alexandru_mg3 wrote:
> In case of "Zomus" more probably we have here a "z". Why?
>Because there are other documents :
>------------------------------------------------------------
> see : 1268: Zhomos, aqua (Gy. 1: 553 [itt Zhomus alakban], 563).
>------------------------------------------------------------
>url : [SNIP]
>where is written with 'zh'. As yourself said "zh" indicates
>a "Z" .
I wrote "zh" in... English. And I pointed out that the
author's spelling is sloppy (as it was that of most authors
of medieval Latin scripts).
But let's assume that, in some early times, the hydronym was
Zom- or Zhom- (let's leave the ending aside). No relevant
language in the region (Hungarian, Romanian, Slavic and
German) has preserved it other than with an initial [s].
How come?
> Your method is wrong. You present here TODAY hungarian
>pronunciation that is not relevant AT ALL for our subject.
>(I learned this from Piotr during Bessa topic)
I admit that I'm no expert at 12th-13th c. Hungarian.
Nonetheless I expect that a Hungarian-language expert
won't endorse your assumption. As for how you perceive
Piotr's explanations: take into consid. that any
European language of the 12th-13th century is very
close to today's continuation of it, whereas earlier
phases of, say, the 1st-2nd c. or 5th-6th c., are
not intelligible to us, unless we learn vocabulary
and grammar. (A German-l. speaker understands much
of the Nibelungenlied, written in Middle High German
of the 13th c., but had it been written 4 c's earlier,
in Old High German, one would've needed special
knowledge for its translation.)
As for the relevance: if we don't pay heed to the peculi-
arities of the medieval texts (i.e. how accurate or not
people and place names might have been rendered by
*local* authors - magister P. Belae regis notarius was
an autochtonous narrator, and not a, say, French or
Italian chronicler), we're forever prone to inferring
wrong things.
> Do you know the Hungarian situation around 900-1000AC,
>when the Hungarians arrive in Panonia ?
A redundant question: the author of this "Gesta
Hungarorum" was a Hungarian of the turn of the 12th
to the 13th century. I.e. the Hungarian spoken during
his time was sensibly different from that of duke
Almus' and his son's time, and closer to modern
Hung. OTOH, the corpus of place and person names in
the narration can be compared and corroborated both
with various variants in writings almost contemporary
or 1-2-3 centuries later, and with early writings in
*Hungarian*, as well as with their transformed variants
all the while up to now. (On top of that, person names
put into the dative case, Latinized or not, have
attached the ending "-nec", which is the same
today's Hungarian (written "-nek" or "-nak", depending
on the vowel in the root). Etc.)
> In any case, in case of "Zomus" we have another document
>with a 'zh' spelling "Zhomus" (see above).
I would ask an expert's explanation or interpretation
on that. Namely, why the "h" after the "z", whether the
"h" had any significance, and, if so, which one.
As for the author of the chronicle, from which you quoted,
he spelled it only "Zomus" (i.e. without "h"). Had he
instead written "Somus", than the interpretation must've
been either [SomuS] or [tSomuS].
>"Slavic-Hungarian-Turkic(-Germanic) suffix" (long
>construction, here isn't it?)
A necessary one, since in any of these languages there
are such endings such as in Hung. Szamos ['sO-moS]
and Rum. Some$. ("Germanic" in brackets since chiefly
endings such as "-isch" and "-esch" in German names.)
> If yes, please present the complete transformation
>for Samus -> Zomus (taking into account rom. Somesh)
>using your "Slavic-Hungarian-Turkic(-Germanic)"
>transformations.
That's superfluous AFAI am concerned, since I'm
convinced there has been no *Zomus in Hungarian
and Romanian (the Slavists over here may confirm or
not the esixtence of *Zomus in some Slavic idiom).
Moreover, Ptolemy didn't pass on any *Zomus to us
either, AFAIR.
>4. "And one almost never knows when "u" is meant to be [u] or
>[ö] or [ü] (e.g. Tuhutum or Tühütüm or
Töhötöm)."
>
> In case of Tuhutum your are right : we will never know.
