Z. Golab "The Origins of the Slavs, a Linguist's View"
(1991) has a lengthy discussion of `Bieszczady/Beskidy' (pp.
341-345). Although now primarily one major mountain range, variants
of the word were used for individual mountains in the Carpathians
and in Ukranian for "rock, mountain, cliff, precipice" and as a
verb for "to graze cattle in the mountains" (cf. `alp',
which is properly a mountain meadow rather than a rangeDJM).
Golab says only two attempts at etymology deserve serious
consideration: the Germanic and the Illyrian. For the Illyrian he
refers to Trubacev who derives Bieskidy/Bieszczady < Illyr. *biz-
kit/*biz-ket from *buz- from Proto-IE *bhug "beech + kit-
"forest" justified by the allegedly Illyr. Ketion oros in Ptolemy.
Golab prefers, however, an etymology proposed by
Rozwadowski in 1914, from Germanic *biskaid-, which is represented
by MLG `beschet' "trennung". Golab goes at great
length into phonological details, which I will not attempt to
summarize, but he satisfies himself that they are explainable. He
entitles his excursus "a Vestige of the Germanic Bastarnians in the
Toponymy of the Carpathians?". The specific form "beskid" (with a
short rather than long initial vowel in my simple-minded
understanding), however, he believes is Ukranian and associates with
the so-called "Walachian" colonization of the late fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, during which Ruthenians (Ukranians) migrated to
the Western Carpathians.
Dan Milton
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
wrote:
> Subject: Re: [tied] Ukrainian words from Carpathians
>
>
> > As far as I remember, there are also place name Beskides and
there are all chances to be explained only through Alb. appellative
bjeshkë 'summer mountain pasture'.
>
> Yes, several mountain ranges in southern Poland are called
Beskid or (pl.) Beskidy (< *beskydU < **besku:do-, with loss of
palatalisation that looks as if it were due to
Czech/Slovak/Ukrainian influence). The word is genuinely old and the
Albanian connection may be real. Like the name of the
Carpathians 'the Rockies' (cf. Alb. karpë), which is well over
2000
years old, it may be a surviving substrate word.
>
> Piotr