Re[2]: [tied] Re: sea, seal

At 7:15:09 PM on Friday, August 10, 2007, Rick McCallister
wrote:

> --- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>>> Connection with *saiwa-la- "soul" (water creature)?

>> Incidentally, the 'seal' word is *selxaz, with short *e
>> (diphthongised to <eo> in non-Anglian OE, hence <seolh>;
>> cf. ON selr). The only thing it shares with the 'sea'
>> word is the initial *s.

> So then the root is selx- but there is also Scots selkie
> "a seal-like creature, a were-seal", evidently from *selk-

No, it's from *selx-: <selkie> is a variant of earlier
<selchie>, diminutive of <selch> 'a seal', with numerous
variants; see <http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/> (search on
<selch>).

And I see now that the earliest spelling recorded in the OED
is <selchies> ~1550.

> My question was based on the fact that -ai- often
> changes to -e-, as in saiwa > sea, so please explain

The OE is <sæ:>, gen.pl. <sæ:wa>, dat.pl. <sæ:wum>,
apparently from *saiwiz.

Brian