W dniu 2011-06-23 01:23, Trond Engen pisze:
> No, well, I meant the other way around, with (some of) the Vends being
> the Many or the Great Ones or something like that in a language akin to
> Slavic. Probably still not much of an idea, though.
>
The various "Venetic" ethnonyms of ancient Europe are usually thought to
derive from *wenh1- 'love, desire', but this is just a conjecture which
does not have to apply in every case anyway. The etymology of Slavic
*veNt-je/*veNt-jIs^- is not secure either. The suffix is certainly PIE
*-je/os-, but the root *veNt- occurs only in this suppletive comparative
of the adjective 'great'. It looks deverbal, perhaps from something like
*wn.h1-tó- 'nice, agreeable' -- the sort of meaning that is easily
extensible. The Slavic Vyatichi are analysable as *veNt-itji (with a
"patromnymic" suffix comon in tribal names), so an etymological
connection with the classical Veneti is possible, if hard to demonstrate.
Piotr