Re: Etymology of Houbit and haben

On Mar 16, 11:56 am, "Franz Gnaedinger" wrote:
On Mar 15, 10:51 pm, "Douglas G. Kilday" wrote:

My nickel's worth:

1.  By far the best explanation of <populus> (earlier <poplus>)
'people', phonologically and semantically, is as a loanword from a P-
Italic language (probably Sabine), originally 'the folk dwelling
round', from PIE *kwe-kwlo-, reduplicated from *kwel- 'revolve, move
round, dwell round'.  In this view <populus> is cognate with Greek
<kúklos> and English <wheel>.  Umbrian <poplos> 'people' is well
attested in the Iguvine Tables.  According to Hamp (ref. not handy),
Lat. <poples> 'kneecap, knee; ham, hough' also came from P-Italic, as
the kneecap is a round object.

Harvey and Baldi reject this explanation of populus
as improbable, *kwekwlo- in the Latin qu-dialect
would have become something like *coculus.

That does not prevent Latin, a Q-Italic language, from borrowing a
word from a P-Italic language such as Sabine. Latin borrowed
<popi:na> 'cook-shop, eating-house' from Sabine; it is of course
cognate with native Latin <coqui:na> 'kitchen'. Such familiar words
as <bo:s> and <lupus> have P-Italic consonantism and show that the
Sabine component in Latin goes back a long way; the legends of Titus
Tatius as co-regent with Romulus are not so far-fetched. Derivation
of <populus> from P-Italic is much more plausible, and better grounded
in attested forms, than derivation within Q-Italic from *pel-.

I see that the authorities on Indo-European disagree
widely in the case of populus, and in other cases as
well, which confirms my opinion that we need a new
approach from below.

  POL --- dwelling; ancient Greek polis for town

  LOP --- hedge or wall around a dwelling; ancient
  Greek lopos for shell, bark

  PLO --- a wall in the wattle-and-daube technique;
  ancient Greek plokos for texture, wickerwork,
  tissue, fabric

  POL LOP --- a dwelling (pol) protected by a hedge
  or a wall (lop); polop polis ?

  POL PLO --- a dwelling (pol) protected by a wall
  in the wattle-and-daube technique (plo); pol plo
  po-plo poplo- ?

POL PLO  polplo  po-plo  poplo-  seems more convincing
to me than the explanations I have seen so far.

Could polis be derived phonetically from polop ?
could -lop have turned into -lis ?

I find none of that necessary.

2.  <popula:ri:> 'to lay waste, ravage' can be understood as a
specialized military sense of 'circulate', that is 'travel around
destroying the enemy's crops' (when Livy uses this verb, that is
generally what an army, such as Hannibal's, is doing, not tearing down
a city's walls).

The fields around a polis were open terrain, overseeable
for example from top of the former Circular Building on
the limestone hill of Tiryns, thus contributing to the safety
of a settlement, and part of it's 'envelope'.

I see no objection here to my explanation of <popula:ri:>.

3.  The Etruscan town of <Pupluna> (on numerous coins), Latinized as
<Populo:nia>, has nothing to do with <populus>.  Instead, it is the
regular Etr. derivative in -na of a noun *puplu 'peak, height,
eminence' referring to the hill of Populonia, borrowed from Ligurian
*boplo 'id.'.  Literary evidence indicates that Ligurians were in the
area before Etruscans, and <Boplo> as the name of a Ligurian hill is
found in the Sententia Minuciorum.  (This explanation is based on
comments by Bottiglioni, _Elementi prelatini nella toponomastica
corsa_ [Pisa 1929], p. 61.)

This may well be, and as I know nothing about
the geography, archaeology and history of Populonia
(Populonium in my historical atlas) I won't mention it
again.

Another Latin variant is Populonii, but the important thing is the
Etruscan form, which is consistent. (A coin which allegedly had φ or
f in place of p cannot now be found.)

Unlike most of the Ligurian toponyms in the Sententia Minuciorum,
<Boplo> has no convincing Indo-European etymology (to my knowledge
anyway).

4.  On the other hand the Etr. deity <Fufluns> is indeed related to
<populus>, being borrowed from Paleo-Umbrian *Poplons (cf. Etr.
<Neθuns> < P-Umb *Nehtuns < Proto-Italic *Neptu:nus 'Neptune').  The
Etruscans heard the Umbrian /p/ as [ph], and their early [ph] passed
into /f/ unless shielded by a preceding liquid or nasal (as in <hamφe-
'on the right side').

Villages were often founded on rivers; willows growing
along river banks provided the settlers with material
for building huts, wickerwork, wattle-and-daube-walls;
the Greek equivalent of Neptun, namely Poseidon, was
the patron of Troy, most concerned about it's safety,
and so I could imagine that also Neptun played a role
as a city protector.

Possibly. In the Iguvian Tables we do find the imperative <nepitu>
'overwhelm with water!', the object being the enemies of Iguvium.
Neptu:nus (based on a 4th-decl. noun *neptus 'flooding' vel sim.) was
probably at first the god of river-flooding. But this has only a
marginal connection with the etymology of <populus>.

.

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