Re: Lepanto


Dusan Vukotic wrote:

It seems this discussion might be very fruitful. Let us see: Lat.
'lepas' (mussel); 'lepidus' (charming, witty, pleasant, elegant; Serb.
'lep-o' beautiful), Eng. 'love', Ger. 'Liebe", Serb. 'ljubav', Eng.
lip/s, Ger. Lippe; Gr. λεπίδωση lamination; Serb. 'lepenka'
(stiff cardboard made by pasting together layers of paper), Serb.
'lepiti' (to glue), Serb. 'lipljan' (a kind of river fish; cf. Franz's
'lepa');

First I must say that my tentative explanation of Lepanto
via lepa was completely wrong. Naupaktos was a dockyard
long before Venice became a sea power. The derivation is
then Naupaktos Efpaktos Epantos L'Epanto Lepanto (or so).
Linguistically, the fish called lepa in the Medieval Latin of
Venice and the town of Lepanto in the Corinthian Gulf have
nothing in common.

However, there might be a link between lepa and Lepenski
Vir and other such names. The fish lepa has prominent lips,
also present in the zoological name Crenilabrus pavo. Lepa
may be a variant of Latin labra (?) German Lippe English lip.
Lepenski Vir lies in a deep gorge of the river Danube. The
Neolithic settlement of Lepenski Vir contained 45 fish idols,
15 of them show human faces with prominent lips. Most of
the human idols are female with a big vulva. Some boulders
have the shape of an egg. One forms an egg with a vulva.
Marija Gimbutas believes in a mythological aspect of these
idols. I follow her, and I got a vague idea of what they could
have meant - but my notion is far from conclusive, so I keep
it back for the time being.

My Magdalenian studies led me to a word I give as -: I -:
Pronounce the letter -: by touching the lips with your tongue.
The hypothetical word -: I -: has many derivatives, as the letter
-: became L, B, or D. For example ancient Greek lilazo for I
desire, German Liebe for love, Punic Dido for loved. Also the
word lip may have come from -: I -: Furthermore Latin bibere
for to drink. And so on. You may look up my message on that
hypothetical word in my etymological thread. The Serb words
you mention above fit well into the same scheme, even lepenka,
if you can see layers of paper glued together as sort of closed
lips, and if you glue together two pages of a book it can't "speak"
anymore ... Well, at least some of the Serb words you mention
fit. You are welcome to further think along this line, only that you
have to let go Lepanto. It has a completely different origin.

Regards Franz Gnaedinger

PS. I corrected "c.f. Franz's 'lipa'" into 'lepa' - the Medieval
Venetian Latin word for the fish Crenilabrus pavo was lepa.

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