On Sun, Dec 28, 2003, at 03:03 AM, Mate Kapović wrote:
> From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
>
>> The problem is, Bulgarian (+ OCS) has *tj > *s^t, and East Slavic has
>> *kortj- > *koroc^-. If the Slavic form is indeed *krac^- with _old_
>> *ra
>> (not from mliquid metathesis), it can't be related to *kort(-Uk)-
>> 'short'. The only solution I see is a wandering loan from a dialect
>> related to Serbo-Croatian or Slovene that had the word.
>
> I found some data. It seems that I wasn't right about *krat7k7.
> Bulg. has kracˇun "Christmas Eve (besides other meanings)", Slovak
> kracˇún/kracˇunˇ"Christmas", Old Russian korocˇun6, Ukr. kracˇun,
> kerecˇun
> and some other forms etc. All forms cited have a meaning related to
> Christmas.
(1) Is there any information that this seemingly pan-Slavic
krac^un/karac^un/koroc^un was (is?) also used as related
to Summer solstice events (rites)?
I only vaguely remember to have read somewhere that Ukrainians
and/or Russians used the word in this context. (But don't
ask me who said this and in what context, cuz... outa sight,
outa mind. :-))
(2) Can (must) be this krac^un (connected with Yule &
Christ's birthday) be seen in relation to some substrate
rite (i.e. pagan) of the season? Namely with a tree branch
& a ritual fire. (If so, then the Romanian vocabulary
has two other fitting lexems <creangã> and <cracã>
pertaining to trees.)
> (So DEX is wrong :-))
It seems so. Lat. <creationem> and <callationem> were
indeed tempting because of their semantics related both
to pagan season rites and to Christmas and because they
seem to fit the specific transformation rules Latin =>
Romanian, in order to result in <crãciun(e)>. (To some,
even Lat. <crucem> was tempting, although Romanian vocab.
has <cruce> for it. But, OTOH, it's phonetics ['kru-c^e]
doesn't belong to another galaxy if you compare it with
[kr&-'c^un], does it? :-))
Noteworthy that in the area of the Daco-Romanian
dialect, Crãciun is an old first name, as well as a
quite frequent surname. Karácsony(i) must be very
rare, if any, within the Hung. population. What's the
onomastic situation in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia,
Bulgaria, Ukraine, Slovakia in this... Krac^unian
respect?
> Mate
George