Re: [tied] Etymology of "Warsaw"

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

> On 9/3/04 3:37 PM, alex wrote:
>
>> the name in Rom. has stil the "o" there since the name is
>> "Vars^ovia". Apparently the name "krakaw" is too young in this
>> constelation, the old form being "Krakovia"( at least so is it
>> "freezed" in Rom. Lang) .Interesting to me appears the sufix "-ovia"
>> here. If I try to connect with the ancient names I can think just at
>> the note of Trajan which mentioned the city/village "Bersobia" in
>> Dacia. The "bers-" remain "b�rs-" in Rom. (See county of B�rsa) and
>> I have no ideea iv the -obia here can be connected with Latin "ovis"
>> beeing kind of "owia" which can be translated as sheep. Which is the
>> usual explanation of "-ovia" in Slavic ( special Polish?)
>
> It's a fancy Latinisation (plus femininisation, if not already
> feminine) of Slavic placenames with the well-known possessive suffix
> -ov-/-'ev- (as in Russian patronymics). For some reason Mediaeval
> Latin writers preferred Varsovia, Cracovia, Tarnovia etc. to
> *Varsova, *Cracovus or *Tarnovus (which would have been more faithful
> to the original names: Warszowa, Krak�w, Tarn�w, etc.). The existence
> of "Classical" placenames in -ovia certainly played a role in this
> remodelling.
>
> Piotr

Oh, I see.. in fact I should have had think about that because in the South
Slavic and Rom. toponims of Slavic origin there is no "-ovia" at all. It
appears interesting that in Slovakian /Czechian part there is not this
"ovia" but "-ava" which is having the same form as the ancients "-ava"
(Sava, Morava). The toponims in Rom. which ends in "-ov" are masculine
(R�s^nov, Bucov) but I cannot recall of any feminine in "-ova" by now.
Assuming he "v" was not consonatic in its femine form "owa > ua" then such
feminine toponims should be hard to find since they should have been
remodelated (ova >0 since "owa" was considered as definite article, thus was
reduced to 0) . One example should be toponim "V�lcea, V�lceaua" which stil
has regionaly a genitive in "V�lceauai" which is not the literary correct
and normed "V�lcelei".
Mrrr...., not too good to deviate too much from a topic. Now with this
example of "V�lcea(u)a" (< DEX Latin *vallicella(=vallicula) I rise up the
question how I can explain the genitive of feminine in "-uai"(w&i) which is
almost get out of use due literary (latinised?) "-ei". Better I stop:-)
Thank you for explaining the "-ovia"

Alex