Re: Rome

What's the relation to Latin ru:mina "teat", Ramnes and Ro:mulus? Could Roma means "black" (cf. Skt Ra:ma) in opposition to Alba Longa "white"?

JS Lopes

Em Terça-feira, 1 de Julho de 2014 13:53, "octavianoaf24@... [cybalist]" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> escreveu:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> On second thought, if <Ro:ma> is derived from *reuH- 'to spread out,
> make room' (as in Lat. <ru:s> 'countryside' from *rewHos 'expanse,
> spread', Gmc. *ru:maz 'space, room' from *ruH-mo- 'extended, spread out,
> etc.), it is better to explain the morphology without going outside
> standard Latin.
>
> A plausible parallel is Lat. <po:mum> 'fruit', for which Umb.
> <Puemune> dat. sg. 'to Pomonus' requires an Italic stem *powemo-
> 'fruitful'. This can be taken as

containing the /o/-grade of the root
> *peu- 'to propagate one's kind, procreate' whose zero-grade implemental
> noun *putlo- 'implement of procreation, offspring, son' is reflected as
> Skt. <putra->, Osc. acc. sg. <puklum>.
>
> Formed like *powemo-, Itc. *row(H)emo- 'expansive, broad' would apply
> to the wide part of a river where fording is feasible, and <Ro:ma> would
> simply be the fem. sg. of this adjective.
>
> > One question: is the Tiber fordable in Rome? Otherwise, I'd prefer the
> > classsical etymology from Oscan *sru:ma 'river', through an Etruscan
> > intermediate.
>
> First, since Oscan had *-fr- from medial *-sr- (Neap. <Ottufre>

'October'), it probably had initial *fr- from *sr- as well, like Latin
<fri:gus> 'coldness',
>

> > That's right. This would mean *sru:ma is either from a different
> > language, possibly Italoid (i.e. your Illyro-Lusitanian), or from early
> > Sabellian before the change sr- > fr-.
>
From a statistical point of view, *sreu-m- can be found in Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Celtic and Germanic, while *reuH-m- is only found in Germanic. This would imply the former etymology is preferrable, although the loss of *s- should be still accounted for.