alexandru wrote:
>The hungarian word aranjos 'gold' (-anjos is a suffix in Hungarian)
<arany> ['OrOñ] "gold"; <aranyos> means "golden, made of gold"
(i.e. "de aur; auriu; ca aurul; suflat cu aur / fig. "dragutz,
nostim, dulce" <--- as a transparent loan translation from
German <goldig>)
-any & -ény is also a suffix; however, I don't know if
<-any-> in <arany> can be interpreted as a suffix. (Unfor-
tunately, I don't know the etymology of Hung. <arany>.
But there seems to be a connection to the vast IE groups
of terms related to gold and copper a/es- and a/er-.
Probably related to this Hung. <ezüSt> ['æzüSt] "silver"
-- ie, here, <ar-> and <ez->; whereas Hung. érc [e:rts] "ore,
containing metals (of mountains)" is, probably, of no
use since it might be [I personally don't know] a German
loanword: Erz "ore".)
>seems to be a loan from a local population that:
> 1. has loaned Latin 'aurum'
> 2.a and has reduced auC-u to aC-u see Latin auscultare >
>Romanian ascultare , Latin Augustus > OldRomanian Agust
> or
>.b from a population that globally reduced au>a as in Albanian
>so this population was either a Romanized one or an Albanoid one
>possesin some important Latin loans :)
>
>So a single loan is enough to tell us who was that local population
>that Hungarians found extracting the Gold in the 'Gold Valley'
>(Arjesh) of the Apuseni Mountains when the Hungarians arrived
>around 1000 AC.
This assumption would imply that Romanians are not autochtonous
there. Since in the Romanian language, in all Romanian sub-
dialects that have been spoken North of the Danube (as well as
in the former Roman provinces Dacia ripensis, Dacia mediterranea,
Moesia Inferior, Moesia Superior, Dardania) au- has been preserved:
aur. But not as a mere diphtong [au], but in diferent syllables
separated by a hiatus aur [!a-ur]!
There is no <aur> "gold" in Romanian without the vowel [u].
Moreover: the assumed population that passed on *ar must
have been assimilated by Hungarians without any trace before
Romanians arrived that area (of the Romanian "Western"
Mountains), since Romanian doesn't have *ar and no other
traces that could have been left by that population (let
alone traces of traditions, customs etc.).
And, finally, the Romanian rendering of that geographic
Aranyos ['O-rO-ñoS] is Arie$ [a-ri-'eS]. In Romanian, Arie$
has no meaning. Only -e$ has the aspect of a suffix to the
Romanian ear. And that's all. If those who took that loan
term were aware of the meaning, they would've translated it
in a way or other, Romanian being capable of building many
derivates outa <aur>, both toponyms and anthroponyms (of these
let me mention Aurel, Auricã, Aurica, Aurelia). Related to
the name of this rivulet Aranyos/Arie$, look at the toponym
Zlatna, Hung. Zalatna ['zO-lOt-nO], both meaning nothing
in Romanian and Hungarian, but containing the... "gold"
semantic in any... Slavic language. In ancient times, i.e.,
under Roman administration, in the province Dacia Felix,
Z(a)latna's name was... Ampelum.
Also note that no direct phon. relationship (of derivation)
can be established between the late Roman name <Auratus>
and <Arie$>. Its older name was <Crisola>, which, if read
in Greek, contains at least the common semantic: "gold"
which is present in <Auratus> and <AranyoS>, but if it is
also contained in <Arie$>, no Romanian native-speaker is
aware of it, since it is too distant from the Romanian
word <aur> "gold" and its derivations e.g. <auriu> "golden"
and <aurit> which is the Romanian past participle that shows
a verb (a aurí) in the -ire (IV) conjugation, and not that
one in the -are (I) conjugation which lays at the base of
the late Latin name <Auratus>.
#
For the timespans of the 9th and 10th centuries, the
existence of some kind of "Albanoid" population in the
mountains where Arie$ flows and where Zlatna is located
can't be assumed due to complete lack of any information
whatsoever pertaining to such a population. (And *illyroid*
people who extracted gold and silver in the same places
had lived there 8-10 centuries before. We know that due
to some written vestigies left by the overlords themselves:
the Roman authorities.)
>Marius
George