In following up on the "Tolkien and Germanic Astronomy"
discussion, I learned a new word: 'Jubar' (or 'iubar'), the early
Latin equivalent of 'Orendil' etc.
http://www.interpres.cz/worag/cosmol/venus.htm
An Ancient Latin Name for Venus
Venus, in its aspect as the Morning Star, was known to the early
Romans as iubar; not until much later did Lucifer, "the bringer of
light," replace iubar as the designation of the planet Venus in its
morning aspect.1 Latin writers derived iubar from the word iuba,
meaning "hair." Varro wrote: eadem Stella vocatur iubar quod iubata
"this star is called iubar bacause it is hairy."2 Varro and Festus
compared the Morning Star's hair to a lion's mane.3 The image would
appear to be that of light scattered in all directions: only some
poetic hyperbole could see in today's bright morning star a hairy
apparition resembling a lion's mane.4
Seneca and Pliny used the word iubar to describe a comet in the sense
of a star with hair.5 Modern scholars, however, unable to see how the
word "hairy" could possibly be applied to Venus, have sought for
different etymologies of iubar, for "the morning star does not appear
as a luminous trail, but as a point lightly twinkling."6 True, it does
not now so appear; but that hardly gives us license to reject the
ancients' description of Venus as having been hairy (iubata) in an
earlier age.
References
1. Iubar dicitur Stella LuciferVarro, De lingua latina VI.6.
2. Ibid., loc. cit.
3. Varro: Quod habet luminem diffusum ut leo in capite iubam - De
lingua latina VII. 76; Festus: Quod splendor eius diffunditur in modum
iubae leonis (On the Meaning of Words 92.13).
4. For the association of the lion with the Morning Star. see F.-X.
Kugler's Sibyllinischer Sternkampf und Phaëthon in
naturgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung (1927). Beginning with a passage in
the Sibylline Oracles (V. 51 6), Kugler traces the association through
the literary and artistic traditions of the ancient Near East.
5. Seneca, Octavia 231: vidimus caelo iubar ardens cometem pandere
infestam facemapparently in reterence to the comet of A.D. 60. Cf.
Pliny,. Natural History II.xxiii. 91.
6. André le Boeuffle, Les noms latins d'astres et de constellations
(Paris, 1977), pp. 238-239, ii. 6. The word iubar was also used in
Latin to designate the light of the Sun, Moon, and other celestial bodies.
My questions: Is 'jubar' an expected derivative of 'juba'? If so,
what is the function of the final 'r'? Or is Varro wrong again and
there is some completely different etymology? And what is the
etymology of 'juba' itself (which seems to mean "mane" rather more
general "hair")?
Dan Milton