Re: Scientist's etymology vs. scientific etymology

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:

>
> --- dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> ...
> >
> > Oscan <trutum> 'quartum', for *ptrutum, shows that
> > the zero-grade
> > stem did indeed exist. The form <Ptroni(us)> from
> > the Ager Paelignus
> > shows that Paelignian also had *ptru-, without
> > dropping the p-;
> > likewise there is an Etruscan <Ptruni>, the
> > gentilicium borrowed from
> > one of these conservative P-Italic languages.
> >
> So, Petronius Arbiter, the inventor of the road trip,
> was really a Quatronius in Latin?
>

I don't know whether Petronius and Pomponius have exact Latin
equivalents. Their bases may have meant 'leader of a group of
four/five' or the like. In Umbrian we have <puntes> 'groups of
five', and there is good reason to suppose that <pontifex> was
borrowed from a Sabine compound, literally 'one who makes a group of
five', that is, 'one who completes a group of five with his
presence', 'member of a group of five' (as the College of Pontifices
originally was).

So perhaps the Echtlatein for Petronius would be Quaternionius, which
ought to warm the cockles of Sir William Hamilton's heart, anyway ...

DGK