”The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”



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”The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”

  • ”The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”

  • Leslie P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)



”Loanword research, alongside historical semantics, connects the history of a language to the ethnocultural reality in which the language users lived. Thus, it can provide valuable connections to other historical disciplines and contribute to the chronologies and localisations of linguistic reconstructions … Sometimes, in fact, loanword research is our only source to information about the undocumented prehistory of ethnic groups …”

  • ”Loanword research, alongside historical semantics, connects the history of a language to the ethnocultural reality in which the language users lived. Thus, it can provide valuable connections to other historical disciplines and contribute to the chronologies and localisations of linguistic reconstructions … Sometimes, in fact, loanword research is our only source to information about the undocumented prehistory of ethnic groups …”

  • (Johanna Laakso, 2013)



Mm

  • Mm



When

  • When



Mmm

  • Mmm



Vilhelm Thomsen was a pioneer

  • Vilhelm Thomsen was a pioneer

  • who conveyed to Indo-European

  • Studies a range of new subfields

  • loanword studies

  • Pioneering works within loanword

  • studies:

  • Den gotiske Sprogklasses indflydelse på den finske (1869)

  • Beröringer mellem de finske og de baltiske (litavisk-lettiske) sprog: En sproghistorisk Undersögelse (1890).

  • Linguistic contacts between Uralic and Indo-European and their respective branches is still today an extensively studied and vibrant field. In some respects, though, important evidence is consistently overlooked because of the power of tradition which affects not only how you carry out your research, but also what you search for, where you look for evidence, and from which angle.



Fenno-Ugric  (NW) Indo-European

  • Fenno-Ugric  (NW) Indo-European

  • Balto-Fennic, Saami  (Pre-)Proto-Indo-Iranian

  • Balto-Fennic, Saami  Proto-Baltic

  • Balto-Fennic, Saami  Proto-Germanic

  • Balto-Fennic, Saami  Proto-Slavic

  • Balto-Fennic, Saami  Proto-Scandinavian.

  • Mordvin  Iranian, Baltic Mari  Iranian, Baltic

  • Permian  Iranian Ob-Ugrian  Iranian

  • Hungarian  Medieval Latin, Pannonian Slavic and Alanic (Iassic), Old and Middle High German

  • Samoyedic  Tocharian



Everywhere Indo-European is automatically assumed to be the provider and Uralic the target language while the assumed share of Uralic loanwords in older Indo-European languages is close to absent.

  • Everywhere Indo-European is automatically assumed to be the provider and Uralic the target language while the assumed share of Uralic loanwords in older Indo-European languages is close to absent.

  • Such an asymmetry is commonly supposed to be typical for a relationship between two peoples where one had the upper hand, technically and politically, at the time of borrowing



Jorma Koivulehto (†23 Aug 2014) said: Proto-Indo-European *H- is preserved in loanwords in Fenno-Ugric as *k-

  • Jorma Koivulehto (†23 Aug 2014) said: Proto-Indo-European *H- is preserved in loanwords in Fenno-Ugric as *k-

  • North Saami guovssu < Proto-Saami *kawsoj- ‘dawn’

  • borrowed from Indo-European *h2aus-, but the laryngeal is gone everywhere in the daughter-languages:

  • Latin aurōra

  • Greek ēós

  • Lithuanian aušra

  • Germanic *austra- (Eng. east, Da. øst) …

  • k- in the Saami term shows that

  • the reconstruction of a laryngeal

  • is correct



Another example is the Indo-European word for ‘white’,

  • Another example is the Indo-European word for ‘white’,

  • *h2al-bho-s (Latin albus; Germanic *albaz ‘limestone plain’)

  • Danish al, older aluær, Swedish alv, alvar,

  • German dialect Alben

  • It occurs in Finnish kalvas and kalpea

  • ‘pale’ < Proto-Fennic *kalβas, *kalpeδa

  • North Saami guolbben ‘chalky layer

  • underneath the top soil’ < Proto-Saami

  • *kalpen

  • There must have been a

  • laryngeal in Indo-European,

  • because Finnish k-

  • cannot come from nothing



The laryngeal in PIE *h2ezgh- ‘ashes’ (Danish aske) is visible in

  • The laryngeal in PIE *h2ezgh- ‘ashes’ (Danish aske) is visible in

  • Finnish kaski ‘slash-and-burn, swidden’

