Re: [tied] Help with ban_Banat

The American Heritage dictionary, which is generally pretty sensible
(there were some rather weird etymologies in the 1st edition, but they
seem to have been weeded out by the 3rd) has "Serbo-Croatian 'ban'
lord, from Turkic 'bayan', very rich person : 'bay', rich, gentleman +
'an' intensive suff."

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Feb 2003 17:59:42 +0200, "S & L" <mbusines@...> wrote:
>
> >I am working to a comment regarding the meaning of ban/Banat [ie ban as
> >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".
>
> As far as I know, <ban> is a Hungarian word, borrowed from Iranian.
> Unfortunately, I have no information on what the Iranian word might
> be. Perhaps Persian <-pa:van> (<xs^aTrapa:van-> "satrap")?
>
> I doubt <ban> has anything directly to do with Slavic <pan> (<hpán>),
> <stopan>, <z^upan> (which is borrowed as <ispán> in Magyar), unless
> the Slavic words are themselves derived from Iranian <-pa:van>.
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...