fbpx
Wikipedia

Old European hydronymy

April 12, 2023

Old European (German: Alteuropäisch) is the term used by Hans Krahe (1964) for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy (river names) in Central and Western Europe.[1][note 1]

Old European hydronymic map for the root *al-, *alm-

Geography

Krahe writes in A1, chapter III, "Introducing preface" Number 2[1]: 32  that the old European hydronomy extended from Scandinavia to South Italy, from Western Europe including the British Isles to the Baltic countries. Of the three Mediterranean peninsulas, Italy was most completely included, whilst the Balkan Peninsula was only scarcely covered. He writes that what he presents for hydronomy also applies to mountains and ranges of mountains, and continues with "Karpaten" and "Karawanken", certainly within the Slavic settlement area, omitting the Bavarian/Austrian "Karwendel" though.[1]: 12  This area is associated with the spread of the later "Western" Indo-European dialects, the Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Baltic, and Illyrian branches.[citation needed] Notably exempt is Greece.

Krahe located the geographical nucleus of this area as stretching from the Baltic across Western Poland and Germany to the Swiss plateau and the upper Danube north of the Alps, while he considered the Old European river names of southern France, Italy and Spain to be later imports, replacing "Aegean-Pelasgian" and Iberian substrates,[1]: 81  corresponding to Italic, Celtic and Illyrian "invasions" from about 1300 BC.

Origins of names

 
Old European hydronymic map for the root *Sal-, *Salm-

Krahe continues in III A 5, "Geographic Area and age of the paleoeuropean hydronomy", that the overwhelming majority of river and stream names originate from words which in the historical single languages cannot be found or cannot be found any more.[1]: 77  He uses mainly Indo-European roots to allow the river names in question to speak (rule 1) of which more than 10,000 are listed.

In III A 2, "Etymology and Semasiology of the paleoeuropean river names", Krahe states that the oldest strata are composed by prerequisites of nature and that the river names especially refer to the water itself (rule 2),[1]: 60  and that words referring to humans and culture are newer. Both rules are important arguments for considering the old European hydronomy of southern France and the north of the Iberian Peninsula as a result of secondary implementation (A 1, number 3) due to a postulated immigration about 1300 BC.

In "Morphology of Paleoeuropean river names" (III A 1, number 3) Krahe concentrates on suffixes (simples and multiples) and distinguishes eleven different ones in a table.[1]: 62–63  He attributes geographical (Central European vs. South European or Eastern), functional (for example affluent) or temporal (before or after a change of consonants or vowels) functions to the suffixes of the river names (rule 3). For the temporal function he claims the existence of a system of phonetic changes (Lautverschiebung), however he does not include prefixes in his considerations.

Krahe's concentration on Indo-European roots and the omission of prefixes had serious negative consequences, because later those more than 10,000 roots were emphasized, or sometimes those of Old Irish, but scarcely of Gaulish and other Celtic languages or the Baltic languages and completely omitting Basque. Delamarre later included for example under Gaulish dubron only rivers with "B" (or similar) omitting other names, which Krahe would have termed Schwundstufe, i. e. "zero grade", the form of a root characterized by the loss of a letter (basically a vowel), sometimes combined with the inversion of letters.

Krahe ignored the effect of Moorish occupation in Spain, which resulted in frequent combinations of Arab "prefixes" (always at the beginning) on Celtic "suffixes" as seen in Guadiana (guadi "river" + anas "bayous, muddy", as it appears in Ptolemy).[2] The tables "Comparison of old European hydronyms" show that, in contradiction to Krahe's opinion, hydronyms (and toponyms) can in some cases very well be explained even by modern Irish, Welsh, or French and certainly by Gaulish.

Krahe's influence on other scholars

Krahe has influenced archaeologists, linguists and particularly experts in Celtic languages:

Marija Gimbutas (Lithuanian: Marija Gimbutienė) studied in Tübingen, and received her doctorate of archeology in 1946 in the same department where Krahe lectured. Gimbutas developed the Kurgan theory.