  • Finnish kutoa ‘to weave’, North

  • Saami goddi- (< *kuδa-) is directly

  • comparable to Lithuanian áudžiu

  • ‘I weave’ < PIE *h2eu-dh-;

  • the root is the same as in weave,

  • (< *h2ue-bh-), only with a different

  • suffix

  • An example with *h1- is kesä

  • ‘summer’ from PIE *h1es-en-,

  • one of the Indo-European words

  • related to ‘harvest’ (Old Church

  • Slavonic jesenь ‘fall, autumn’;

  • Gothic asans ‘harvest; summer’)



Problem: One ancient Indo-European language

  • Problem: One ancient Indo-European language

  • group has preserved *h2 directly as a

  • consonant: Anatolian in Asia Minor with its

  • mots prominent member, Hittite. In this language, a good

  • candidate for a reflex of *h2elbhos exists: alpaš ‘cloud’

  • This has lead scholars to suggest:

  • ► that ‘white’ is to be reconstructed without an

  • initial consonant (*álbhos) which is impossible

  • in the light of Finnish kalpea, kalvas

  • ► that the word has *h1- a consonant preserved in

  • Fenno-Ugric but not in Hittite. However, it is not

  • likely that a sequence *h1a- existed

  • ► that the word has o-grade in Hittite only (*Holbhos); according to some scholars, h- disappears before o-grade

  • But all other languages point to *-a- (*h2e)

  • ► that alpaš, not meaning ‘white’ anyway, is simply unrelated and possibly a loanword in Hittite - ?



Frederik Kortlandt’s arguments (2003)

  • Frederik Kortlandt’s arguments (2003)

  • for regarding alpaš a loanword:

  • 1) it is not found in Indo-Iranian or Tocharian

  • 2) it has a variant *elbʰ- in Slavic

  • 3) it has an alternating suffix -it-, -ut- in Slavic and the same suffix with an infixed nasal in Slavic in the word for ‘swan’

  • 4) it plays a role in Germanic mythology (cf. Eng. elf)

  • 5) it is frequent in European geographical names (Alba, Albion, Elbe, the Alps)

  • Kortlandt concludes that alpaš is a non-Indo-European loanword (from some unknown source) into Anatolian – it simply looks foreign according to him but 2) is generelly acknowledged as “Rozwadowski’s change” and the suffix in 3) is probably Indo-European. The rest of the arguments still speak in favour of a loanword, but not necessarily an

  • non-IE one



Jaan Puhvel in his Hittite Etymological

  • Jaan Puhvel in his Hittite Etymological

  • Dictionary (followed by Kloekhorst

  • 2008) also denies a connection between alpaš ‘cloud’ and PIE *h2elbhos ‘white’ because the Hittite word mostly refers to dark thunder clouds, not innocent white clouds

  • The argument is quite weak

  • a) ”mostly” – it is not always the case

  • b) Thunder clouds are more relevant

  • in Hitt. texts than summer clouds,

  • cf. Teshub/Tarhunna c) Thunder clouds can be white and dark

  • at the same time d) Thunder clouds can be covered by a generic cloud

  • term anyway, cf. Eng. thunder cloud



I agree with Kortlandt that alpaš must be a loanword, but it does not have to be non-IE. Two of Kortlandt’s remaining arguments speak for a borrowing from NW Indo-European:

  • I agree with Kortlandt that alpaš must be a loanword, but it does not have to be non-IE. Two of Kortlandt’s remaining arguments speak for a borrowing from NW Indo-European:

  • It is confined to the West (Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Italic, Greek)

  • It plays a role West European mythology

  • It occurs in European place-names (i.e. it is a word that has typically been transmitted

  • I add two more arguments:

