From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 20592
Date: 2003-03-31
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sergejus Tarasovas" <S.Tarasovas@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 5:44 PM
Subject: RE: [tied] Vladimir
> BTW, does Germanic *-me:r- only mean 'shine'? I've come across something like 'eminent' (thus 'eminent ruler' or the like).
>
>
It's usually glossed as 'illustrious, famed, outstanding, noble'. The normal form of the adjective was *me:rja- (Goth. me:rs, OE mæ:re, Old Runic ma:riz, ON mæ:rr, OHG ma:ri), and as regards its use in personal names, the influence of Gaulish <-ma:ros> 'great, famed' is evident. It seems a Celtic name-forming pattern diffused into Germanic and then into Baltic and Slavic.
In Slavic, there appears to have been some confusion between *-me^rU and the common onomastic element *-mirU 'peace', and since Germanic *wald- corresponded closely to its Slavic cognate *vold- (*voldi- in V+N type dithematics), it was easy to re-etymologise the name in Slavic terms as *voldi-mirU (rather than *voldome^r, which would have been the most faithful rendering of the Germanic prototype). The forms attested in Polish reflect *voldimirU rather than *voldime^r.
Piotr