Re: [SPAM] [SPAM] [tied] Re: Ramsons [was: Felice Vinci's "Homer in

On 2009-06-08 16:55, tgpedersen wrote:

> Interesting move. That would undercut any attempt to introduce Uralic
> elements in Polish onomastics such as you do here too:
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/18081

Uh... did I claim *weis- was Uralic? But never mind Uralic, my proposal
concerning the wisent word does not invalidate the reconstruction of
*weis- as in Lat. vi:rus etc. or its hydronymic connections.

> BTW, how come the rule -s-R- -> -ks-R- in Wisl/a vs. Weichsel occurs
> also in Lith. (tukstantis) and Finnish (one of the declinations has nom.
> -s, gen. -ksen, Sibeliuksen, Nurmeksen)?

Babik (2002) devotes five pages to the Wisl/a in his book on the oldest
layers of Polish toponymy. According to him, the cluster -stl- is in all
likelihood original (Lat. <-scl-> and later forms with <-sl-> being
secondary) and the -x- in Weichsel (first attested in the late Middle
Ages) may reflect an epenthesised -k- of Baltic (Old Prussian) origin or
some sort of hypercorrection/folk etymology in German. Babik regards the
name as too old to be safely attributable to any known linguistic group;
he even doubts if it's etymologisable at all. I wouldn't bee so
pessimistic. The traditional etymology *weis-tlah2 doesn't look bad to me.

> And also, since the *wis- root means "green" besides "stinking; toxic",
> as an epithet of rivers it perhaps just meant "full of duckweed etc"?

I've never seen any conspicuous quantity of that stuff in the Vistula.
It's a big and relatively fast-flowing river.

Piotr