--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
>
> It seems we are back to last summer's issue about
> pseudo-celtic *nant- "valley, river",
> and my controversial conclusion that this word is connected with
> Basque lats and harran and with Etruscan ner-
> So you bumped on another variant of this paleo-european word *nant?-
> Do you have aanother map to be added to the files ?
I've uploaded under 'Placenames untouched by Grimm' a couple of
placename maps from Udolph, among them those in *nVt-; note that those
that are 'ältere Bildungen' (eg. with suffix *-isV) are noted as
coming from *nVd- (> *nVt-) inside Germania, as according to Udolph's
complicated theory, those in *nVt- outside. Udolph's material seems to
point to forms in *-tt- and *-ss- in Germania.
I want to propose something radical:
1) the original root is *n,Wet- meaning "went tangled mass", a
derivation of *akw-, *an,W- "water"
2) the substrate roots *matt- "mat" and *mass- "mass" are related
3) the donor language was spoken by the LBK-Rössen culture.
Facts that feel comfortable with this theory (I won't even call them
evidence)
a) Udolph: Notter (tributary of the Unstrut) ... to which
Nater-(Notter)gau, 997 Uater-, Natergowe etc
b) The roots *nat- and *we(:)t- "wet" are distributed complementarily
in Germanic (*nat- in Dutch and German, *we(:)t- in English and North
Germanic
c) Falk & Torp: "Matte, also maatte, Sw. matta, fra MLG matte (Du.
mat) = OE meatte (eng. mat), OHG matta (NHG Matte). The word is from
Lat. matta «straw cover» (It. matta, Fr. natte)."
Note the m-/n- alternation; because of /a/ more likely a loan.
d) Falk & Torp: "Masse, Sw. massa, through NHG Masse (OHG massa) from
Lat. massa (Fr. masse, Eng. mass). Lat. massa «mass, lump» is loaned
from gr. máza [= madza or mazdza] «kneaded dough» (másso: «kneads»).
e) Falk & Torp: "Messing [brass] (alloy of copper and zink), Sw.
mässing, No. dial. messing and mas(s)ing, late ON messing, mersing,
massing = MLG missink (Du. messing), MHG messinc (NHG Messing), OE
mæs(t)ling. A shorter form is MHG messe, which also means «metal lump»
= mass, for which reason it has been assumed the word to be derived
from Lat. massa «mass, lump (eg. of metal)»: see masse. This, however,
is not very reasonable. Most likely the word is borrowed from Slav.
*mosengjU (Polsish mosia,dz) «brass», which again is reminiscent of
oriental names for «copper» (Osset. mosaz, New Pers. mis). [Me:
'massa' is NWGermanic and entered Latin through soldiers' language].
The Gr. name for «brass» is oreíkhalkos (literally «mountain ore»),
whence Lat. aurichalcum. The first mention of the metal is found in
(Pseudo-)Aristotle, where it is told that the mossinoiki (an Asian
people at the Black Sea) produced yellow copper by smelting copper
with a zink ore. ... Other Germanic names is late ON latu:n af OFr.
laton (Eng. latten), mnt. matta:n..."
Note the alternation l-/m-
Under this explanation the various *nVt- rivers meant "overgrown
(hardly navigable) river"
Torsten