Re: The Origins of Zürich...


Heidi Graw wrote:

Brian, I found out what richi means in OG and MG. It's reich...realm.
Ziu-richi, Ziu's Realm. A place where Ziu rules over the land. Ziurichi,
Zürich. It is a name dervived from the German Language Tree. It is not
related to the Celtic or Latin Languages.

Remains of a 5,000 years old settlement have recently been
discovered in the center of Zurich, at the northern base of the
hill whose top is called Lindenhof. This was a beautiful place,
a hill in a wide river plain surrounded by wooded hills, from
the Lindenhof one saw the lake, and, beyond it, in the south,
during foehn weather, a long line of snow capped mountains.

I reconstruct the name of that first settlement as TYR AC
--- he who overcomes (tyr) an expanse of land with water
(ac), together: land of a ruler. The Romans latinized Gallic
names. Hypothetical TYR AC became Turicum. Then came
the Alemanni and felt a need to make sense of the Gallo-
Roman village names they didn't understand. There were
two places by the name of Cossiniacum, both on a lake,
which I translate as expanse of land with water (ac) own
by one Cossinius. Now what did the Alemanni make out
of Cossiniacum? Cossi Niacum -- Kuess Nacht -- Kissing
Night ...

Compared with that lovely nonsense your reconstruction
Ziu rihi, realm of Ziu, is fairly close to the hypothetical
original name TYR AC, since Ziu is a derivate of Tyr as
god, while rihi can pass as a fairly good translation of
ac for an expanse of land with water, owned by a ruler
TYR, or by one Turus, eponymous Tyr / Ziu.

Don't miss my reply in your thead Odainsakur from
this morning.

Regards Franz Gnaedinger

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