[tied] Re: Trakai

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Egijus <segijus@...> wrote:

>> Roughly 1/2 of them are miss-spelled (some even beyond
>> recognition). Some of them are true Slavic, Hungarian, and
>> Turkish-Persian names/words (e.g. Tirnava, Chiojd, DuSman).
>
> TIRNAVA I have associated with Lithuanian word TYRAS, which
> means PURE.

You may associate it with anything, as long as you don't care
about phonetics, meanings and other (much more likely!) sources.
That is not a decent standard in linguistics and this kind of
unsubstantiated associations should be avoided.
The place name "Târnava" is just one among hundreds of Slavic
names in Transylvania; one should link it with OCS "trUnU", with
normal phonetisc evolution.
BTW, the two "Târnave" are not so pure as one would think.

> Ending -ava is very popular in Baltic place names.

-ava, -ova are also Slavic.

> CHIOJDENI was been added to the list, because it has Baltic and
> Romanian suffix and ending -eni, -enai, which is being used to
> indicate inhabitants.

Funny. In this case, you should add all place names in Romania
having this supposed Baltic-Romanian suffix (about some hundreds).
-eni is a Slavic suffix adopted by Romanian.

> The root can be Lithuanian word CHIAUDETI, which means TO SNEEZE.

Everything in the name "Chiojd" points towards a Hungarian origin
(Kózsd).

> So, place name CHIOJDENI can mean THE PLACE, INHABITANTS OF WHICH
> ARE SNEEZING.

... but actually meaning `inhabitants of Chiojd`.

> It is possible, that DUSMANI have come from Lithuanian word DUSTI,
> which means TO PANT, and Zhemaitian word MANI, which means ME.

... but it is much more likely to come from Turkic "du$man", where
it has the same meaning as Romanian loanword "du$man" (`enemy`).

> What about other 500 place names?

A bunch of fallacious examples, of little relevance for this list
and indecently large to spend time discussing it word by word.

Regards,
Marius Iacomi