Re: [tied] Re: Terminology (Re: Piotr-)

Interesting. Av. zantu- (< *g^enh1-tu-) 'tribe, tribal area' suggests
that there might have been an Iranian prototype.

Piotr

30-08-03 12:57, tolgs001 wrote:

> I was asking only because of the word "dentu"
> written (probably in the 12th c.) by the
> Hungarian chronicler "anonymus P.", a king
> Béla's notary.
>
> Namely in this syntagm: <dentumoger>. In the
> sense the people who were the nucleus of the
> Magyar nation. The chronicler maintains this
> was the ethnonym when they lived in "Scythia"
> (i.e. in what's today Russia and Ukraine).
>
> AFAIK, this <dentu> has no meaning and usage in
> Hungarian, nor in other neighboring languages.
> And I gather that the author must've found the
> term in the internal materials/traditions of
> the Hung. royal dynasty (which are lost). Now...
> what if this term is some PIE linguistic
> relic? (Unless there's some other explanation,
> in some Turkic or Iranic idiom which I'm not
> aware of.)
>
> One example:
>
> <<Gens itaque hungarorum fortissima et bellorum
> laboribus potentissima, ut superius diximus, __de
> gente scithica, que per ydioma suum proprium
> dentumoger dicitur__ (,) duxit originem.