Re: Pliny's "Guthalus- "Richard Wordingham"

From: x99lynx@...
Message: 16040
Date: 2002-10-08

<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
<<You made the point that the same tribe could have many different names for
the
same river and perhaps not conceive of it as the same object at different
locations. Waterway users would tend to see a river as a single entity, and
therefore give it a single name.... What has been said so far about names is
entirely consistent with it being waterway users' names that were passed on
and recorded for navigable rivers.>>

That still raises the difference between local names and the waterman's name.
And whether "the waterway user" is at the point and time of naming when a
name is recorded. Not that I think this is wrong -- local preliterate
traders giving their insider name to outside traders from a literate culture
that will record it as the "true name." But it does perhaps mean that local
traders' name did not necessarily match the common names for the river among
most of the people who lived along the river.

<<Would traders necessarily be foreign? I would envisage some _local_ trade
at least. Foreigners dealing in local trade could rapidly go native. Would
the traders be literate?>>

More likely local traders were natives, but met foreign traders at some
central location where "a market was made" - as the Romans would say.

Richard also wrote:
>The one exception to the principle of naming that I can think of is
> an overwhelmingly dominant river. For that, a phrase such as 'the
> main river' might suffice. After all, in English we don't really
> have a single name for our planet! (Is it Earth? Is it Terra?)>>

I replied:
> Try the really big bodies of water. How were the Atlantic,
Pacific, Indian,
> Artic Oceans named? More importantly, how were those names spread
and
> preserved? Historical naming suggests a very difference scenario
then the
> "true native name" idea assumed for preliterate European rivers

Richard replied:
<<There was only one 'Ocean' before literacy. It didn't need a name.>>

Well, of course, <O:keanos> was a name and referred to very roughly the same
body of water. But why would "ocean" end up being the English word for any
ocean when the British Isles are in an ocean? Writing had a lot to do with
that as it did with the naming of individual oceans. Certainly we don't know
that there was only "one 'ocean' before literacy?" Is "ocean" even
originally a Greek word?

(And BTW how would Homer have known of a "river" (he called Ocean a river)
beyond Gibralter that 'circled' the world? He was not anywhere near its
shores.)

Regards,
Steve Long