  • 4) It has entered into Fenno-Saami with a laryngeal (> *k-)

  • 5) The suffix *-bho- (Hittite -pa-) is common in Indo-European, but virtually absent in Anatolian



I sift the Anatolian evidence both for nominal *-bho- and the verbal extension *-bh-. There are no certain examples left

  • I sift the Anatolian evidence both for nominal *-bho- and the verbal extension *-bh-. There are no certain examples left

  • I have earlier argued (2010) that *-bho- was an old participial suffix. The other participial suffix *-nt- gained an extended use in Anatolian. I therefore believe that *-bho- and *-bh- were replaced in Anatolian but lived on for some time in Core IE

  • We are thus not dealing with an innovation

  • in NW IE, but an archaism. At the same

  • time it shows that *-bho- and *-bh- were

  • alive and productive in PIE

  • Of course we would expect lexicalized

  • archaisms to survive but the corpus does

  • not expose any certain examples.



The unique Hittite meaning ‘cloud’ need not worry us either since the motivation for the borrowing was most likely mythological, either going via

  • The unique Hittite meaning ‘cloud’ need not worry us either since the motivation for the borrowing was most likely mythological, either going via

  • ► ‘vapour, spirit’ as in Germanic *albi- ‘white creature connected with the fog’ (an original dichotomy of white ljósalfar as opposed to the dark døkkálfar, cf. also NHG Weiße Frauen, Dutch Witte Wieven)

  • or ► ‘upper world’ as in Celtic, cf. also Eng. sky ~ Danish sky ‘cloud’.



Migrations into Europe

  • Migrations into Europe

  • New cultural communities, influenced by Uralic populations in the North

  • One cultural community must have existed across Northern Europe around 2000 e.Kr. and can be connected to the Pre-Celtic Unětice Culture in present-day Czech Republic

  • Around 100 early inherited terms shared by Celtic and Germanic almost all refer to

  • a) Religion and healing b) Warfare, horses, transport

  • As many as 10 terms for ‘wound’!



PCelt. *sanesto- ‘secret advice’ ~ Fi. sanasto ‘list of words’ (synchronically analyzable as sana ‘word’ + collective -sto), cf. the semantics of PCelt. *rūno- and PGmc. *rūna- ‘secret’ which in itself must be identical to Fi. runo ‘song; poem’.

  • PCelt. *sanesto- ‘secret advice’ ~ Fi. sanasto ‘list of words’ (synchronically analyzable as sana ‘word’ + collective -sto), cf. the semantics of PCelt. *rūno- and PGmc. *rūna- ‘secret’ which in itself must be identical to Fi. runo ‘song; poem’.

  • Mod. Ir. lón, pl. lóinte (> Eng. lunch) could represent Late Proto-Fennic *louna ‘southwest; noon; lunch’ (Fi. lounas) which is derived from Proto-Uralic *luwe ‘south’. Note that this word is already known to have been borrowed into Baltic (Latv. launags ‘lunch’, Lith. láunagas ‘dinner’).

  • Fi. maa ‘land’ and its Balto-Fennic cognates go back to Proto-Uralic *maγe, reminiscent both in form and semantics of PCelt. *magos ‘plain, open field’ > OIr mag ‘plain’, W ma ‘place’, Gaul. PN (Arganto-)magus)

  • Fi. tuoni ‘dead’ < Late Proto-Fennic *tōne could formally represent Proto-Celtic *doueno- (item 27).



