From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 59109
Date: 2008-06-07
>> Thus the Nahar had a sounded /h/, and can originate fromUnless backed up by specific criticism of Douglas's
>> 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?