A. wrote:
> I am simply curious as to whether this word: tewaz/tewa/tewai etc is
> any relation to "teiwa" as from the Negau helmet with its "harigasti
> teiwa" inscription??
If the most common reading of the Negau inscription is roughly correct,
the <teiwa> part can be identified with PGmc. *teiwaz (later *ti:waz),
iterpreted as either a preform of Tyr's name (the war god), or generally
'deity' (PIE *deiwos, ON pl. ti:war). There's a connection with Tuesday,
but not with *tewaz.
> As I looked at the various Gmc cognates as well as the final
> comments... I wondered if this might be the root of the
> infamous "irmin" as in the Irminsul.
> Any thoughts or ideas??
What's infamous about <irmin->? We find a few variants of this element,
reflecting *ermana-, *ermuna- or *irmina-. They all go back to PGmc.
*ermVna- with wariable vocalism of the unstressed syllable ("suffix
umlaut") and vowel-harmony adjustments. The initial vowel is not
compatible with either *h2a- or *h2o-, so there can hardly be a formal
connection with the 'arm, shoulder' term.
The unmotivated variation of *i/*a/*u is common in unstressed syllables
in early Germanic. Note such cases as Goth. asilus, OHG esil 'ass' (a
borrowed word) vs. OE esol, Anglian eosol. The back umlaut in OE
dialects points to a back vowel in the suffix, whereas the initial e- is
the product of previous i-umlaut (as in OHG)! So the historical sequence
must have been like this:
*asil- > *esil > *esul > e(o)sol
-- and the replacement of *-il by *-ul took place already on British soil.
Piotr