Fennic *halpa-, gen.*halβan ’reduced; cheap (of prices)’ (Finnish halpa, g. -van, Estonian halb, g. -van)

  • Fennic *halpa-, gen.*halβan ’reduced; cheap (of prices)’ (Finnish halpa, g. -van, Estonian halb, g. -van)

  • < Fenno-Volgaic *šalV- id. (Mari *šul-δo)

  • Germanic *-b- next to *h- is not evidence for the Gmc. sound shift preceding Verner’s law; rather,*-b- is a reflex of the BF weak grade *-β- before a closed syllable in the paradigm, gen. *halβan

  • Germanic meanings: ’1. incomplete, partial, reduced; 2. a significant portion of; 3. exactly ½’

  • Better than from an adj. *ḱol-bho- ~ Lith. šalìs ‘side’

  • Kroonen (fthc. 2012): “No clear etymology”

  • Orel (2003): “A difficult word (…) Probably related to Skt. kálpate ‘succeed; fit; be partaken by’

  • Lat. scalpere ‘partage’



In the individual languages also ’skin (of animal); apparition, ghost; covering; net’

  • In the individual languages also ’skin (of animal); apparition, ghost; covering; net’

  • Balto-Fennic *hahmV ’shape’ (Finnish hahmo, haamu ’apparition, ghost’, Lule Saami sjipmō ’similarity’, Mordvin M šama, E čama ’face’); traditionally reconstructed as Fenno-Volgaic *šama; but cf.

  • FU *čamčV ’skin (of animal), membrane’ (N Saami cuoži ’membrane, fleshy fibres on the inner side of the skin’, Khanty čunč ’skin, hide’)

  • BF *hahmV could be metathesis of *čamčV, and the Mordvin forms might just as well < *čama

  • Lule Saami sjipmō looks regular from *šama, cf. that the only other Saami reflex of *šaN-, namely FV *šama-ra ’back of an axe’, also has ”irregular” *šim- for expected †suom-. *ča- still > *cuo/_N (*-m- regularly > *-w- > Ø in cuoži)



Since Proto-Germanic possessed words with the structure

  • Since Proto-Germanic possessed words with the structure

  • *-VhmV- (e.g. *heuhman- ’mass, heap’), it is likely that Balto-Fennic *hahmV was metathesized after the development of *š and *č to > *h

  • It cannot be excluded that haamu has secondary lengthening from *hamV, and that the latter was borrowed into Gmc., but a spontaneous development *haam- > *hahm- is ad hoc

  • Similar variation between *č- and *s- in cognates of Written Mongolian čamča ’shirt’ (via Persian  py-jamas and very likely also IE words of the camisia family), M. Stachowski in Per Urales ad Orientem [Fs. Janhunen], Helsinki 2012



There probably was no such root:

  • There probably was no such root:

  • Germanic *skamō- < *skH2-mo- ’(female) organ’, cf. sex and *-mo- as a suffix in words for body-parts  *sekh2- ’to cut’. Rather than  ’split’, probably  ’naked/exposed skin’  ’to cut/remove hair’

  • Cf. FU *ńarma ’female organs; groin’  *ńarV- ’hairless skin’ + -ma ~ PIE *der-mo- ’skin’  *der- ’to flay’

  • and Arabic awrah ’intimate parts’ (< √’a-w-r ’nakedness’)  Pers. ’shame; (young) woman’

  • ”Kvindens køn er så skamfuldt, at alle ord vi kender for det er lidt ubehagelige …” (Tine Byrckel in Sprog og sex, Copenhagen 2012)



Classical etymology:

  • Classical etymology:

  • ~ Old Church Slavonic kamy,

  • Slovincian kamor ’stone’,

  • Lithuanian akmuõ ’stone’

  • ašmuõ ’whetstone; cutting edge,

  • blade’ Sanskrit áśman- ’stone;

  • thunderbolt’, Avestan asman-

  • ’stove, heaven’; Gmc. *hemina-

  • ’heaven’, Greek καμάρα ’vault’ etc.



Old Norse hamarr meant:

  • Old Norse hamarr meant:

  • (1) hammer

  • (2) back of an axe

  • (3) crag, precipice (rather

  • than just “stone”);

  • berghamarr ‘rocky precipice’, hamarrifa ‘rift in a crag’

  • The latter meaning, however, is more likely figurative than primary. In the Da. place-names Hammer Odde, Hammerknuden (on Bornholm, 1539 Hammar), Hammer Bakker (1503 Hammer) the name refers to the hammerhead-shaped crag of granite – again, the meaning ‘hammer(head)’ is primary, its use of a rock is a figurative description of a steep rugged mass of rock projecting outwards and upwards. It mostly occurs in coastal areas and never seems to be used just of rocks or stones in general that are not protruding or hammer-shaped. This use is confirmed by a common noun hammer ‘(steep) crag’ in Danish dialects.



