Table Of ContentEuropa Vasconica - Europa Semitica
W
DE
G
Trends in Linguistics
Studies and Monographs 138
Editors
Walter Bisang
Hans Henrich Hock
Werner Winter
(main editor for this volume)
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Europa Vasconica - Europa Semitica
by
Theo Vennemann
gen. Nierfeld
edited by
Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York 2003
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction xiii
1. Bemerkung zum frühgermanischen Wortschatz 1
2. Die Lautverschiebungen und die Ausbreitung des 21
Indo-Germanischen
3. Zur Erklärung bayerischer Gewässer- und Siedlungsnamen 33
4. Die mitteleuropäischen Orts- und Matronennamen mit/, p, h
und die Spätphase der Indogermania 95
5. Der Name der Landeshauptstadt München 123
6. Linguistic reconstruction in the context of European prehistory 139
7. Etymologische Beziehungen im Alten Europa 203
8. Zur Erklärung des ßaiem-Namens 299
9. German Eisvogel, Greek halkyon, English alder.
Α study in Old European Etymology 315
10. Some West Indo-European words of uncertain origin 343
11. Atlantiker in Nordwesteuropa: Pikten und Vanen 371
12. Der Kastalische Quell, die Gastein und das Rätische:
Mit einem Anhang zu Kassandra und Kastianeira 397
13. Zur Etymologie der Sippe von engl, knife, franz. canif, 427
bask, kanibet
14. Basken, Semiten, Indogermanen: 453
Urheimatfragen in linguistischer und anthropologischer Sicht
15. Pre-Indo-European toponyms in Central and Western Europe: 473
Bid-IBed- and Pit- names
vi Contents
16. Remarks on some British place names 479
17. Zur Frage der vorindogermanischen Substrate 517
in Mittel- und Westeuropa
18. Andromeda and the Apples of the Hesperides 591
19. Germania Semitica:
+plög-l+pleg-, +jurh-/+farh-, +folk-/+flokk-, +felh-/+folg- 653
20. Etymology and phonotactics:
Latin grandis vs. Basque handi 'big' and similar problems 673
21. Germania Semitica: Biene und Imme:
Mit einem Anhang zu lat. apis 713
22. Zur Etymologie von tire, dem Namen Irlands 729
23. Zur Etymologie von Senne:
Mit einem Anhang zur Etymologie von lat. cäseus 'Käse' 737
24. Volksetymologie und Ortsnamenforschung: 753
Begriffsbestimmung und Anwendung auf ausgewählte,
überwiegend bayerische Toponyme
25. Testing the West: Hesperia, Euskal Herria, Europe, Abendland 803
and supporting etymologies
26. Grundfragen der Ortsnamenforschung, 820
dargestellt an den Beispielen Ebersberg und Yssingeaux sowie
weiteren bayerischen und europäischen Örtlichkeitsnamen
27. Water all over the place : 857
The Old European toponyms and their Vasconic origin:
With notes on the names of Cannes and Le Suquet
Abbreviations 871
References 877
Index of Atlantic and Old European Appellatives 941
Index of Place Names 959
Subject Index 975
Preface
Etymology is from beginning to end a matter of
balancing probabilities, and thick-set with un-
certainties and chances of error. ... All such errors,
it is hoped, will be viewed with a reasonable degree
of indulgence, considering the novelty and the
extreme laboriousness of the undertaking (William
Dwight Whitney 1885: xi f.).
1. Aim of this book
Europa Vasconica - Europa Semitica proposes and defends two major
theses:
(1) Vasconic languages, i.e. languages related to present-day Basque,
were spoken in Europe north of the Pyrenees and the Alps for
several millennia after the last ice-age.
(2) Semitidic languages, i.e. languages related to the Mediterranean
Hamito-Semitic languages, were spoken along the European Atlantic
Seaboard from the fifth millennium B.C. until the first millennium of
our era.
The second thesis comprises three parts:
(a) The Semitidic languages of the Atlantic littoral gave many loan-
words to Indo-European, especially its western branches.
(b) Germanic in particular was shaped both lexically and structurally
by a Semitic, probably Phoenician superstratum.
