Re: [tied] Alans

george knysh wrote:

> An interesting Spanish-language item about the Alans
> in Wikipedia reconstructs their Iranic name as
> *arya-nah I've forgotten what this -nah is. A
> specific nominative plural? Or something else? Since
> the usual plural (cf. Piotr's analysis of Herodotus'
> "Paralatae") would have been a -ta (?) .

It should be *arya:na- (> POss. *ælan-), a possessive adjective meaning
'of the Aryas' (a byform of *aryana-, presumably influenced by the
gen.pl. *arya:na:m, which also underlies the etymology of "Iran", MPer.
e:ra:n). The name <ælon> does have a *-ta: plural in Ossetic, <ælættæ>
from *ælan-tæ. (I'm quoting from memory, but I think -nt- assimilation
does apply here. Anyway, don't compare this directly with the
Paralatae's name, since the Ossetic assimilation is too recent.)

Piotr