From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 18954
Date: 2003-02-20
>I am working to a comment regarding the meaning of ban/Banat [ie ban asAs far as I know, <ban> is a Hungarian word, borrowed from Iranian.
>ruler of an Banat] from our days until the ancient history of the region.
>Everything was just OK until I reach the etymology problem of these words.
>
>It seams that both ban_Banat has some slavic/avar meaning [ie lord, master].
>Already the French savant Charles du Fresne, sieur Du Change [1610-1688] in
>his work [ie "Glossarium", tome I. (Niort, 1883)] was convinced that the
>technical word "ban" comes from "Baian" (Bajan/Boeanos), a khan/kagan of
>Avars, who lived in the VI century. Other scholars [mainly historians from
>the region] took his explanations as it is. Unfortunately for me I do not
>have the opportunity to check Du Change's original explanation [I did not
>find yet his work in a romanian library].
>
>I found some other explanations like: the name "banat" has its origin in a
>Persian word meaning "lord", or "master" and is to be found also in the old
>Indian dialect [with the meaning of "master", "ruler", "responsible",
>"superintendent"] and because this Indian dialect was very similar to the
>Thracian/Geto-Dacian [both being indo-european languages] one can suppose
>that these -ie the Thracian/Geto-Dacian- used the word with the same
>meanings. The argument: it is known that the Dacian king Duras was also
>named DiurPANeus. The second part of his name, "paneus" means "ruling" and
>"pan" or "ban" means "ruler/master".