- > tiat-) and perhaps liquid vocalisation (*drC- > *driC-) though I daren't offer any exact etymologies. The element -boci may occur in the tribal name Saboci as well. I'm sceptical of etymologising it as *bHa:-k- 'light'; it's pure guesswork.

 

 

> [I notice BTW that another Thracian word list has ZAN-, ZENES for "clan, family" where you have tried Iranic "ZANA" in the matter of the Alizones]

 

The <zen-/zan-> element in Thracian is etymologically the same as Iranian *z'an (> dialectal *zan-, *ðan-) -- to wit, a Satemic reflex of *g^enh1- (genus, genes-/gono-, kin, etc.).

 

Piotr