 Balto-Fennic *hamara (> Fi. hamara ‘back of an axe’, Est. hamar, hammar ‘back of a knife’).

  •  Balto-Fennic *hamara (> Fi. hamara ‘back of an axe’, Est. hamar, hammar ‘back of a knife’).

  • The most important reason is that the word must be inherited in Balto-Fennic from at least the Fenno-Volgaic stage. It can be connected to Saami *sɤmērē ‘back/pole of an axe, back of knife’ (> N Saami šibmar, Lule Saami sjimēr, Skolt Saami šammer) and Mordvin *šuvV ‘back of a knife’ (Erzya čov, čovone, Moksha šov).

  • Western Saami *ši- ( < Proto-Saami *sï-) must be the regular outcome of *ša- before nasal

  • While Uralic and Fenno-Volgaic *š- indeed normally yields Saami *s-, the actually attested forms, which are comparatively few.

  • Only one alternative surrounding: *su- before a labial stop (N Saami suhpi ‘asp’ ~ Fi. haapa). When followed by other vowels, both these vowels and *š- behave as expected (e.g. N Saami savvi- ‘heal a wound’ < FV *šeŋä and N Saami soarvi ‘dead pine-tree < PU *šorwa- ‘to dry (out)’).



> Go. puggs, ON pungr, OE pung, OHG ‐pfung

  • > Go. puggs, ON pungr, OE pung, OHG ‐pfung

  • otherwise etymologically obscure, but

  • PBF (PFS?) *punka, gen. pungan

  • Est. pung ‘something chubby and protruding, clod, bump, swelling’

  • < PFU *puŋka, *poŋka



Most often seen as reflecting PIE *k’ol-ieh₂, derived from *k’el- ‘to cover, conceal’. However, if Fi. Koljo ‘name of a giant’ is a Germanic loan, and the Finnish vocalism constitutes a problem—why is PGmc. *-a- substituted with -o-?

  • Most often seen as reflecting PIE *k’ol-ieh₂, derived from *k’el- ‘to cover, conceal’. However, if Fi. Koljo ‘name of a giant’ is a Germanic loan, and the Finnish vocalism constitutes a problem—why is PGmc. *-a- substituted with -o-?

  •  Fenno-Ugric *kolja, reconstructed also

  • on the basis of Komi kul’ ‘water spirit’ and

  • Mansi kuĺ-nājǝr ‘master of the netherworld,

  • devil’.

  • Internally analyzable as a participial form

  • or agent noun derivative consisting of the

  • Proto-Uralic verbal root *kole- ‘to die’

  • and the agent-marker -ja with regular loss

  • of root-final -e

  • The figure Kalma in Finnish mythology ‘guardian of the abode of the dead’ corresponds to Hel in Nordic mythology



Loanwords from Baltic into

  • Loanwords from Baltic into

  • Volgaic languages

  • (Mari and Mordvin) are now

  • generally accepted

  • (e.g. Mägiste 1959,

  • Van Pareren 2005, 2008)

  • But there are also loanwords

  • in the reverse direction!

  • Volgaic  Baltic



Old etymologies:

  • Old etymologies:

  • Related to Vedic (YV) káśa- and the Rigvedic hapax kaśīkā- (Fick 1879)

  • Reduplicative formation of the root in šìkti ‘to shit’, i.e. *še-š(i)ka-s with typical loss of -i- (Kalima 1936)

  • The reconstruction of a PIE form *kek’- on the basis of Vedic-Baltic comparison has almost become a generally accepted etymology, mentioned as the only option in standard handbooks. However, the irregular correspondence Lith. š- ~ Ved. k- has virtually no counterparts



