Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)

Appendix to the glossary of the new Magdalenian words,
part 37, a test (seven)

Edwin D. Floyd, in the Proceedings of the Thirteenth
Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference (conference
held in 2001, proceedings published in 2002) finds
hidden meaning in standing formulas, for example in
the Iliad. He points out that Agamemnon was like
a second father to Achilles. The poem begins with
maenis 'wrath', a word only used of divinities and
Achilles (Watkins 1977): Maenin ... Achilaeos, the
wrath of Achilles, caused by Agamemnon's claim on
lady Briseis, the girl Briseis, Briseis of the lovely cheeks,
concubine of Achilles, his reward for participating in the
Trojan war.

The subtext elaborated by Edwin Floyd becomes even
more evident in the light of my Magdalenian approach
that can explain the name of the girl:

BRI SAI --- fertile (bri) life, existence (sai)

If Agamemnon and Achilles stand in a social relation
of 'father' and 'son', the son or the rising generation
is obliged to defend the own cause, the own people,
the own interests, in this case to participate in the
Trojan war, and he will be rewarded by love, by the
chance of becoming a father himself who will give
life to and raise the next generation, here personified
in Briseis, whose name, in the light of Magdalenian,
means fertile life, a fertile existence. A similar name
is modern Britney, which I explain as BRI GNE ---
fertile (bri) nine days or nights of the full moon
(gne, paralleling the round from of the full moon
with the swollen womb of a highly pregnant women,
and the period of nine days with the nine months
of a pregnancy).

Now if the social 'father' Agamemnon' deprives his
social 'son' of that chance by claiming Briseis for
himself, he does the same as Laius did to his son
Oedipus, and Cronus to his son Zeus. (Freud only
saw the role of Oedipus, missing the one of Laius).

Furthermore, the relation of Agamemnon and Achilles
has a political dimension. As I showed earlier (in the
thread on Homer and the Trojan war, if memory serves)
Agamemnon personifies southern Greece that played
its role in Minoic / Helladic times, while Achilles
personifies northern Greece that, Homer anticipates,
will play an equally important role in the future - Attica
in the classical era, Macedonia in Hellenistic times.
The father-son conflict has a geographical or political
dimension as well.

Language is the means of getting help, support and
understanding from those we depend upon in one way
or another ... This also holds for the Iliad. The aim of
the poem is to unite Greece, and to overcome the
rivalities between the 'old' south and 'young' north,
and this, well understood, in Homer's time.

Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

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Appendix to the glossary of the new Magdalenian words,
part 36, a test (six)

Still in the Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual UCLA
Indo-European Conference I find this footnote in the
contribution by Karl Praust: "47 I do not believe that
the PIE word for 'name' is to be reconstructed as
*H1nomn- (thus Stüber 1997), and hope to show
elsewhere that the word is to be derived from the
PIE root *gneH3- 'to recognize' in the last instance."

I'd like to see that piece, for I found NAM in the solid
permutation group of MAN :

MAN --- right hand; Latin manus Italian mano
French main English hand German Hand

NAM --- worth being remembered

MAN 'right hand' can be seen as pars pro toto for a man
or a woman, as in English farm hand. MAN and inverse
NAM could enforce each other: NAM MAN 'someone
worth being remembered'. And this could have been
the origin of Latin nomen German Namen for name.

The same doubling might have occurred with GID 'give',
present in English give gift get got, and the inverse DIG
'finger': DIG GID 'to give with one's fingers', present
in Latin digitus 'finger' and, abbreviated (-ggi- omitted),
in ancient Greek didomi 'I give'. May it also account for
the PIE root *doH*- 'to give'? Helmut Rix, again in the
same proceedings, offers proto-Italic *dide 'give',
PIE *di-dH3-ti 'gives'. DIG-GID digid di-d- ...

My explanation of *gneH*- 'to recognize' is Magdalenian
GNE for the nine (three plus three plus three) days or
nights of the full moon, and the meaning of to recognize
would come from the task of recognizing the exact lunar
phase. The eight-year period of the lunisolar calender
of Lascaux ideally begins with a full moon occurring on
midsummer, represented as the red horse in the rotunda
(midsummer sun rising) and the white bull by her side
(full moon, indicated by the sign of three plus three plus
three elements in front of his head).

