--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G.and.P@...> wrote:
>
> Pardon me if I'm repeating something, but I don't remember anyone in
this discussion mentioning Plato's statement that Hektor = anax
("king", or "ruler"). It's in the Cratylus 393:
> "The "anax" and the "hektor" mean about the same thing."
>
> Plato's etymologies, of course, are far from infallible, but it
makes you think, and of course Hektor's son, Scamandrius, was
nicknamed "anax of the city" (Astyanax) because his father was Hektor.
>
Pokorny:
"
seg^h-, seg^hi-, seg^hu- festhalten, halten; einen im Kampf
überwältigen; Sieg'; seg^hos- n. 'Sieg', seg^hu-ro- ,siegreich'.
...
Gr. ékho: (eì~khon, éskhon, éskhe:ka, hékso: und skhé:so:) 'halte,
besitze, habe'; hom. Hékto:r, lesb. hékto:r 'Zurückhalter',
...
kelt. PN Segisu:(*-o:), Sego-ma:ros, GN Segomo:(n), f. Segeta:, ON
Sego-du:non, Sego-briga, Segontion,
...
illyr. ON Segesta in Pannonien, Ligurien, Sizilien;
[Pan-Illyrismus ;-)]
got. sigis n. 'Sieg', ahd. sigi m. ds., german. PN Sigi-merus,
Segi-mundus usw. (idg. neutr. -is- oder -es- St.), ahd. sigirōn
'siegen'; ahd. sigu m., ags. sigor 'Sieg', ahd. PN Sigur-ma:r (idg.
neutr. -us- St.).
...
"
I suppose that makes Hektor a teniente or lieu-tenant ;-)
Palmer: The Greek Language, 34-36
"
34
THE LINEAR B TABLETS
2. Personal Names
Mycenaean grammar must be based primarily on securely established
vocabulary words, but most of the words occurring in the tablets are
names of persons and places, not unexpectedly in documents which are
largely concerned with the registering and control of the population.
However, the personal names are not only of interest linguistically,
since they often preserve fossilized phenomena, but, as will be shown
below, they carry implications for the history of the Homeric Epic. By
way of preliminary some remarks on their morphology must be made.
The abundance of securely-identified personal names in the Linear B
tablets shows that Mycenaean had already evolved the categories
familiar in later times. We may first cite an example of the stately
combination of full name and patronymic adjective: Alektruo:n,
Etewoklewehios (spelt arekuturuwo etewokere-weijo 'Alektryo:n son of
Eteokle:s'. The father's name is a word with two components, a type
familiar also from other IE peoples. Of particular interest are the
names in which one of the components is a verbal stem. Where it is the
first component there are three main types: (a) Ekhe-da:mos 'holding
the people', (b) Orti-na:wos 'urging on the ships' and (c)
Philo-wergos (with compositional vowel -o-) 'loving work'. In (b) the
-ti also occurs in the assibilated form -si: manasiweko =
Mna:si-wergos 'mindful of work'.
Such full names may be shortened (e.g. Te:lemos for Te:le-makhos,
Ekhelos for Ekhela:wos, Patro:klos for Patro-kle:s (*-klewe:s), and
certain characterizing suffixes may be attached, particularly -eus:
e.g. Menestheus for Mene-sthene:s. This is a fact which will be of
importance in the analysis of Akhilleus. The same suffix can also be
added to a full name: e.g. tatiqoweu, which is interpreted as
Stati-gwoeus 'he who steads the oxen'.
It was natural that scholars should have looked for the names of the
Pylian dynasty, and in particular for Nesto:r, in the Linear B tablets
recovered by Blegen from Pylos. The search led to results which
revealed what may be called the leitmotiv principle operative in the
dynastic names of the Heroic Age. Nesto:r is an example of a familiar
type, an agent noun in -to:r attached to a verbal root, in this case
nes- 'bring back safely', 'save'. Others of the same type are Mento:r,
Kasto:r, Hekto:r, etc.
Now the parallels of Mento:r: Menela:wos, Hekto:r: Ekhela:wos, Akto:r:
Agela:wos open up the possibility of a name *Nese-la:wos, in which the
intervocalic -s- would become -h-: the form Nehela:wos in fact
accounts for the name neerawo, which occurs in a list of notables in a
Pylian tablet. It also includes akireu (dat. akirewe) = Akhilleus, on
which, see below. The element nes- also occurs in the type -ti-, i.e.
with component Nesti- in the name netijano, dat. netijanore =
Nestiano:r. We may compare Kas-to:r: Kasti-aneira. The root kas-
'excel' would also undergo the aspiration of -s- intervocalically, and
this insight suggested an answer to the puzzle presented by the name
Nausikaa:, the Phaeacian girl whose brother was called Kluto-ne:os, a
name combining the themes 'renowned' and 'ship'. The girl's name is
simply the feminine form of Nausi-kahos 'excelling in ships'.
We may now turn to Nestor's father Ne:leus, again a longstanding
puzzle, not only linguistically but also in Greek proto-history: why
do so many of the earlier generation of heroes have non-Greek and even
non-Indo-European names? One of these was allegedly Pe:leus, the
father of Akhilleus, but here the solution is not far to seek: it is a
shortened form, characterized by the suffix -eus, of a name which has
as its first component the adverb qwe:le- 'from afar' that is also
found in Te:lemakhos 'fighting from afar', but with the Aeolic
treatment of the labio-velar consonant qwe:- > pe:- (see p. 60). A
later form Te:leus, with the Attic-Ionic phonological development, is
also attested. This opens up a similar solution for Ne:leus: it is
explicable as the shortened form of Nehe-la:wos 'saving the folk'.
This full form would regularly develop in Attic-Ionic to Neileo:s, and
this is the name given to the son of Kodros, who in the tradition was
the Pylian saviour of Athens from the onslaught of the Dorians.
In Ne:leus/Nesto:r, both based on the verbal root nes-, we have an
example of the leitmotiv principle: the habit of giving the son a
component of his father's name. This is particularly frequent in
Cyprus, an island which preserved so much of Mycenaean tradition: thus
Ona:silos (short for Ona:si-la:wos 'he who helps the people') is the
son of Ona:si-kupros. We have a striking example of the same principle
in the names of the Atreidai, the descendants of Atreus. The name of
his younger son is transparent: Mene-la:wos 'he who makes the folk
stand fast', with men- in the sense 'abide', 'cause to abide'.
...
"
Torsten