Jürgen Untermann, a disciple of Krahe with dissertation 1954 in Tübingen was professor for Comparative Linguistics at the University of Cologne. He was an epigraphist and Indoeuropeanist.

Antonio Tovar, with preliminary studies in Berlin, later professor of the University of Salamanca, was professor for Comparative Linguistics in Tübingen from 1967 to 1979. Together with Manuel Agud and Koldo Mitxelena he prepared an unedited etymological dictionary of the Basque language.

Other authors

Other authors concerned with old European hydronomy are listed below.

Xavier Delamarre is a French linguist whose standard work is Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (2nd revised and augmented edition Paris, 2003), with the subtitle "Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental". This is in fact the most comprehensive publication on Gaulish words. Slightly more than 800 terms appear in alphabetical order derived from Gaulish-Greek, Gaulish-Etruscan and Gaulish-Latin or solely Gaulish inscriptions, printed classical languages, coins and some terms of Celtic substrate in Occitan. He presents all cases of appearance of toponyms and hydronyms in question, cites authors and roots, showing alternatives, and classifies, if necessary, as uncertain or questionable. He shows all river name examples with prefixes. For example, see "comparison of old hydronyms" adding "water", "clear", "hard stone", etc.

The German linguist Theo Vennemann suggested in 2003 that the language of the old European hydronyms was agglutinative and Pre-Indo-European.[3] This theory has been criticised as being seriously flawed, and the opinion accepted more generally is that hydronyms are of Indo-European origin.[4]

The Spanish philologist Francisco Villar Liébana argued in 1990 for the Old European preserved in river names and confined to the hydronymic substratum in the Iberian Peninsula as yet another Indo-European layer with no immediate relationship to the Lusitanian language.[5] However, the idea of "Old European" was criticized by Untermann in 1999 and De Hoz in 2001.[5] Villar Liébana advocated the theories of Gimbutas against those of Colin Renfrew. In his work, Indoeuropeos y No Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Prerromana ("Indo-Europeans and Non-Indo-Europeans in Pre-Roman Hispania") he presents a nine root "series" and a few more collective "series", mainly of toponyms (Hispanic and non-Hispanic) but also including hydronyms.[6]

For example, in chapter IV B VII[6]: 120  Liébana discusses hydronyms of the series "uba" starting [6]: 149  with Maenuba (Pliny 3.8) = modern Vélez and, with the same name, a tributary of the Baetis (Pliny 3.11) = Guadiamar, Salduba (close to Málaga). He compares modern rivers names like Ubia, Ove, Fonte dos Ovos with, amongst others, Danube,[6]: 149  and with historical Corduba (modern Córdoba, Andalusia).[6]: 153  Wherever "uba" appears, like in the rivers Saruba = modern Saar (river), an affluent of the river Mosel, Spanish fuente Sarobals (Huesca), Sarrubian (Huesca), he acknowledges only "uba" and not the root "Dan" in Danubius (corresponding to Dnieper and Dniester) or the root "Sar" in others, which are all Indo-European roots.

Examples

An example is the old river name Isar:[7]

  • Isar > Issel (Germany)
  • Isar > IJssel (Netherlands) there are several (parts of) rivers in the Netherlands called IJssel (Yssel), one of which was called "Isala" during Roman times
  • Isar > Ézaro (Spain)
  • Isar > Ésera (Spain)
  • Isar > Iseran (Savoy)
  • Isar > Esaro (Italy)
  • Isar-ko > Eisack (Italy)
  • Isar-na > Isières[11] (Belgium)
  • Isar-ellum > Izarillo "little Izar" (Spain)
  • Isar > Iza (Romania)

