Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)

Appendix to the glossary of the new Magdalenian words,
part 39, a test (nine)

First a correction of my previous message. The ancient
poplar ointment was made of buds of Populus nigra;
the balmic poplar is an American tree. Poples meant
originally hollow of the knee, back of the knee; poples
'knee' is post classical Latin (says my dictionary at home).
If poples was named for the poplar unguent, this one
might have been applied to and rubbed into the hollow
of the knee, in order to relief an arthritic inflammation,
and applied to the back of the leg in order to relieve
a muscle sore. Dried and ground poplar (and willow)
bark, added to the ointment, could have provided an
analgetic effect (eased pains owing to salicin).

A couple of years ago my brother Steve and I visited
the menhirs of Sion in the Valais, in southwestern
Switzerland, with a southern climate sometimes
reminding of the Provence. Poplars grew there already
in Neolithic times. Several menhirs reminded me of
poplar trunks. Have a look at these photographs taken
by Steve, showing menhirs interspersed with poplars:

www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8f.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8g.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8h.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8i.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8j.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8k.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8l.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8m.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8n.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8o.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8p.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8q.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8r.jpg
www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8s.jpg

The menhirs belonged to a cemetary, so I assumed
the menhirs evoking poplars alluded to the quick growth
of poplars, promising a next life in the beyond. Now
that poplars may have played a role in wattle and daub
walling of the Neolithic I imagine that the poplar menhirs
of Sion also promised plenty of poplar upshots for
building huts and fences in the heavenly abode.

The people of Sion had contacts with Valcamonica.
At least one ancient mountain pass connected the Valais
with the Padovan plain. The dwellers of the Rhone Valley
might have worshipped a similar vegetation god as Fufluns.
POL PLO poplo populus peuple (people), po:plo po:pulus
peuplier (poplar tree), ??? Puphlu Fufluns ... There is
a village by the name of Puplinge east of Geneva ...

Regards Franz Gnaedinger

..
..


Appendix to the glossary of the new Magdalenian words,
part 38, a test (eight)

Paul B. Harvey, Jr. and Philip H. Baldi, in: _Populus:
A Reevaluation_ (Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual
UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2000/1) discuss
various explanations of populus, then derive the word
from *pel 'to strike, beat' (Pokorny). Thus they can
explain populus in the sense of army, and populo(r)
'lay waste, ravage', while they explain populus in the
sense of people with the same shift from army to
people occurring in several other languages.

However, the root *pel can't shed light on populus
'poplar tree', Fufluns, and poples 'knee'. Considering
my permutation group of POL (published on Dec 11,
2006, here in this thread) I can explain also these words
and meanings. Here are three of the six permutations:

POL --- fortified dwelling; ancient Greek polis for town,
fortified dwelling, German Bollwerk for fortress

LOP --- hedge or wall around a dwelling; ancient Greek
lopos for shell, husk, bark (also envelopper, envelope)

PLO --- walls made in the wattle and daub technique;
ancient Greek plokos for texture, wickerwork, tissue,
fabric

If you can derive poplo populus from *pel, then certainly
also from POL:

POL PLO --- a dwelling of huts and fences made
in the wattle and daub technique, polplo po(l)plo
poplo poplo- populus

1) populus 'army' - those defending such a settlement

2) populo(r) 'lay waste, ravage' - attacking such a
settlement

3) populus 'people' - those inhabiting such a settlement

4) populus 'poplar tree' - referring to poplar used for
uprights in early wattle and daube walling, the tree
in question is Populus nigra, 30 to 35 meters tall,
with many long and straight upshots along the trunk

5) Fufluns - Douglas G. Kilday kindly informed me
that Fufluns is related to populus. Fufluns was the
Etruscan god of plant life, of health and healing,
and of wine. There is a link between Fufluns as
healer and poplar trees: buds of the balmic poplar
were used already in very ancient times for making
a medical ointment, helpful in cases of arthritis
and other infirmities

6) poples 'knee' - the city of Basel in Switzerland
is situated on the Rheinknie, on the knee of the river
Rhine, so I could imagine that early villages of huts
and fences on river bends or knees gave rise to the
word poples. Or, perhaps more convincing, one may
derive poples from a poplar ointment used in a case
of arthritis in the knee

The time horizon of POL PLO po(l)plo poplo 'village
of huts and fences built in the wattle and daub
technique (using poplar for uprights, willow for the
horizontal interweaving)' might have been, say, 8 000
to 5 000 BP. The time honored word would later have
been expanded to more solid stone architecture and
what it involved: defending a town (army), attacking
a town (enemy), inhabiting a town (people).

Next time: a message on the poplar menhirs of Sion
in the Valais (southwestern Switzerland).

.
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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.

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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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Relevant Pages

  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
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