--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> > GK: The proto-Slavs were part of the
> > classical Scythian realm. Why would they have
> > waited? (to adopt the Dnipro etc. rivernames GK)
>
> To tell the truth, I don't know if they were part of
> it,
*****GK: The oldest Slavic toponyms and hydronyms are
found in the area south of the Prypjat'/Pripet, which
were part of the Scythian state (more precisely of the
subsidiary kingdom of the Aukhata). The population of
"northern Aukhatia" was mixed: "Neurian" and
"agricultural Scythians", the former apparently more
numerous.*****
though of
> course they were strongly influenced by the culture
> of Iranian-speakers
> (lateral contact rather than full immersion in the
> Scythian empire would
> have been enough, I suppose).
*****GK: The point is that the basic "Aukhata"
population, ruled by secondary Paralata kings, but
retaining an aristocracy of its own, descends from
archaeological cultures whose Thrakoid identity is
demonstrable (Komarov, Bilohrudiv, Chornolis) and
which corelate nicely with the few extant Thrakoid
hydronyms. So the proto-Slavs of "norhern Aukhatia"
would have had even more intense cultural dealings
with these Thrakoids than with their Iranic masters.
This, in the period 600-200 BC, preceding the massive
Thrakoid outmigration subsequent to the collapse of
Scythia.****
But even if the
> contact was very intimate,
> it doesn't follow that the name "Don", for example,
> goes back to a
> Scythian past.
*****GK: Here the issue is the short "o" rather than
the exact name.****
river-names can change, and can be
> borrowed and
> re-borrowed easily in an ethnically unstable area
> (which the steppe zone
> was during and after the Great Migrations).
*****GK: We're actually talking forest-steppe and
south forest zones, though that too was unstable. But
acc. to Stryzhak, the modern Dnipro can be shown to be
a derivative of the ancient Borysthenes, and he tries
to describe the various changes leading from one to
the other.*****
The
> Slavs probably had their
> own name (or names) for the Dniester (or parts of it
> course) before a
> borrowed name became accepted with reference to the
> whole river.
******GK: It seems quite plausible that they
"borrowed" the name which they found in use upon
arriving here or already knew via contact, cultural
and commercial, with their predecessors in the area,
or with intermediaries of such. And the same should
hold with regards to Dnipro and Don.*******
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