--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> what is your take that long "a" can transform itself into long "o"
> in attested situations? Cf. the table at
>
> http://www.kroraina.com/sarm/jh/jh3_4.html
It seems to me that in Old Iranian --> Iranian of South Russia and
Central Asia this transformation only occurs before a nasal (cf.
also below).
> there are a few classical "Os-" mentions of presumably Alanic
> tribes (in Pliny and Ptolemy).
For example?
> Besides the Georgian deflection you cite (obviously the ultimate
> source of our "Ossetes") I noticed that the hydronimic
> nomenclature of East Ukraine has many river names where "o"
> substitutes for the putative Iranic "a", incl. the river Oskol in
> Poltava region. I'm starting to develop doubts about the obligatory
> "a" in the light of Harmatta's reflections.
I now see there are authors who state that Georgian Os (âOsseteâ)
couldnât possibly have been derived from As/A:s in that the older
Georgian form Ovs would (?) exclude it:
http://tinyurl.com/yt3khb
"In Old Georgian (400 AD) the Ossetians were called Ovs which
later changed to Os. The suffix -eti means 'land', so Osseti
[Georgian Osetâi -- Francesco] simply means 'the land of Ossetians'.
It is in other words a Georgian term for the people, they have never
been called As [this is a well-known fact -- Francesco], and there
has never been a phonetic development from as to os such as
advocated by [Thor Heyerdahl -- open the link for details]...
Ossetian is a Georgian name for those who call themselves Ir, Iron
which again has the same origin as Alan."
According to an authoritative book on things Alanic, AgustÃ
Alemanyâs _Sources on the Alans_ (Leiden, Brill, 2000), quoted at
http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/24Alans/IranianEtymologyEn.htm
with some interspersed editorial comments by a proponent of a
Turkish origin of the Ossetes,
"Georg. Osetâi, Ðsi [are] the evolution of some older forms
Ovsetâi and Ovsi, documented in the chronicle Kâartâlis Câxovreba (§
9. 1); however, this does not seem to be more than a variant of an
ethnic name *as-. [...] The origin of the term *as- is obscure. The
Georg. form os- could have the same origin as *as-, although it goes
back to ovs-, as the long length of the vowel in some forms (Arab.
NPers. As/As, Lat. Aas) and the gemination of the sibilant in others
(Lat. Assi, Azzi) suggest a development *aws-/*ows- > as-/os-, thus
the Arm. Awsowrk/Osur, name of an Alan tribe which inhabited the
present-day Mazran-Dvaletâi, near Georgia (Asxarhacâoycâ § 7.3); cf.
however the Abkhaz wafs âOsseteâ."
Thus, there seems to be also a possibility that the ethnonym
As/A:s âAlanâ comes from *aws-/*ows-.
In Ossetic, as far as I know, the rounding of /*a/ to /*o/ only
occurs before nasals, which doesnât appear to be the case here.
Thatâs why I continue to think that the forms with initial o-
(whence Russian Osetiya), which come from Georgian, don't represent
the âoriginalâ self-designation of the Alans.
I, however, agree that the linguistic evidence to draw any firmer
conclusion on this issue is very shaky.
Regards,
Francesco