george knysh wrote:
> ******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.*******
To show how important hydronyms may circulate, suffice it to point out
the wide distribution of the name *dunajI in various Slavic-speaking
areas. <Dunáj> is even recorded as a Belarusian folk name for the upper
Dnieper in the Mohylev area, and there are many smaller rivers called
<Dunaj>, dimin. <Dunajec> or the like in the Dnieper, Vistula and Oder
systems. This fact inspired Lehr-Splawinski to postulate a native Slavic
etymology based on reconstructed PIE *dHou-nah2 (accepted by Udolph and
Golab, among others), with an arbitrary *-j- extension; according to
this theory, the Danube was named by the Slavs with a Slavic appellative
_accidentally_ similar to Germanic *do:nawi < *do:nawjo: (<-- Celtic
*da:nauios, from a different IE root). However, *dunajI does look like a
loan from Germanic. The early Slavs regularly substituted their *au
(later > *u) for Germanic long *o:, and the *a of the second syllable
may be due to dissimilation in the sequence *au...*aw... > *au...a:...,
resulting in *dauna:j- > *dunaj-. I think it's far more likely that the
fame of the Danube as "_the_ river" (hence 'any major river') spread
among the Slavs together with its name, inspiring the creation of new
local hydronyms.
Piotr