From: dgkilday57
Message: 69865
Date: 2012-06-22
>It could have been formed within Greek using the prefix eri-, and meaning 'much-flowing' (i.e. year-round) or 'great river', hence applied to a poorly known great river of the Northwest, then applied directly when settlement occurred nearby, without bothering to consult the natives.
> 2012/6/20, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:
> >> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> >> > <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >> (...) What matters
> >> is that both the Po (as everybody knows: Bodincus, Padus, Eridanus)
> >> and the Adda (Lexua) did have more than one name (still in the Middle
> >> Age) and accordingly a different name for every stretch from an
> >> important confluence to another one, not to speak of the names of
> >> different branches.
> >> Anyway, I recall the point of departure of our discussion: If You
> >> dislike the garlic-etymology You can choose the rock one or anything
> >> Pre-Latin You prefer, the point is anyway on the origin of -o:na.
>
> > DGK:
> > First, regarding the Po, I know of no evidence that natives ever called it
> > Eridanus. That was the poetic name of a mythical river.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
> It was the name of river in Athens as well. You are assuming the
> Greeks simply gave a mythical name to the river near Adria; but they
> ordinarily kept quite well local river-names wherever they settled,
> or, at least, preferred transparent names (maybe direct translations,
> maybe not), but quite rarely purely myhical names like e.g. Styx.
> Of course, there are instances like Akh'ero:n, but these - like Styx
> - end up as normal PIE river-names (maybe at least partially with
> adstrate phonology, e.g. *h1g'heront-). If this were the case with
> Adriatic Eridanos, we would come back to the same question: where did
> it come from?
> I, as expected, find the Celtic etymology of EridanosHoly hydronyms, Batman! The East River is in Gotham City. And holy Harold, Batman! You now have a Celtic etymology for a river of Athens.
> (*h'eperi-dh2no-s 'East River') convincing; nevertheless, as per
> above, this is irrelevant to our question, because this latter raises
> anyway with just two ancient local names for the Po, Bodincus and
> Padus.
> > DGK:I never bought into the 'fundo carens' explanation, a mere guess by the ancients, and digging is not obviously involved. I consider it more plausible that Bodincus meant 'Muddy', agreeing with "acque melmose del Po", that the same stem occurs in the Bodensee, and that Celt. *bodjo- 'yellow' originally meant 'mud-colored'; likewise Japygian or Messapic *badja- borrowed into Latin as <badius> 'chestnut-colored, bay'. Of course, if you dig mud, you could derive *bHodHo- 'something dug' from *bHedH-.
> > What we do know is
> > that Ligurians called the upper part of it Bodegkos/Bodincus, and the lower
> > part was called Padus. What this means is that Ligurians reached the river
> > from the west and named it, and some non-Ligurian group reached the river
> > from the east and named it something else, and subsequent groups used the
> > existing non-Ligurian name.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
> Any Ligurian etymology of Bodincus (be it from PIE *bheudh- 'bottom'
> or *bhedh- 'dig') is indistinguishable from a Celtic one (please don't
> reply that the first of these roots is scarcely represented in Insular
> Celtic lexicon, because the same holds true for a great part of
> river-names all over Celtic lands, whereas another great part of
> river-names in the same areas does exhibit Celtic lexical material, so
> every conclusion can be drawn: stratification of Celtic and non-Celtic
> but also, conversely, loss of lexical items in the subsequent history
> of Insular Celtic).
> A good Celtic etymology for Padus is Hubschmied's one (: Old Norse"Good"? Semantically inappropriate and anachronistic. The lower Po is broad and slow. Moreover, Lat. Patavium 'Padua' with its -t- must have come through archaic Etruscan, and the Etruscans had colonized this area BEFORE the Gauls swept through the passes and drove them out. No etymology for Padus is better than a forced one.
> hvatr 'swift', Pokorny 636), in my opinion the best one among many
> proposals that have been made. Quite surely we don't agree on any of
> these etymologies, but this can be another thread, the point is again
> on the very existence of more than one name for the same river.
> > DGK:That is not how streets (or rivers) acquire multiple names.
> > There is ABSOLUTELY NO GROUND for asserting that every stretch of a river
> > had a different name. In fact, such an assumption flies in the face of your
> > homogenist model. You envision uniform PIE-speakers settling (or being
> > divinely created) over a very large area, and since rivers serve as routes
> > for travel, there is no basis whatever for a uniform stratum of speakers to
> > assign multiple names. The only reason for multiple naming is
> > ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, which your model denies for pre-Roman times,
> > although you are willing to admit enclaves of conservatism to explain
> > Porcobera and the Plinii. Thus your model should yield only such variants
> > as the Duero/Douro. It cannot account for Bodincus/Padus and the like.
> >
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
> You are mixing two arguments. If we discuss of multiple naming of
> different stretches, a very good reason for it is the need of
> distinguishing such stretches, just like different stretches of one
> and the same street bear different names (even at one or two km
> distance) according to the people who dwell or work along it or to
> other features.
> When You refer to ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, You are indeedWrong. Adjectives fulfill this need.
> recalling instances like Duero/Douro (different phonological outputs
> from the same name), although in any case inside a common genealogical
> origin (like the Porcoberans and the Plinys on one side and the [rest
> of] Cisalpine Celts on the other side), while - as You have written -
> a name for the upper course and another one for the lower course of
> the same river are exactly what is needed in order to refer, in one
> and the same community, to such different parts.
> Usually people colonize rivers' valleys upwards and they need a nameI think you sound like Heraclitus would, if practical jokers had forced him into the cannabis tent with the Scythians. Abstruse philosophical considerations of potential naming have no relevance to actual practice. And again, adjectives (or prepositional phrases) easily satisfy the need for subdividing 'home'.
> for the lower part of the valley and another one for the upper part.
> Should You seriously argue that everything that has a hyperonymic name
> cannot have different hyponymic names for each part of it (unless by
> different ethnolinguistic communities), Your argument would be
> patently absurd, since the lowest limit for naming differentiation is
> at microscopical scale, not at a miles' size (otherwise one and the
> same family couldn't a have a name for the first floor of its home and
> a different one for the second floor - they should call everything
> simply "home"). I cannot believe You really mean that, I think You are
> joking.