Re: Temarunda (follow up)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
>
> --- stlatos <stlatos@...> wrote:
>
> > The best explanation is that Temarunda had *mater
> > > temar- and *udna- > -unda :
> > 'mother' and 'water' sim. to the gloss but actually
> > meaning 'Mother Sea'. Why would a
> > people living by a small sea call it the mother of a
> > larger sea they have no contact with?
>
> ****GK: Perhaps because they did have such contact,
> since some of them, esp.the Sinds, were subjects of
> the Bosporan monarchs (even though they had autonomy
> under their own reguli).

That still doesn't seem likely; how old is the name supposed to be? I find it hard to
believe the natives would change it due to meeting others familiar with the Black Sea,
which still isn't a reason to call the smaller 'mother' of the larger.

As to your explanation:

> "unda" means "sea"in classical Latin, and temar- is a
> garbled Latin Mater? Perhaps I've misunderstood. ****

It doesn't have to be from Latin or a related language, any PIE (without e>a, as here)
could be the source. Since there was no specific word for 'sea' a derivative of *wedr-
/udn- would work as well, 'Mother Water', 'Big Water = Sea', etc.

The reason for metathesis, if one is needed, in temar- could possibly be the creation of
vowels in a short-long-short-long pattern (te-ma:-run-da:).