From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 63691
Date: 2009-03-30
>That's true. In OE it would have to be *long* *E:or-, which *aur- would have become in one local dialect of Northumbrian (the dialect of the Northumbrian portion of the Rushworth Gospels), but the *vast majority* of Old English would have developed _E:ar-_ (and did). In OHG *aur- would have become *O:r; in ON *aur- would have become *Aur- (and did, in the nominative form <aurr> with the second -r being the sign of the nominative singular, from *-az). OHG Ir-, OE Eor-, and ON Jor- (Jör-) can only come from conditioned variants of *Er- with short *e, not a diphthong which *au was. The similar-looking ON *Jo:r can come from a hypothetical *eur-, or the actual *ehwaz 'horse' (> *e:waz or similar > *e:wz > *e:uz > *e:oz > *eo:z > *io:z > *jo:z > *jo:r; or some similar process of development, I don't know the actual steps in the process of *ehwaz > jo:r); OE *E:or (in all other dialects) would come from *eur- or *euz- or *ehr- or *ehur- or *ehwr- (and in later periods also *i:hur or *ihur etc.), but no such words exist as far as I know. But note that in both these hypothetical cases the OE and ON diphthongs are long (because from *eu or *eh(w)), not short as in eormen- and jörmun- (and irmin- of OHG), which definitely come from *ermun-, *ermin-, or *erman-, variants of the same word.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Whatever the name of the rune, it stands for <e:a> < *au. This is borne
> > out by its only epigraphic occurrence -- on the Thames scramaseax. It's
> > the second letter of the name B{ea}gno{th} (there are at least three
> > other known Beagnoths from the eighth and ninth centuries).
> >
>
> > > I cannot think of a compelling reason, are you aware of an etymology for
> > > *ermana- /jormun ?
> >
> > Not a convincing one. There are only tentative guesses, and no clear
> > external cognates with the same structure.
> >
>
> Piotr,
>
> Thank you again for your response.
> And a big thanks to Brian, Andrew and Rick as well!
> I'd also like to ask just one last question, if I may...
>
> You (Piotr) stated there is now way e:ar and irmin can be related.
> Thus I'm assuming that despite the lack of a clear etymology for PGmc *ermana- , there is no way it can be linguistically related to *aura- . Is this because *aura- cannot develop into anything like OHG Ir-, OE Eor-, or ON Jor- ... is that correct?
>
>
>
> Thank you yet again!
> Aydan
>