--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans@...> wrote:
> Could someone please tell me what is the most likely reconstruction
> of the Alanic word for "horseman". Modern Ossetic has baræg and
> bæx-dzhyn (lit. "one having a bæx" - a horse, that is). I'm not sure
> these are inherited Iranian and not borrowed from some Caucasian
> language.
It seems to be the other way round, viz. it was most likely North
Caucasian that borrowed words for horse, horseman and horse-riding
from a set of Alanic (Scythian) horsemanship terms derived from the
Iranian verbal stem *ba:r- 'to ride (horseback)' -- see V.V. Ivanov's
discussion at
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/pies/pdfs/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf
(on pp. 84-85 of the pdf document)
and S. Starostin's comments at
http://tinyurl.com/2d272h
> And if you can tell me what the Hunnish word was, I'll be enormously
> grateful :)
I just know of two possible Hunnic words for the horse, but not of
words for its rider. Both are based on the linguistic analysis of
Hunnic onomastic material proposed by O. Pritsak in _Harvard Ukrainian
Studies_ 6 (1982) at
http://www.huri.harvard.edu/pdf/hus_volumes/vVI_n4_dec1982.pdf
The two proposed Hunnic words for the horse are:
1) *donát, corresponding to the Turkic generic word for the horse
yonat ~ yont/yond ~ yunt/yund etc. (see discussion on p. 437 of the
paper);
2) *xará-to:n 'black-clad', an elliptical designation for the horse
formed, in all probability, as a compound of the Turkic word qara-
'black' and the Saka loanword in Turkic, thauna (> *taun >
to:n) 'garment, clothing' (see discussion on p. 437-38 of the paper).
Best,
Francesco