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Appendix to the glossary of the new Magdalenian words,
part 35, a test (five)

While waiting for someone to point out a case where
_Pelasgoi_ refers unambiguously to the see and can't
refer to a mountain I go on reading the Proceedings of
the Fourteenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference
(2002).

Gregory E. Areshian proposes to reconstruct a metatext
from language, myth, archaeology, sociology, psychology,
and so on. That's what I am doing, only that I start from
Paleolithic times and follow the arrow of time.

Annamaria Bartolotta, _Towards a Reconstruction of
Indo-European Culture: Semantic Functions of IE *men-_.
Some quotes: "All the IE languages, from Old Indic to
Gothic, from Lithvanian to Greek, from Slavic to Latin
and Old Celtic and others, show that the root *men-
refers to the semantic field of knowledge (...) The Vedic
denotes typically human knowledge, which is identifiable
with rational evaluation (...) Greek, instead, seems to
show an inverted frame. Most of the words that we may
trace to the root *men-, such as mainomai, manteuomai,
mnaomai, meneaino, menoinao, as well as nouns such
as menos, mantis, mainas, mnaestaer, etc., refer to an
impulsive activity, not mediated by means of a rational
re-elaboration (...)" Bartolotta argues that "every mental
action" has a "correspondence in action," and speaks
of a "reciprocal penetration of action and thought." We
"should try to understand and "imagine" the origin of our
culture instead of formulating a mere list of names."

Well, I imagine that my word MAN 'right hand' was the
origin of the IE root *men- and refered to both actions
carried out with the right hand and mental activities of
planning actions before_hand_, and reflecting on them
when they had been carried out ...

Imagine the origin of our culture -- very nicely put,
Annamaria Bartolotta.

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Appendix to the glossary of the new Magdalenian words,
part 34, a test (four)

Homer, in the Odyssey, mentions the Pelasgians only
once, XIX 177: dioi te Pelasgoi. Both Rieu and Lattimer
translate dioi as noble, but the correct translation is
divine, godlike: and the divine Pelasgians. This might be
further evidence for my reading PE LAS 'near mountain':
near the mountain of the gods and goddesses, near the
mountain of Zeus. There is a village by the name of Dion
on the river Helikion at the base of Mount Olympos,
mountain of Zeus. Old Dion was probably some eight
kilometers higher up the northeastern slope of Mount
Olympos, very near to Zeus on top of the mountain.

What about Peloponnese? may this be another PE
'near' word? Peloponnese is explained as island
(nesos) of Pelops, and Pelops as pellis ops, dark
face or dark eye. However, this explanation is most
probably ancient folk etymology. Homer does not
use the name Peloponnese, he speaks of Argos.
Yet we find the name Penelopeia in the Odyssey,
which I interpreted as pun on Peloponnese: while
Odysseus symbolizes the seafaring skills and military
power or shrewdness of (southern) Greece in the time
of the Trojan war, his faithful wife would be the symbol
for the Peloponnese. Now I reconsider my explanation.
Penelopeia might conserve a very old name:

PAS --- everywhere in a plain: here, south and north
of me, east and west of me, all in all five places;
ancient Greek pas pan for all, every, penta for five

LOP --- hedge or wall around a dwelling: ancient
Greek lopos for shell, bark, French envelopper,
English envelope

PAS LOP --- wherever you come to (pas) you'll
find well protected dwellings inside of hedges
and walls (lop)

In the Odyssey, Penelopeia is first mentioned in
I 223, Athene speaking to Telemachos: Your family
is not doomed to disappear into namelessness with
Penelopeia for a mother ... I see Telemachos as
Homer's personified hope for Greece in his time,
some five hundred years (one epic generation)
after the Trojan war: May Greece stand up against
new tyrants rising in Anatolia (Homer anticipating
Gyges) and overcome the inner conflicts (Messenian
wars). The well protected settlements in the Argolis
are symbolized by Penelopeia, and, as a cultural
mother, she may bring forth a Telemachos, the
equal of Odysseus, willing to defend Greece against
enemies from the outside, and against moral decay
from the inside ...

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