----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Pferd
As for Paris, and Oise River,
Oise comes from *isarâ not the short form *is-
The other river Isère also come forme
*isarâ
The difference is :
Gaulish accent on i : isara >
oise
Latin accent on a : isara >
isère
Cf. the town Pontoise : Pontus Isarae (in text of
IV century)
The etymology "those on the river Oise" would be :
ar-isarii.
BUT this type of tribe name based on *ar
+ river names does not exist.
There isn't any reason to supposed non Gaulish
people in this part of France,
Gaulish accentuation in place names shows a strong
presence of Gaulish people.
Isère River is in the south : Latin
accent.
As a general rule, Gaulish accent is the same as in
Latin, one syllabe shifted to the initial (if possible)
This is the objective criterion to tell whether it
is Gaulish or LAtin.
Some tribe names are based on tree
names,
so my own explanation :
Parisi < *kwr-s-i : those of the oak (Root
*kwrs-u oak)
Carnuti < those of the hornbeam
tree
Eburi < those of the yew
As for Pferd,
the explanation in Kluge seems perfectly acceptable
to me.
para-veredus is a late LAtin word,
hybrid : Greek para- + Gaulish veredus, hence
paravered
Kluge writes that the German borrowing dates back
to the VI century.
Greek language was present in southern France, as
early as -600,
This fact is very often forgotten.
Hybrid words are not rare in French
etymology : for example,
Greek oino-phulon vineyard > latinized into
vino-pOlus > GAulish accented (!!) vinO-pol-
Hence modern French vignoble.
You can find Greek-LAtinized-GAulish-like hybrids
as far to the north as Burgundy.
I even read that the first attempt to christianize
France was made in Greek not LAtin !
French has some Greek words that do not exist in
other Roman LAnguages,
so it is not wonder that the prefix *para- might
have used to build a hybrid word.
Arnaud
