30-10-03 11:38, Marco Moretti wrote:
> These suffixes are not necessarily Anatolian. But they are surely of
> non-IE origin and very widespread in pre-IE toponymy. They are
> substratum item. In Etruscan they were still productive in common
> words such as am-inth, calu-s (pl. calu-s-ur, adject. calu-s-na, all
> derived from calu), etc...
> Also the Thracian suffix -intho- is a substratum feature.
Why? Because you say so? Judging from the attested Thracian vocabulary,
the language had a stop system with a fortis/lenis (rather than simply
voiceless/voiced) contrast, which is why Greek loans often show <tH> for
Thracian fortis /t/ and hesitate between <t> and <d> to represent
Thracian lenis /d/. As far as I can see, <-intHo-> may simply be IE
*-n.t-o- filtered through Thracian itself or through an IE language
closely related to Thracian. I'm willing to admit other analyses in
individual cases, but I don't care much for the practice of dumping
together all cases of Gk. -intHo- as "non-IE" ("Pelasgian" or whatever).
The same, a fortiori, goes for Gk. -ss-, which can derive from a number
of sources, including native ones (< *-tj-, *-dHj-, *-kj-, etc.).
> Germanic *-und- comes from IE *-ntó- in IE words such as Gothic
> fijands, frijonds, and so on, but in toponyms it may derive from
> different sources.
This is just another stipulation. It may, but does it?
> This *sam- may be unrelated with Saami, Suomi, due to phonetic
> difficulties, but this doesn't imply that this *sam- is IE.
> What IE cognate do you have for Sams ??? Your arguments suffer of
> severe difficulties.
_All_ my arguments? :-) Look, I'm not a specialist in Danish onomastics.
I can't pretend I have a convincing etymology up my sleeve, though of
course *sam- _could_ be Germanic (if anything, we need more data to
constrain the inevitable embarras de richesse, since more than one
possibility could be considered). One ought to examine all the available
historical evidence (especially the oldest attested forms of a name)
before even beginning to speculate; otherwise one's practically bound to
make foolish mistakes. If Torsten, or anyone else, can provide some
reliable historical info on Samsø, we can discuss the name. Otherwise a
discussion makes no sense.