--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
> Do we not have <Adrana> as an old name of the Oder, indicating that
> the /o/ in <Odra> results from Common Slavic */a/ > /o/, and the
> name has nothing to do with Skt. <udra>?
Yes, the river name Odra is part of a set of Old European hydronyms derived from a noun root *ad(u)-/*ad-ro-, meaning 'water current' and unconnected with the PIE root *uod-r-/*uod-n- 'water'. The main reason why this hydronym is analyzable both as *ad-ro- and
as *ad-u- is morphological. The change of the derivational suffixes
*-ro- and *-u- is regular -- it is called "Caland system" after the
great Vedicist. And there is not only the r-derivative in the name
of this river, but also u-derivative: Ptolemy in his Geography (II,
11.4) used the name Oiadou = /Wi-adu/ for Oder, where wi- is the "doubling" prefix, expressing undoubtedly the bifurcation of the river Oder in its mouth. Likewise, the Latin name of the Oder was both Viadua and Viadra, thus, showing both the u-derivative and the r-derivative.
A more recent etymology derives Odra from a word that would mean, among other things, '(water) artery': PIE e:ter- 'intestines, vein, a channel for liquids etc.' A distant cognate in Greek would be represented by the word e:tor- 'heart', e:tron- 'stomach'; cp. Old English aedre- 'vein, water stream, a channel for liquids, fountain'.
> Why would the same word develop in Polish into both <Odra> and
> <wydra>?
That's a good question! Yet, don't expect people being only driven by religious fanaticism and by a nationalistic-cum-chauvinistic agenda to be able to reply to it.
Best,
Francesco