Re: Etymology of Osettic "Nart"? (the suffix?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Edlund Anderson" <cea@>
> wrote:
> > I've been looking into the etymology of the Ossetic name "Nart".
> > The connection with PIE *(a)ner- "vital energy; man" seems
> > straightforward enough, though I don't yet understand
> > the -t. I thought perhaps some kind of proto-Iranian
> > plural/collective -ta suffix might be involved, though checking
> > Pokorny, I see he suggested an earlier Iranian form like *nar-�`ra-
> > (I think the symbol before the -ra- is a theta/θ). I'm not sure
> > what a "-thra-" suffix might imply. Any thoughts?
>
> If the suffix is *-θra as claimed by Pokorny -- who glosees "osset.
> -kaukas VN Nart (iran. *nar-θra)" --, then it could be an unattested
> Old Iranian cognate of the Avestan agentive suffix -θra. The latter is
> used to form substantives which are the inanimate accomplishers of an
> action (as -tra does in Sanskrit). The same suffix is also used in
> Avestan to form abstract nouns.

Interesting -- I didn't know about Sanskrit -tra. (I'm not very knowledgeable about Indo-
Iranian, which is probably slowing me down with this issue!)

> Yet, Old Iranian *nar 'man' is a noun, not a verb. How can it be
> joined to an agentive suffix?

Well, I really don't know why Pokorny suggested -thra particularly -- the /r/ in the suffix
doesn't seem necessarily reflected "Nart" and he lists no other cognate that suggests
something like a -tra/-thra suffix to me. I thought might rather naive *nar-ta- "the men"
was more sensible, if perhaps doomed by some factors I can't see.

Celtic shows reflexes of a *ner-to-, though I don't know the function of that -to- suffix;
and perhaps something similar stands behind proto-Germanic *Nerthuz (for Tacitus's
Nerthus) .... Pokorny mentions such cognates, of course, but the Osettian Nart < Iranian
*nar-θra remains unclear to me.

Cheers,
Carl