Re: [tied] RE: etyma for Crãciun,Romanian for Christmas, correction

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 29-12-03 12:31, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Correction
> >
> >>If the sense was once "tree" or "yule log" there is ON

<kraki> "tree

> >> with branches cut off, which would then be borrowed after Grimm,
> > but
> >> before the last Slavic palatalisation (or all from some

substrate

> >> language?).
>

> The final -i is the weak-noun suffix, which can simply be ignored,

since

> ON speakers could easily have added it to a borrowed word.

Since it's weak-stemmed, it would originally have -n- in the stem.
There's the -n- of kraciún. As for the stress I was reminded in these
times channelsurfing on the cable of the difference between
Da. 'légeme' and Sw. 'lekámen' "body" (li:k-hamin-, falsely divided
from a definite form in Danish) the word used in Holy Communion. It
seems to me the Swedish stress shift corresponds to a (Latin?
German? - induced) tendency in solemn/liturgical language to shift
stress away from the first syllable; similarly, is there a stress
shift influenced by the pervading etymology (which the church would
have favored) from 'creatione(m)'?

>As for the
> /krak-/ part, it might have been taken from Slavic *korkU with
> "Lekhitic"-type metathesis. Polish krok means 'step, stride', but

also

> 'crotch' (= the point where both legs meet')

which makes one wonder about the etymology of Engl. 'crotch'. Cf.
Danish 'krog', Sw. 'krok' "hook" (related to German 'Krug' "mug"),
Da. 'kroget' "gnarled, twisted"; Da. 'krage' (obs; < kraki) also
means "pole with hook at end". Then there's of course the supposedly
Norwegian 'Kraken' of a sea monster, wherever that comes from.

>and sometimes 'branching
> point' (<stana,c' w kroku> = stand with legs astride; cf.

<krak> 'leg'

> in South Slavic); it's difficult to decide which meaning is

primary. Cf.

> also Polish karcz 'rooted-out stump of a tree' (perhaps from
> unmetathesised Northwest Slavic *korc^-jI, if not from reduced-

grade

> *kUrc^-). Your question also made me think about West and East

Slavic

> *kroky (*krokUv-) 'rafter' (Pol. krokiew, Cz. krokev, Slk. krokva,
> Russ./Ukr./Bel. krokva), a technical word unknown in South Slavic
> (except in Slovene, where it's a recent loan from Czech). Is it a
> borrowing from hypothetical Gmc. *krakõ: (as in <kraki>), or a

Lekhitic

> derivative of *kork- borrowed into the neighbouring Slavic dialects
> _and_ into Old Norse? The fact that the word looks isolated in

Germanic

> but belongs to a largish word-family in Slavic, seems to favour its
> Slavic origin.
>

If it's somehow related to Kraków, should we be looking at Celtic?

Perhaps the right thing to do is to compare the geographical
extension of the yule log custom with the geographical extension of,
say, Krahe's Old European water names? The word certainly seems fond
of /a/.

Torsten