Re: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> W dniu 2012-09-05 11:45, Francesco Brighenti pisze:
>
> > > 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.
>
> LOL, Francesco, whatever fanaticism motivated such official publications
> in post-war Poland, it certainly wasn't religious. There was an
> anti-German agenda, no doubt about that, and it made many placename
> specialists concoct questionable etymologies to "demonstrate" the
> ancient presence of Slavs in areas that had been transferred from
> Germany to Poland in the aftermath of the war. There is of course no
> connection between Slavic *vydra (from *udrah2) and the attested names
> of the Odra (the oldest documents, from the 9th c. onwards, have
> Od(d)dera, Odora vel sim., but there is some indirect evidence that the
> medial vowel is epenthetic). A connection between <Odra> and "Old
> European" hydronyms like <Adra> is possible but hard to prove. There are
> speculative proposals linking <Odra> to Avestan aðu- 'canal,
> watercourse', since quite a few *-u- stems have *-ro- variants, but it's
> again a mere possibility. Ptolemy's <Ouiadoua> (*wiadwa?) could then
> represent something like *wi-adu- (or even a dissimilated *dwi-adu-)
> 'branching watercourse' -- if we could only be sure that it referred to
> the lower course of the Odra.

Is there a rho in some mss.? Hazlitt gives the name as <Viadrus>. Krahe's theory has no place for prefixation in OEH river-names. If the correct form has -r-, perhaps it was a Gmc. adj. applied to the river by local tribes. In Skt. *widH- seems to have developed a secondary full grade: <vi'dhyati> 'pierces', with <prati> 'shoots (at)', caus. <vyadhayati>. Given the noun <vya:dha'-> 'hunter', the Skt. semantic transition was probably 'separate' > 'separate from life, kill' > 'kill prey (with an arrow)' > 'pierce (with an arrow)'.

If correct, <Viadrus> could then represent Gmc. *wjadra- 'separating', 'forming a boundary'(?), formally PIE *wjodH-ro'- from the sec. full gr. *wjedH-. A Greek morphological parallel is <sphodro's> 'vehement, violent, zealous' against <sphedano's> 'eager, vehement, earnest'. In Gmc. we have *dapra- 'heavy' (ON <dapr> 'heavy', OHG <tapfar> 'heavy, strong', MLG/MD <dapper> 'heavy, powerful, agile') from PIE *dHob-ro'- against *dHeb- in OCS <debelU> 'thick', Russ. <djebje'lij> 'plump, corpulent'. Admittedly, the precise morphology is not common.

The Elbe-Oder interfluve is noted for its absence of OEH river-names, so the Oder was indeed an important boundary at some earlier time. The pre-Ptolemaic Germans, arriving from the west, would not have encountered the name *Adara within the interfluve.

DGK