Re: Where does the name come from?

ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
heliogabalus wrote:
from The Metamorphoses by Ovid and related to "The Creation
of the Earth and the Great Flood":
Before there was earth or sea or heaven, there existed only chaos:
shapeless, unorganized, lifeless matter.

How was "chaos" pronounced by Romans and by Greeks before that?


Before Ovid? I'm not sure I understood your question. I can copy
and paste from the Web some piece of information about old words and
concepts related to 'chaos', but my skills on 'pronunciation' are next
to zero. The Roman writer Ovid gave Chaos its modern meaning; that of an
unordered and formless primordial mass.
But
'The word χάος did not mean "disorder" in classical-period ancient
Greece. It meant "the primal emptiness, space". It is derived from the
Proto-Indo-European root ghn or ghen meaning "gape, be wide open":
compare "chasm" (from Greek χάσμα), and Anglo-Saxon gānian ("yawn"),
geanian, ginian ("gape wide"); see also Old Norse Ginnungagap. Due to
people misunderstanding early Christian uses of the word, the meaning of
the word changed to "disorder". (The Ancient Greek for "disorder" is
ταραχή.).'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_%28mythology%29
and
'c.1440, "gaping void," from L. chaos, from Gk. khaos "abyss, that which
gapes wide open, is vast and empty," from *khnwos, from PIE base *gheu-,
*gh(e)i- "to gape" (cf. Gk khaino "I yawn," O.E. ginian, O.N.
ginnunga-gap; see yawn). Meaning "utter confusion" (1606) is extended
from theological use of chaos for "the void at the beginning of
creation" in Vulgate version of Genesis. The Gk. for "disorder" was
tarakhe, however the use of chaos here was rooted in Hesiod
("Theogony"), who describes khaos as the primeval emptiness of the
Universe, begetter of Erebus and Nyx ("Night"), and in Ovid
("Metamorphoses"), who opposes Khaos to Kosmos, "the ordered Universe."
Chaotic is from 1713.'
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=chaos



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