Thomsen (1890): Veps hähk ‘otter’, Finnish dial. häähkä, Olonets Karelian heähku, Lude heähkäine ‘European mink’, is a loanword from the Baltic predecessor of Lith. šẽškas

  • Thomsen (1890): Veps hähk ‘otter’, Finnish dial. häähkä, Olonets Karelian heähku, Lude heähkäine ‘European mink’, is a loanword from the Baltic predecessor of Lith. šẽškas

  • Wichmann (apud Kalima 1936) instead suggested that the Baltic word was the one that had been borrowed, and that Balto-Fennic was the provider. He pointed to Mari šäškǝ, šaškǝ, meaning either ‘mink’ or ‘otter’ depending on the dialect which corresponds nicely with the Balto-Fennic protoform *hähkä. He envisaged a borrowing at the Early Proto-Fennic stage, when the form would still have been *šäškä.



Mari šäškǝ, šaškǝ ‘mink; otter’ is already known to have been borrowed into neighbouring Turkic languages:

  • Mari šäškǝ, šaškǝ ‘mink; otter’ is already known to have been borrowed into neighbouring Turkic languages:

  • Chuvash šaškǝ̑ ‘European mink’

  • Bashkir šäškǝ ‘id.’, (dial.) šaška ‘marten’

  • Tatar čäškä, čäškǝ ‘a water animal’.

  • Meadow Mari šeške ‘daughter-in-law; young lady’, Hill Mari ‘daughter-in-law’; in some dialects the meaning is more specific, such as ‘the wife of one’s son’, ‘the wife of one’s younger brother’, ‘the wife of one’s husband’s younger brother’ and ‘the wife of one’s wife’s younger brother’.



Danish brud ‘bride; least weasel, Mustela nivalis

  • Danish brud ‘bride; least weasel, Mustela nivalis

  • Germanic *marþu- ‘marten’ ~ Lith. martì ‘bride’,

  • Latvian mārša ‘sister-in-law’

  • Italian donnola, Portuguese doninha ‘weasel,

  • lit. ‘little lady’, Spanish comadreja ‘weasel,

  • little god-mother’

  • Basque satandre ‘weasel’, < *sagut- ‘mouse’ + andere ‘lady’

  • Greek γαλέη ‘weasel’ ~ γάλως ‘sister-in-law’

  • Modern Greek νυφίτσα ‘weasel; little bride’

  • Hungarian hölgy ‘weasel, bride’

  • Russian kunica ‘(little) marten; bride (in traditional wedding rituals)’

  • Armenian hašn owk ‘weasel’ ~ harsn owk ‘little bride’

  • Turkish gelin ‘bride’, dim. gelincik ‘little bride, little young woman; weasel’

  • Also in cultures of Western Siberia from where furs were provided (Laakso 2005).



Mari šeške ‘daughter-in-law; young lady’ is thus probably related to šäškǝ, šaškǝ ‘otter, mink’, at least indirectly.

  • Mari šeške ‘daughter-in-law; young lady’ is thus probably related to šäškǝ, šaškǝ ‘otter, mink’, at least indirectly.

  • The former is likely to be formed as a diminutive of the word for ‘sister’, which today is KB šǝ̑žar, U šüžǝr, B šužar.

  • Two Fenno-Volgaic protoforms: *sasare (also Fenno-Permian)  Early Indo-Aryan or Indo-Iranian, and *sisare or *sesare, regarded  Baltic. The Mari word can come from either of them; the rounded vocalism in the first syllable is secondary from assimilation to the sibilant.

  • Mari has to velar diminutive suffixes; -γǝ and -ka ~ -(i)kä, going back to PU *-kV and *-kkV respectively. The former is realized as the allomorph -kǝ after a sibilant. It is therefore likely that both šäškǝ, šaškǝ ‘mink; otter’ and šeške ‘daughter-in-law; young lady; sister-in-law’ are diminutives of the ‘sister’-word, the former of *sasare and the latter of *sesare, at an early time when the vocalism in the Mari ‘sister’-word had not yet become rounded



English mink, Middle Eng. menks, mynkes

  • English mink, Middle Eng. menks, mynkes

  • (15th-16th c.)