Also relevant might be *ezero (the Slavic word for lake), ežeras (the Lithuanian word for lake) and the Acheron river in Greece.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Old European" in this sense is not to be confused with the term as used by Marija Gimbutas who applies it to non-Indo-European or pre-Indo-European Neolithic Europe.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Hans Krahe, Unsere ältesten Flussnamen, Wiesbaden Edition Otto Harrassowiitz (1964)
  2. ^ Alfred Stückelberg; Gerd Grasshoff (eds.). Ptolemaios Handbuch der Geographie. Basel: Schwabe. p. 169. ISBN 978-3-7965-2148-5.
  3. ^ Theo Vennemann, Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna, Europa Vasconica, Europa Semitica, published by Walter de Gruyter, 2003, ISBN 3-11-017054-X, 9783110170542.
  4. ^ Kitson, P.R. (November 1996). "British and European River Names". Transactions of the Philological Society. 94 (2): 73–118. doi:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1996.tb01178.x.
  5. ^ a b Wodtko, Dagmar S (2010). Celtic from the West Chapter 11: The Problem of Lusitanian. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK. p. 338. ISBN 978-1-84217-410-4.
  6. ^ a b c d e Francisco Villar Liébana (2000). Indoeuropeos y No Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Perromana. ISBN 84-7800-968-X.
  7. ^ Delamarre, Xavier. Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise. Paris, Ed. Errance, 2003.
  8. ^ Émile Lambert, Toponymie du département de l'Oise, Amiens, 1963 (Collection de la Société de linguistique picarde ; 1), p. 258.
  9. ^ R. W. Morris, Yorkshire through place names, David & Charles, 1982, p. 29.
  10. ^ Wolfgang Linke, Der Ortsname Neuching: Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Deutung, Books on Demand, 2011, p. 16. .
  11. ^ Jean-Jacques Jespers, Dictionnaire des noms de lieux en Wallonie et à Bruxelles, Ed. Lannoo, 2005, p. 344.

Further reading

  • Lühr, Rosemarie (2021). "Spatial cognition in landscape designations in the area of the Old European Hydronymy". Lexicographica. 37 (1): 59–84. doi:10.1515/lex-2021-0005. S2CID 244134360..
  • Woudhuizen, Fred C. (2020). "The Old Indo-European Layer in the Mediterranean as Represented by Hydronyms, Toponyms, and Ethnics". Journal of Indo-European Studies. 48 (1–2): 41–60..