How do you know that we'll never know? You earlier said your
knowledge of Hung. phonetics is not of much help.
> But I can tell you that in case of TURDA (ancient Potaissa) that
>is attested in 1075 as TURDA with U, like in today and also in the
>ancient Romanian pronunciation. (and not as in today magh.
>pronunciatian TORDA with O) we have an U :
This attestation of 1075 says nothing in connection with
Patavissa/Potaissa, nor anything in connection with the
Romanian language. However, it might preserve some trace
of a Turkic clan or tribe, Torta, that was included in
the federation of tribes that, in those centuries after
the conquest formed the Hungarian nation. Western Tran-
sylvania and the plains left and right of the river of
Tisa were heavily colonized with Turkic-speaking (also
with Iranic-speaking) tribes - the most prominent of them
being the Kabars (Khazars) who in the beginning were the
actual "ruling class". (What's more, even the rulers
mentioned in this chronicle, and who were defeated by
the Hungarian conquerors, MenuMorout, Gelou and Ohtum,
were of Turkic descent. This is meanwhile accepted as
such by most Romanian historians as well.)
Whichever it might have been, the -da ending is one
of the typical place name endings in Hungarian ("-da"
and "-vowel+d" (usu. -ed, -ad) or "-vowel+nd").
>-------------------------------------------------------------
> " Ultra silvam ad castrum quod vocatur Turda...in loco, qui
>dicitur hungarice Aranas, latine autem Aureus "
> (1075 A.D.),
>-------------------------------------------------------------
Aranas is the awkward Latinization of Aranyos ['OrOñoS]
"the golden" < arany "gold" + the suffix "-oS."
> This shows that the Hungarians learned 'TURDA' from a population
>that pronounced it with U.
You can't infer that, simply because, even in Hungarian
there is a tremendous [o]<->[u] correspondence; even
today, esp. subdialectally (e.g. standard ló [lo:]
"horse" and non-standard lú [lu:]). A similar dichotomy
ü<->ö both the short and long ones (rendered in ASCII as
û and õ or ô for the long ü and ö respectively).
> What is 'strange' also, is that the Hungarians knew very well
>that the surround place in Latin is called : "Aureus". (This
>happens 77 years after their arrival in Panonnia and about less
>than 50 years after their arrival in Turda)
Is there any ancient source attesting Aureus as an
ancient place name? The Latin text only says that
"Aranas" means in Latin "golden". It doen't mention
the pace name in the language of the autochtonous
population. What's more, the Romanian population
in the auriferous mountainous region in the vicinity,
although having in its vocabulary words such as <aur>
"gold", <auriu/aurii/aurie/> "golden", <aurar> (some-
one dealing with gold in a way or another), has used
the place name... Zlatna (an obvious Slavism, either
borrowed directly or via Hungarian proxy, Zalatna)
and the river name Arie$, that, although resembling
something golden-like as <aura$>, prompts no one to
think of "gold" or "golden." How come?
>From where they could learn, how the place is named in
>Latin ?
Pay attention: in which Latin? In the Latin of the medieval
Hungarian author who thus translated the place name into
Latin? If so, this has nothing to do with how Romans
might have called that place 800-1000 years earlier, as
there was an urbs called Patavissa.
As to from whom, the answer is from populaces living
there when they showed up. The question continues to
be: which population? If it was Romanians from whom
Hungarians got Turda or Torda, we still don't know
what it means in Romanian and/or whether Romanians
themselves got it from another populace.
>(maybe from the Slavs, Turks
A mixture of Slavic-Turkic population was there, this
seems to be undoubted. Perhaps rests of a Bulgarian
sphere of influence or of the so-called "Moravian
Empire" (that had its center in Banate, at Cuvin and
Morisena (Csanád/Cenad), where Glad and Ahtum ruled,
rather than in Czech Moravia;)
or Germans, isn't it?)
Germans would've fit (Tor "gate" > Torenburg), but they
first showed up in the last decade of the 12th c.,
invited from Rhineland and Luxembourg by the Hung. king.
George