  • Low German mink ‘otter’ Swedish mänk, mink

  • Of unknown origin. Today it denotes a

  • North American animal, but it was

  • originally used only of the

  • European mink

  • (Mustela lutreola,

  • Danish nertz, flodilder).

  • Etymological dictionaries

  • typically treat it as an ancient

  • culture-word connected to fur

  • trade around the Baltic sea,

  • without speculating further

  • about its origins



Curious double meanings:

  • Curious double meanings:

  • Latin mūstēla

  • Greek galéē

  • Hungarian mëny-hal (hal ‘fish’), lit. ‘daughter-in-law fish’ or (Old Hung.) ‘bride fish’

  • ‘weasel’ and ‘burbot’, a sweetwater fish species (related to the cod) with which it shares similarities both in visual characteristics and behavior.

  • West Slavic words for ‘burbot’, in Baltic transferred to the salt-water ‘cod’:

  • Sorbian mjenk

  • Czech mník

  • Lithuanian ménkė

  • Latv. męnca



Slovenian menǝ̀k, menká

  • Slovenian menǝ̀k, menká

  • All derived from Late Common Slavic *mьnь, reconstructed on the basis of Ru. men’, Ukr. min’, Slovak mieň and the rarer Czech simplex meň .

  • The root man- in Serbo-Croatian manić, curiously missing from Vasmer (1953-1958), also fits in (cf. pas ‘dog’ < *mьnь), while the Lechitic derivatives Polish miętus (→ Belarusian mjantúz), Kashubian mińtus, as well as Rusyn mn’uh, Russian dial. ment’uk (→ Moksha Mordvin ment’uk, Erzya Mordvin *mänt’uk) are less well understood.



The Hungarian mëny looks as if = ‘daughter-in-law’

  • The Hungarian mëny looks as if = ‘daughter-in-law’

  • But Hill Mari (West Cheremis) men, men-gol, also ‘burbot’.

  • Skolt Saami has manij ‘(big) whitefish, Coregonus (lavaretus)’, moanji, moanjigaž ‘id.’

  • Correspond to each other as from a common protoform

  • From burbot skin Fenno-Ugric forest peoples have traditionally

  • produced clothing – coats, boots, and caps – justifying an

  • analogy with terrestrial animals hunted for their pelt

  • (Armstrong 1997).

  • The burbot along with the sturgeon and

  • sterlet were so important for the Khanty

  • in the time of Russian expansions in the 1600s

  • that a particularly bad fishing season

  • could threaten the very existence of a tribe.



Whether the Baltic and Slavic forms are Indo-European or borrowed from Fenno-Volgaic, it seems clear that the Germanic term for the mink must derive from the Balto-Slavic fish-name.

  • Whether the Baltic and Slavic forms are Indo-European or borrowed from Fenno-Volgaic, it seems clear that the Germanic term for the mink must derive from the Balto-Slavic fish-name.

  • It is further conceivable that the term mink spread in Western Europe under the influence of Du. minneken ‘playful term for a female’ > Eng. minikin (attested from the 16th c.).



Finns ~ Proto-Germanic *finōn- ’(fish) fin, fish scale, pimple, any kind of protuberance on the skin’

  • Finns ~ Proto-Germanic *finōn- ’(fish) fin, fish scale, pimple, any kind of protuberance on the skin’

  • Suomi ~ Finnish suomu ’fish scale’

  • Veps ~ Saami *vε̄psē ’fin’ (e.g. > Inari Saami vepsi)

  • Votes (Finnish Vatja-) ~ Baltic *vadja- ’patch, fin’

  • Lapps ~ e.g. Scandinavian lap(p) ’patch’

  • Ugrians ~ Russian ugor’ ’pimple’

  • Estonia  Latin Aestii, Old Norse Eistri- ~ Proto-Baltic *aistra- ’pimple, larva under the skin of cattle’, Slavic jester- ’sturgeon’

  • Sambi ~ Finnish sampi ’sturgeon’ < Fenno-Ugric ’back-fin of a fish’