External link

  • Wasserwoerter Karte Hessen accessdate 6-11-14

April 12, 2023
european, hydronymy, european, german, alteuropäisch, term, used, hans, krahe, 1964, language, oldest, reconstructed, stratum, european, hydronymy, river, names, central, western, europe, note, european, hydronymic, root, contents, geography, origins, names, k. Old European German Alteuropaisch is the term used by Hans Krahe 1964 for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy river names in Central and Western Europe 1 note 1 Old European hydronymic map for the root al alm Contents 1 Geography 2 Origins of names 3 Krahe s influence on other scholars 4 Other authors 5 Examples 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linkGeography EditKrahe writes in A1 chapter III Introducing preface Number 2 1 32 that the old European hydronomy extended from Scandinavia to South Italy from Western Europe including the British Isles to the Baltic countries Of the three Mediterranean peninsulas Italy was most completely included whilst the Balkan Peninsula was only scarcely covered He writes that what he presents for hydronomy also applies to mountains and ranges of mountains and continues with Karpaten and Karawanken certainly within the Slavic settlement area omitting the Bavarian Austrian Karwendel though 1 12 This area is associated with the spread of the later Western Indo European dialects the Celtic Italic Germanic Baltic and Illyrian branches citation needed Notably exempt is Greece Krahe located the geographical nucleus of this area as stretching from the Baltic across Western Poland and Germany to the Swiss plateau and the upper Danube north of the Alps while he considered the Old European river names of southern France Italy and Spain to be later imports replacing Aegean Pelasgian and Iberian substrates 1 81 corresponding to Italic Celtic and Illyrian invasions from about 1300 BC Origins of names Edit Old European hydronymic map for the root Sal Salm Krahe continues in III A 5 Geographic Area and age of the paleoeuropean hydronomy that the overwhelming majority of river and stream names originate from words which in the historical single languages cannot be found or cannot be found any more 1 77 He uses mainly Indo European roots to allow the river names in question to speak rule 1 of which more than 10 000 are listed In III A 2 Etymology and Semasiology of the paleoeuropean river names Krahe states that the oldest strata are composed by prerequisites of nature and that the river names especially refer to the water itself rule 2 1 60 and that words referring to humans and culture are newer Both rules are important arguments for considering the old European hydronomy of southern France and the north of the Iberian Peninsula as a result of secondary implementation A 1 number 3 due to a postulated immigration about 1300 BC In Morphology of Paleoeuropean river names III A 1 number 3 Krahe concentrates on suffixes simples and multiples and distinguishes eleven different ones in a table 1 62 63 He attributes geographical Central European vs South European or Eastern functional for example affluent or temporal before or after a change of consonants or vowels functions to the suffixes of the river names rule 3 For the temporal function he claims the existence of a system of phonetic changes Lautverschiebung however he does not include prefixes in his considerations Krahe s concentration on Indo European roots and the omission of prefixes had serious negative consequences because later those more than 10 000 roots were emphasized or sometimes those of Old Irish but scarcely of Gaulish and other Celtic languages or the Baltic languages and completely omitting Basque Delamarre later included for example under Gaulish dubron only rivers with B or similar omitting other names which Krahe would have termed Schwundstufe i e zero grade the form of a root characterized by the loss of a letter basically a vowel sometimes combined with the inversion of letters Krahe ignored the effect of Moorish occupation in Spain which resulted in frequent combinations of Arab prefixes always at the beginning on Celtic suffixes as seen in Guadiana guadi river anas bayous muddy as it appears in Ptolemy 2 The tables Comparison of old European hydronyms show that in contradiction to Krahe s opinion hydronyms and toponyms can in some cases very well be explained even by modern Irish Welsh or French and certainly by Gaulish Krahe s influence on other scholars EditKrahe has influenced archaeologists linguists and particularly experts in Celtic languages Marija Gimbutas Lithuanian Marija Gimbutiene studied in Tubingen and received her doctorate of archeology in 1946 in the same department where Krahe lectured Gimbutas developed the Kurgan theory Jurgen Untermann a disciple of Krahe with dissertation 1954 in Tubingen was professor for Comparative Linguistics at the University of Cologne He was an epigraphist and Indoeuropeanist Antonio Tovar with preliminary studies in Berlin later professor of the University of Salamanca was professor for Comparative Linguistics in Tubingen from 1967 to 1979 Together with Manuel Agud and Koldo Mitxelena he prepared an unedited etymological dictionary of the Basque language Other authors EditOther authors concerned with old European hydronomy are listed below Xavier Delamarre is a French linguist whose standard work is Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise 