From: alexandru_mg3
Message: 62124
Date: 2008-12-17
> Zupanija (Z = "zh" or "z^") is derived from Zupan 'thePiotr, *g(a)u-pa:na- 'cattle-guardian, cowherd' cannot be the original
> supervisor of a Zupa (a salt mine, sometimes also a salt or
> silver depot)' -- a very important function in early Slavic
> states, as salt production was an extremely lucrative
> business, usually monopolised by the ruler. Zupan eventually
> came to mean something like 'alderman' or 'sheriff' in
> Anglo-Saxon England -- a royal official responsible for an
> administrative unit. As characteristically Iranian agent
> nouns in -pa:na- (cf. Indic -pa:- < IE *pax-) mean
> 'guardian, supervisor, protector', an Iranian connection
> used to be proposed for Zupan as well, but the idea has been
> abandoned by most scholars: the morphological division is
> after all Zup-an rather than Zu-pan. However, Zupa itself is
> a mysterious word and I'd like to see a convincing etymology
> of it myself. Slavic *Z comes from earlier *g(W) palatalised
> before a front vowel (that is, Zupa < something like
> *geup-a:), which seems to rule out any connection with the
> Tamil word.
> The West Slavic word *(gU)panU (Polish pan, Czech & Slovak
> pán, Old Czech hpán) meaning 'lord, master, sir, Mr.' is in
> all likelihood independent of Zupan, though it was once
> regarded as its abbreviation. It may be a genuine Iranian
> loan, as *g(a)u-pa:na- 'cattle-guardian, cowherd' is a very
> plausible Iranian compound (attested e.g. in Pashto as
> Go:b@, G = "gh", cf. also Sanskrit go-pa:-). Perhaps the
> Slavs retained a memory of their powerful Scythian or
> Sarmatian neighbours as cattle breeders and cowboys.
> An alternative etymology (less convincing, as far as I'm
> concerned) connects pan with IE *pot- 'host, master'
> (surviving in Lithuanian patis = Sanskrit pati- < *pot-i-)
> via the feminine form *pot-ni: > *po:ni: > (West) Slavic
> pani, yielding pan through back-derivation. This etymology,
> though beguiling, doesn't work without some ad hoc tricks
> and fails to explain the Old Czech form.