W dniu 2010-07-11 14:07, andythewiros pisze:
> Does this mean that *wanðilaz was the Germanic word for "planet" of
> similar formation and meaning as Greek planetes? And was a "planet"
> thought of as different from "stars", or were they considered to be
> merely wandering stars? Were there any other *wanðilo:z? This is perhaps
> more a question for astronomy, not linguistics, but I'm curious.
It's a derivative of *wondH-éje/o- (Eng. wend [one's way], Goth.
-wandjan), possibly identical with the tribal name of the Vandals. I
doubt if the speakers of Proto-Germanic thought of all the visible
planets as a special category of celestial bodies, but they must have
known that some "stars" were "wanderers", even if they didn't give most
of them individual names. I don't know of any evidence that the Germanic
gods were associated with planets (though some mythical heroes might
have been, rather loosely, cf. the Orvandel story). Note that there was
no attempt to introduce Germanic astronomical terms other than "moon"
and "sun" into the names of the days of the week, calqued from Latin.
Germanic gods replaced Roman ones according to the "interpretatio
Romana" of the Germanic pantheon. Saturn was left in the original form,
as there was no matching deity. In particular, dies Veneris was
translated as the day of *Frijjo: (the goddess roughly corresponding to
Venus), not *Aurawanðilaz (the planet).
Piotr