Re: [tied] Thracian place-names

--- George Hinge <litgh@...> wrote:

>
> > As mentioned before, the earliest
> > designation of the Dnipro ("Borysthenes")seems to
> have
> > been borrowed by the Greeks from a Thrakoid rather
> > than from an Iranic speech. From a population,
> also,
> > which used "t" rather than "d" in many instances.
>
> We have the same confusion of voiced and unvoiced
> stops in many
> Scythian (Iranian) propria in the Greek inscriptions
> of the
> hellenistic and imperial ages

*****GK: According to Lehr-Splawinski and Stryzhak
this confusion also occurs in Thracian items. I
mentioned it in passing, and it is obviously not
decisive. More important is the issue of "short" vs.
"long" "a".******

>
> Another example is the Greek name of the river Don,
> Tanais. However,
> since the appellativum was common in East Iranian -
> cf. Ossetic
> don "river", it is more safe to assume an Iranian
> origin of the name

****GK: Here there are two problems. According to
Abaiev, the Ossetian shift from "a" to "o" did not
occur until the 13th/14th century, and so he does not
think that the Slavic "Don" was an Ossetic borrowing,
since it existed earlier. And then, there is the issue
of the short Slavic "o" which cannot derive from the
long Iranic "a" (Stryzhak, Trubachov,
Lehr-Splawinski). This applies to the major areal
rivers here (Don, Dnipro/Dnepr, Dnister)*****




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