(c) The strong substratal influence on the Celtic languages of the
British Isles, which has been known and studied for over a hundred
years, is owed to this far-reaching Semitidic influence on Western
Europe.
The volume contains all papers I published on the matter between 1984
and 2000, plus one very comprehensive account that I was promised
viii Preface
would be published but which never did go to press. It appears here as
chapter 17.
I have been urged by many to write a book on my theory or at least
to publish a collection of the existing papers, several of which have ap-
peared in volumes not easily available in some parts of the world. Since
new discoveries supporting the theory continue to be made, I have opted
for the second approach, despite a serious drawback: Since the articles,
most of them originally conference papers or guest lectures, had each
been composed so as to be complete in themselves, while at the same
time reflecting the progress reached in developing the theory, the book
as a whole unfortunately contains many repetitions. This will be incon-
spicuous to readers of individual papers but may at times be irritating to
those reading the book continuously. I regret this and apologize.
2. From article to chapter
All papers are here reproduced as they first appeared, with the original
pagination indicated by the symbol Γ . Only obvious oversights have
η
been silently corrected. I was tempted at times to revise the papers in the
light of criticisms I have been sent or have noticed in the literature. But
that would have changed the character of the enterprise too much, so
that I decided to leave things as they are, adding only occasional cor-
recting notes, and bear the brunt of heavier corrections in reviews which
this book will hopefully invite.
To facilitate the use of this volume, all papers are here printed as
"chapters" in a uniform format. English summaries have been added,
marked as additions except in those cases where abstracts are part of the
original publication. Furthermore, Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna has pre-
pared a list of abbreviations, a unified bibliography for all chapters of
the book, and several thematic indexes. She has also written an intro-
duction.
3. The next round
Since the series of articles collected in this book ends with the year
2000, one may ask: What has been accomplished since then, and where
is the theory going? Most of the work done in the years since then con-
cerns that part of the theory which deals with Atlantic influences in
Germania and in the British Isles.
Semitic etymologies for sociologically important Germanic words
Preface ix
lacking convincing Indo-European etymologies emphasize the super-
stratal character of this early influence; they include PGmc. +apal- 'no-
bility' (OE cedel-, G Adel), PGmc. +sibjö 'family' (E sib, G Sippe), the
strong verbs PGmc. +dragan (E draw, drag, G tragen), PGmc. +drepan
'to hit' (OE drepan, G treffen), and the theonyms Ρ hoi and Balder of
the Second Merseburg Charm.
By contrast, the substratal Semitidic influence in the British Isles is
apparent in what I call the transitivity of language contact, specifically
Semitidic —> Celtic —> English, whereby several of the structural influ-
ences of the Semitidic substrate on Insular Celtic were passed on from
Insular Celtic to Anglo-Saxon (and later once more to the Celtic Eng-
lishes such as Irish English). Features treated in this context are the rise
of the verbal noun, the loss of the external possessor construction (i.e.
the sympathetic dative), the method of answering Yes/No-questions, the
subject disagreement rule (of northern English dialects), and the sub-
ordinating use of 'and' (in Irish English).
A brief survey of this work including references forms part of
Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna's Introduction. If interest in the kind of work
reflected in the book lasts beyond this first collection, a sequel volume
containing these and subsequent papers could be contemplated.
4. Acknowledgements
Many friends and colleagues have contributed data, advice, or criticism
to this book over the years, namely to the individual articles when they
were first written and published. Their names are found again in the
chapters of this book.
As for the book itself, I would like to acknowledge several people
who were helpful with the manuscript for this volume: First and fore-
most Dr. Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna who assembled all the articles with
their differing formats and turned them into chapters of a book, who
composed the indexes, wrote the Introduction as well as first versions of
the added chapter summaries, and gently but tenaciously kept me busy
on the project despite continuing research and much university work on
her and my part; then Stephen Laker M.A. who, with his scholarly and
native-speaker competence, did much to improve the grammar, style,
and comprehensibility of the added portions and who, together with
Robert Mailhammer M.A. and Dr. Andrea Böhm (nee Appelt), proof-
read several of the chapters of the book; Elisabeth Hamel who, besides
providing information for some of the toponymic topics, developed
most of the graphics, and stud.phil. Oliver Rezec who unified and re-
