Re: [tied] Thracian place-names

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> 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).

****GK: Note that "Don" was also used with respect to
the "Siverian Donets" (contrasted to the "Don
Velykyj"). Slavs are archaeologically fixated in the
Donets area as early as the 2nd c. AD. There is no
reason to delay a borrowing from neighbouring Alans.
Is there any evidence in that time frame for the type
of dialect you have suggested, or is this just ad hoc
speculation on your part?****

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.

*****GK: Is there any evidence for such a reflex?
There is for the short Thracian riverword...Cf. my
point to G.H.****

A

> cognate of Av. ae:s^a-
> and Skt. is.ir�- 'strong, active' could be lurking
> in the name of the
> Dniester.

*****GK: Is that more plausible than the multiple
local "str" variants esp. the Thrakoid ones? The
Dnister already had a well known Iranic name (Tyras)
with the same meaning ("swift, strong")*****

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).

*****GK: You're losing me here. This theory holds that
the "Borysthenes" was the lower Dnipro and the "Apira"
(or something like it) the upper Dnipro? This sounds
complicated and highly implausible for a number of
reasons. For the upper Dnepr a Baltic root would seem
more appropriate (perhaps something with the -slov-
element, reflected in the much later literary Old
Ukrainian "Slavutych"). And the Borysthenes itself is
almost certainly a river+ river compound
(Borys-thenes) of which Dana- per/ Dana- pris is the
much later metathesized variant (the analysis offered
in Stryzhak, op. cit., pp.15-18, 28-30 appears
conclusive). The Slavic "e", according to Bernstein,
is already prefigured in Thracian "Danedebai" et
sim.****




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