george knysh wrote:
> ****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)*****
That only excludes an early borrowing from "Scythian" Iranian,
preserving the original vowel length. Borrowing from an Alanic dialect
close to Proto-Ossetic, with a shortened and possibly raised and rounded
reflex of pre-nasal *a: into a Slavic dialect which still had unrounded
*a could result in the substitution of Slavic *U for a foreign *o.
(<Don> would have been borowed more recently, after the Slavic shift of
*a > *o). I'm far from sure how to etymologise *dUne^strU and *dUne^prU,
though the identification of the first element with a Proto-Ossetic
reflex of Iranian *da:nu- looks correct to me. A cognate of Av. ae:s^a-
and Skt. is.irá- 'strong, active' could be lurking in the name of the
Dniester. For the Dnieper, there's also Golab's suggestion that it might
contain Iranian *aipi- < *api- < *h1epi- 'upon, above', with a secondary
comparative ending *-ra- < *-(e)ro-. It's as speculative as the
alternative proposals, but at least accounts for the Slavic *e^ and make
sense if the name was originally applied to the upper course of the
river (contrasted with the Borysthenes).
PIotr