2nd revised and augmented edition Paris 2003 with the subtitle Une approche linguistique du vieux celtique continental This is in fact the most comprehensive publication on Gaulish words Slightly more than 800 terms appear in alphabetical order derived from Gaulish Greek Gaulish Etruscan and Gaulish Latin or solely Gaulish inscriptions printed classical languages coins and some terms of Celtic substrate in Occitan He presents all cases of appearance of toponyms and hydronyms in question cites authors and roots showing alternatives and classifies if necessary as uncertain or questionable He shows all river name examples with prefixes For example see comparison of old hydronyms adding water clear hard stone etc The German linguist Theo Vennemann suggested in 2003 that the language of the old European hydronyms was agglutinative and Pre Indo European 3 This theory has been criticised as being seriously flawed and the opinion accepted more generally is that hydronyms are of Indo European origin 4 The Spanish philologist Francisco Villar Liebana argued in 1990 for the Old European preserved in river names and confined to the hydronymic substratum in the Iberian Peninsula as yet another Indo European layer with no immediate relationship to the Lusitanian language 5 However the idea of Old European was criticized by Untermann in 1999 and De Hoz in 2001 5 Villar Liebana advocated the theories of Gimbutas against those of Colin Renfrew In his work Indoeuropeos y No Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Prerromana Indo Europeans and Non Indo Europeans in Pre Roman Hispania he presents a nine root series and a few more collective series mainly of toponyms Hispanic and non Hispanic but also including hydronyms 6 For example in chapter IV B VII 6 120 Liebana discusses hydronyms of the series uba starting 6 149 with Maenuba Pliny 3 8 modern Velez and with the same name a tributary of the Baetis Pliny 3 11 Guadiamar Salduba close to Malaga He compares modern rivers names like Ubia Ove Fonte dos Ovos with amongst others Danube 6 149 and with historical Corduba modern Cordoba Andalusia 6 153 Wherever uba appears like in the rivers Saruba modern Saar river an affluent of the river Mosel Spanish fuente Sarobals Huesca Sarrubian Huesca he acknowledges only uba and not the root Dan in Danubius corresponding to Dnieper and Dniester or the root Sar in others which are all Indo European roots Examples EditAn example is the old river name Isar 7 Isar gt Isar Bavaria Isar gt Isere France Isar gt Oise 8 France Isar gt Yzeron France Isar gt Jizera Czech Republic Isar gt Aire 9 Yorkshire Isar gt Yser 10 Belgium Isar gt Ypres Ieperlee Belgium Respectively in French and Dutch Isar gt Issel Germany Isar gt IJssel Netherlands there are several parts of rivers in the Netherlands called IJssel Yssel one of which was called Isala during Roman times Isar gt Ezaro Spain Isar gt Esera Spain Isar gt Iseran Savoy Isar gt Esaro Italy Isar ko gt Eisack Italy Isar na gt Isieres 11 Belgium Isar ellum gt Izarillo little Izar Spain Isar gt Iza Romania Also relevant might be ezero the Slavic word for lake ezeras the Lithuanian word for lake and the Acheron river in Greece See also EditTyrsenian languages Rigvedic rivers Urnfield culture Beaker culture Germanic substrate hypothesis Pre Celtic Vasconic substratum theoryNotes Edit Old European in this sense is not to be confused with the term as used by Marija Gimbutas who applies it to non Indo European or pre Indo European Neolithic Europe References Edit a b c d e f g Hans Krahe Unsere altesten Flussnamen Wiesbaden Edition Otto Harrassowiitz 1964 Alfred Stuckelberg Gerd Grasshoff eds Ptolemaios Handbuch der Geographie Basel Schwabe p 169 ISBN 978 3 7965 2148 5 Theo Vennemann Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna Europa Vasconica Europa Semitica published by Walter de Gruyter 2003 ISBN 3 11 017054 X 9783110170542 Kitson P R November 1996 British and European River Names Transactions of the Philological Society 94 2 73 118 doi 10 1111 j 1467 968X 1996 tb01178 x a b Wodtko Dagmar S 2010 Celtic from the West Chapter 11 The Problem of Lusitanian Oxbow Books Oxford UK p 338 ISBN 978 1 84217 410 4 a b c d e Francisco Villar Liebana 2000 Indoeuropeos y No Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Perromana ISBN 84 7800 968 X Delamarre Xavier Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise Paris Ed Errance 2003 Emile Lambert Toponymie du departement de l Oise Amiens 1963 Collection de la Societe de linguistique picarde 1 p 258 R W Morris Yorkshire through place names David amp Charles 1982 p 29 Wolfgang Linke Der Ortsname Neuching Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Deutung Books on Demand 2011 p 16 Jean Jacques Jespers Dictionnaire des noms de lieux en Wallonie et a Bruxelles Ed Lannoo 2005 p 344 Further reading EditLuhr Rosemarie 2021 Spatial cognition in landscape designations in the area of the Old European Hydronymy Lexicographica 37 1 59 84 doi 10 1515 lex 2021 0005 S2CID 244134360 Woudhuizen Fred C 2020 The Old Indo European Layer in the Mediterranean as Represented by Hydronyms Toponyms and Ethnics Journal of Indo European Studies 48 1 2 41 60 External link EditWasserwoerter Karte Hessen accessdate 6 11 14 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Old European hydronymy amp oldid 1144595478, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.