From: Tavi
Message: 66203
Date: 2010-06-17
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>Not so. If <Vulcan> is indeed related to <Mulci-ber>, then the latter must be a loanword from some Italic language, where <-ber> is the equivalent of native Latin <-fer> < IE *bher-. It has nothing to do with <mulceo:>.
> This connection is denied by Osthoff (IF 6:9-14, 1896), who refers the Skt. word
> to IE *mr.k^-, citing also the noun <mars'anam>. Vulcan is not known for
> touching things lightly, but for melting metals, and his epithet <Mulciber>
>(with the suffix *-dHro-) is most likely 'Melter', indicating that Lat.
> <mulceo:> literally meant 'I cause to melt' or 'I soften', later used in a figurative sense.
>
This of course raises the question of the actual etymology of the root *Vulc- ~ *Mulc-, (as you suggest) possibly 'to melt, to soften'.
But Etruscan has *marx-, with a different vocalism, so a borrowing is still possible.> Scholars supporting an Etruscan origin for Latin <merx> and its relatives include Hofmann (not Walde!) and Watkins, who are not specialists in the field of Etruscan loanwords in Latin. Among scholars who have published monographs in this field, such as Ernout, Breyer, and Watmough, I am not aware of any support for deriving <merx> this way. While it is possible for Latin to borrow Etruscan nouns as consonant-stems (such as <satelles> 'bodyguard, attendant' from Etr. <zatlath>, probably 'axe-striker' vel sim., referring to the lictors of Tarquinius Superbus), there is no parallel for borrowing the totality of *merk-, *merku-, *merka:-, and *merke:d- from Etruscan. Since no evidence for a root *merk- can be extracted from Etruscan texts anyway, such a borrowing hypothesis explains nothing and should be discarded.
>