Re[2]: [tied] Re: Felice Vinci's "Homer in the Baltic" theory: lingu

At 8:50:07 PM on Saturday, June 6, 2009, Rick McCallister
wrote:

> --- On Sat, 6/6/09, Trond Engen <trond@...>
> wrote:

[...]

>> 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>.

The OED (12/2008) offers as cognates OIr <crem> (Ir.
<creamh>), Welsh <cra(f)>, Lith. <kermus^e.>, Rus.
<c^erems^a>, all 'wild garlic', and ancient Gk. <króm(m)uon>
'onion'.

> In Appalachian English, "ramps" refers to a type of strong
> wild onion. I've never seen any possibly related word to
> it until now

<Ramps>, <ramp>, and <ram> are variant developments of OE
<hramsa> 'onion, garlic'; in Great Britain they refer to
Allium ursinum (wild garlic, bear's garlic), in the U.S. to
Allium tricoccum (wild leek). The OED says that <ramps> is
regional on both sides of the Pond: northern, Scottish, and
Irish on the Right, east Midland and southeastern on the
Left. <Ramsons>, from the same source, seems to be a
current, non-dialect term for the Allium ursinum.

Brian