Re: Interpreting some Scythian names

On 2008-12-28 08:03, stlatos wrote:

> You made a guess with no evidence at all (not even the
> unknown-to-you but possible ev. Herodotus could have had), saying
> -aspo- could be 'horse' (assuming it was the name of a real group
> named for a real characteristic instead of that of fictional one-eyed
> people named for an inhuman ch. (like s.ad.aksó:)). You have no ev.
> that H. made any guess at all (I think he heard rightly that it meant
> 'one-eyed').

Well, if one finds <-aspa-> or <-aspo-> in a name supposed to be Old
Iranian, the first thought is of horses, simply because we have
something like a few dozen _attested_ and _analysable_ horsey names
("Aspa-X-" or "X-aspa") in several Iranian languages. That's my
circumstantial evidence. On the other hand, the change of *-kWs- > *-ps-

> *sp- is based on no Iranian evidence whatsoever. As for the

prototheme, *aryama-aspa- (~= Philippos) has often been suggested, but
of course it's just one possibility among many. As for Herodotus's
etymological method, I wonder if you've seen his "etymologies" of
Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes.

Piotr