From: Tavi
Message: 68603
Date: 2012-02-25
>IMHO the root *perkW- 'oak, pine' isn't a native IE word but rather a substrate borrowing (call it "Paleo-European" or whatever else), and its similarity to the name of a thunder god in some cultures is purely coincidential. There's no need to imagine implausible semantic shifts and the like.
> <Hercynia> is seen as a latinization of a Celtic word corresponding to
> Gmc. *fergun- "mountain". Today it struck me that if Lith. <Perkunas>
> "god of heaven and thunder", ON <Fjörgyn> "mother of Thor" is the same
> word, that would give us an independent example of the IE dualism
> "stone/hammer" ~ "sky" that we glean from the "hammer" word.
>
> And now I'm thinking: Since the Hercynian forest spanned across central
> Europe from the Rhine to the horizon of the known world, is it actually
> possible that *perkW-un- is reconstructable for Indo-European not only
> as a generic "mountain (range)" but as a toponym designing the
> Carpathian mountains, and could that be the very origin of the IE
> semantic duality? Would the Carpathians be the "sky mountains" seen from
> the Pontic plain? Would that be where the god of thunder killed the
> dragon and unleashed the waters?
>