--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "gknysh" <gknysh@...> wrote:
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>
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> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "The Egyptian Chronicles" <the_egyptian_chronicles@> wrote:
> >
> > DGK wrote: I see no basis for Wikipedia's claim that <Venta> meant 'market', and Kitson's theory of extraction from suffixed names is implausible. But if the Belgae conquered the three towns named Venta from the Veneti, perhaps the original name was *Wenetja:, and this became in Belgic *Wentt(j)a with regular syncope and /j/-gemination (a feature later occurring in NWB-influenced West Germanic).
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> ****GK: Only one of the three Ventas is connected to the Belgae. The others are Venta Icenorum and Venta Silurum. Looks like the poor Veneti got it from everybody (:=)). But seriously, I think the link to the discussion mentioned by Brian Scott is useful, and the notion that "venta" was a borrowing into Celtic worthy of further study. On the Venet/Vened problem cf. also ch. 3 here: http://books.google.com/books?id=5aoId7nA4bsC&pg=PA87&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Bojtár, as a Continental, has got it wrong on one point: Coast people like the Veneti don't wander, they sail. Forget about all the arrows showing putative wanderings, whatever migrating they did was by their beloved ships, and it wasn't a one-way trip either. Those coastal and riverine communities must have had trade going on between them, in the style of the later
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
or as Pritsak called the 'east Finns' and Frisians: 'fluvial nomads'
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/67704
which would match with association of the Veneti with the 'European Finns', Aestii/Osismi. Note Caesar's description of the Veneti in DBG as moving between harbors, making a decisive battle impossible.
Oh, and by the way: p. 94
'(the name of an island refers to that: Vendsyssel=Seeland)'
Yeah, right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendsyssel-Thy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sj%C3%A6lland
'(Not to be confused with Zeeland, the Dutch province after which New Zealand is named)'
Seeland is the German name of the latter, which mr. Bojtár presumably added as a courtesy to the Danes in their own native German language (grrr..), replacing the unfamiliar and probably mythological Vendsyssel (quote: 'This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed'; I can assure Wikipedia that Vendsyssel exists, one of my grandfathers is from there) with the vaguely familiar Zeeland (from an unrelated region in the Netherlands). I wonder what some poor linguist will make of that in another two millenia from now?
There is a division in Denmark between a land culture, increasing influenced by immigrating civil servants in the service of the mainly German-speaking court, always involved in dynastic squabbling in Germany, and a sea culture, in which they had no expertise and which they mistrusted.
Cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk
There was constant bickering between the army, the command language of which was German, and the navy, in which it was Danish-Norwegian.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is: sea culture. That's why it vanishes faced with a land-based military threat.
Torsten