Piotr. Gods' names and portfolios were sometimes borrowed or inherited
from other cultures, of course. It has occurred to me that Jupiter may
conceivably have been a composition of Egyptian Shu + Ptah; both names
and portfolios were broadly compatible. The Latin Jupiter might then
have been an exercise in early folk-etymology.
I know far too little of old Greek and its dozens (?) of spoken dialects
to say whether the P of Poseidon might have been a written
representation of an initial glottal stop, but it is conceivable, and I
would be glad to hear opinions from experts in the subject. If it were
- for the sake of argument - then we might be looking at a root Os or
Osi plus a couple of suffixes. Or root Ost, of course, as a halfway
point between Os and Ot. If the name of Poseidon is native to the
Greeks, then it is worth a bit of guessing as to its literal meaning; if
not, not. Only the original language will contain the original meaning
- logically; anything else would be folk-etymology, presumably.
Gordon Barlow
> The most archaic versions of the name look like Po-se-da-wo-ne (Myc.),
> Poseida:o:n, Poteidawo:n, or Poti:dao:n. If the name is IE at all, the
> first element could be identify as *poti- 'master, lord', though it's
> position in the compound is strange (for 'lord of X' we would expect
> *X-potis). It's possible, however, that the name is a frozen vocative
> phrase like Lat. Iuppiter/Iu:piter (*djéu p&2ter). If so, the <potei- ~
> posei-> part may be the archaic vocative of <posis>. What remains is
> *da(:)wo:n, which seems to be the actual original name.
> Any thoughts?
>
> Piotr
>