Re: Felice Vinci's "Homer in the Baltic" theory: linguistic deconstr

squilluncus:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
> wrote:
>
>> Since you are Scandinavian (Norwegian?), I ask you a question. In my
>> notes on Vinci's linguistic comparisons posted at the Files section
>> I write at some point:
>>
>>> The name of the rocky island of Lyökki off the southwest coast of
>>> Finland appears to mean just... _onion_! The Finnish term
>>> lyökki 'onion' is a loan from Swedish lök 'id.'; additionally, we
>>> may note that the Swedish name of the locality is Lökö.
>
> Swede, actually. My webreader doesn't give your representation of the
> letter ö properly. I guess you wrote o with a trema.
>
> Yes, "lök" is "onion", a special Germanic root exported into Slavic
> "luku" and represented in English by "leek" (porrum) and German
> "Lauch".
>
> Hellqvist p.444 (http://runeberg.org/svetym/0532.html) says that the
> possible IE connexion might be *lug "bend" as in Greek "lygos" =
> bendable branch.

Bjorvand and Lindeman (in my translation): "There's no point in
assigning this name for an ancient culture plant to an IE verbal root,
as is often done. Even though there are several formally adequate
options, the connections are semantically vague, of no explanatory value
and impossible to prove."

Or in short: "That word could have come from anywhere."

> He also mentions the loaned root "lauka-" in Finnish which represents
> well the common origin of ö (o with trema) from diphthong au in
> modern Swedish.
>
> If the etymology of the toponym is from "onion" or even "flexibilis"
> is unfortunately beyond my capacity to judge.

Mine too. I see that there are a couple of islands on the Swedish Baltic
coast named <Lökön>, and a huge number of Swedish toponyms starting with
<lök->, but I don't know enough of Swedish toponyms to be certain of the
etymology. It's also complicated by how the monophtongization may make
it difficult to discern <laukr> = OSw <löker> from the equivalents of ON
<lø:kr> "deep slow-running brook; bay in river" and (in some cases)
<leikr> = OSw. <le:ker> "sport, dance, physical activity".

But I'll say that in Norway toponyms with ON <laukr> "onion" as the
first element and a landscape word as the second are omnipresent, and
*laukey would fit in nicely. Also another word for wild onions, ON
<rams> (< *kre/omus- or some such -- another word that could have come
from anywhere), is found all over the place, and, as it happens, seven
of them are compounds with ON <ey>.

--
Trond Engen