Re: The ur-/ar- language

> Thus the Nahar had a sounded /h/, and
> can originate from an inherited root *nagh- or *na:gh-. The Greek
> for 'duck', Attic <nêssa>, Boeotian <nâssa>, can be regularly
> derived from *na:gh-ya, and the duck is a diving bird. The Nera,
> which plunges over waterfalls in its course through the Appennines,
> is a diving river. The nominative ending -ar (from *-ars) is found
> in Oscan/Paelignian <casnar> 'old man' (cf. Lat. <ca:nus> 'gray,
> hoary with age', etc.), Lucerian <loucar> 'grove', and probably Lat.
> <caesar> 'infant cut from the womb' if, as seems likely, the word is
> borrowed from Sabine.
>
> Attic <né:kho:>, Doric <ná:kho:> 'I swim' (originally 'I dive'?)
> probably comes from the same root, *(s)na:gh-, an extension of
> *sneH2-, *sna:- 'to swim', the root-postfix perhaps signifying
> 'downward'. The fact that Umbrian did not lose the /s/ in <veskla
> snata asnata> 'wet and dry vessels' (IIa:19) is not problematic to
> this etymology of <Nahar>. In England, Nottingham is from earlier
> Snotingham, but noses are still snotty, not *notty. Place-names can
> lose "s-mobile" while appellatives retain it.

The logic is impeccable: Ducks dive, water falls.

How about this etymology: Niag-ara "Duck river"?

That would have interesting implications.

How do you feel your etymologies compare to Vennemann's?


Torsten