Caro Giuseppe,
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Fortunati Giuseppe"
<fgiusepp2@...> wrote:
>
> Dear New Friends, I am Italian and live in Narnia town now named
> Narni in Umbria region. I like to know more about the name of my
> town. For this I study a little about it and I think that the root
> of the name come from Nahar that are an old name that come from
> the Indo-European root that means River.
Actually this etymology does not seem to be a viable one.
http://tinyurl.com/yhcfbo
<< The great necropoleis of Terni prove the existence of a
protohistoric Umbrian culture that flourished in the valley of Terni
in the first millennium B.C., before the Romans arrived in the area
at the beginning of the 3rd c. B.C. This culture can be identified
as the "Naharkum numen" (the "nation of the Nera") cited in the
famous Iguvine Tablets (Tab. Ig. Ib 16-17; VIb 54 and 58-59; VIIa 12
and 47-48), the principal document for the language and culture of
the ancient Umbrians. "Nahar" is the Umbrian name of the river that
cuts through the plain of Terni: in Latin, Nar, today, the Nera. The
term would indicate the presence of sulphur in the waters, a quality
that made them sacred. Roman Terni, called Interamna Nahartium in
the ancient sources, reveals in its name, not only its topographical
characteristic of being built on a fluvial peninsula, but also its
ancient Umbrian roots: it records the ancient people of the Naharci,
Latinized into Nahartes.
A. Fabbi, (_Antichità Umbre_, Assisi, Pontificio Seminario
Regionale, 1971) reports that the Sabine word nhar means `sulphur'.
The Sabine language belonged to the Osco-Umbrian subgroup of Italic
languages. The present river Nera (Umbrian Nahar, Latin Na:r, -is
m.) has some sulphurous springs along its course (at Triponzo) and,
therefore, picks up a lot of sulphur that makes its tumultuous
waters turbid. Latin writers often mention the Nar's sulphurous
waters: "Nar amnis exhaurit illos [Velinos lacus] sulphureis aquis"
(Plin. 3, 12, 17, § 109); "Solporeas posuit spiramina Naris ad
undas" (Enn. ap. Prisc. p. 691 P. [Ann. v. 265 Vahl. ]); "Audiit
amnis sulfurea Nar albus aqua fontesque Velini" (Verg. A. 7, 517) --
see Lewis & Short's Latin Lexicon at
http://tinyurl.com/yekgtx
Anyone on the List knows about this posited Osco-Umbrian word
nhar/nahar meaning `sulphur' and its etymology?
Thanks and best regards,
Francesco Brighenti