  • Latin Cornuti finni = Old Norse hornfinnar = Tafeistr ’horned finns’, cf. Latin aci-penser ’sturgeon’, lit. ’peak-fin’ ~ Germanic-Baltic-Slavic *ak-ster- ’sturgeon’ (Danish star ~ Norwegian finne ’stiff grass species’)



The original stem was aistr-, tafaistr-:

  • The original stem was aistr-, tafaistr-:

  • Eistra dolgi ‘the Estonian enemy’

  • (Ynglingatal)

  • devenit in Eistriam, puer Olavis

  • Eistriis in servum venumdatur

  • ‘came to Eistria and bought the boy

  • Olav from Eistria as a slave’

  • (Historia Norvegiae)

  • utan foru i aina oy viþr Aistland,

  • sum haitir Dagaiþi ‘[they] travelled to an island off Estonia called Dagö’ (Guta Saga, 13th c.)

  • 11th c. runestone (U 722), Löts parish, Uppland:

  • tafaistr ∙ lit ∙ raisa ∙ stain ∙ at ∙ a[----- b]roÞur ∙ sin

  • ‘Tafeistr raised this stone in memory of his brother’.



Not Proto-Baltic *āist- ‘to burn’ = ‘dry land’ (i.e. not the sea), or referring to slash-and-burn cultivation techniques

  • Not Proto-Baltic *āist- ‘to burn’ = ‘dry land’ (i.e. not the sea), or referring to slash-and-burn cultivation techniques

  • Despite Baltic place-names like Aĩstere and Aisternīki in Latvia and Eistrai in Lithuania

  • The main argument is the traditional Estonian self-designation maarahvas still in the modern language

  • is literally ‘land-people’, maakeel ‘Estonian language’, lit. ‘land-tongue’, maa-sõna ‘genuine Estonian

  • expression’ lit. ‘land-word’, etc.

  • However, this term is contrasted specifically with the

  • name of another Balto-Fennic population, the closely

  • related Livonians, who were primarily fishermen and literally called themselves ‘inhabitants of the coast’, rāndalist, who spoke rāndakēļ ‘Livonian’, lit. ‘coast(al) tongue’



*aistra- is the Proto-Baltic translation of Proto-Germanic *finō-, *finna-

  • *aistra- is the Proto-Baltic translation of Proto-Germanic *finō-, *finna-

  • It can be reconstructed on the basis of

  • Lithuanian aistrà ‘intense passion’, cf. Greek oĩstros ‘gadfly; intense passion’, a merger of PIE *(h₂)oid-tro- ‘one who makes (sth) swell’ (cf. Greek oĩdos ‘tumour’, Germanic *aita- ‘abscess, ulcer’) and *h₃ois-tro- ‘irritator, one who sets (sby) in vehement motion’ (cf. Avestan aešma- ‘anger’, Lat. īra ‘id.’, Greek oĩma ‘rush, attack, rage (of animals)’)

  • 2) Livonian aistar, vistar ‘pimple’, borrowed from *aistra- and *viestra- with prothetic *vie- as reflex of *(H)oi- as also in *vienas ‘1’



’Fish-scale’  ’coins, money; silver’ as in Vogul kam, Hungarian hálpenz ’fish scale’, lit. ’fish money’; interference between kam ’silver’ and kåper ’Russian’ in Vogul folk-poetry;

  • ’Fish-scale’  ’coins, money; silver’ as in Vogul kam, Hungarian hálpenz ’fish scale’, lit. ’fish money’; interference between kam ’silver’ and kåper ’Russian’ in Vogul folk-poetry;

  • A term ‘fish-skin’ could have referred to an important garment. Fenno-Ugric forest peoples traditionally produced clothing – coats, boots, and caps – from fish-skin, justifying an analogy with terrestrial animals hunted for their pelt. The burbot along with the sturgeon and sterlet were so important for the Khanty in the time of Russian expansions in the 1600s that a particularly bad fishing season could threaten the very existence of a tribe.





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