Non-IE roots in Germanic/@, a, e, i, j, o, u

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Anthony Appleyard" <mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk> wrote:

>Rick Mc Callister wrote:-
>> *i:sarno [Celtic, Germanic] > iron, Eisen n.
>> [< ?Vasconic *isar "star";
>> see Basque izar "star"] [mcv2/98, tv2/98]

>Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> replied:-
>> No comment.

>Also, Greek `side:ros' = "iron", Latin `sidus' (gen `sideris') = "star".

The Latin word is an s-stem *sidos-/*sides-, so there is no
connection with Greek sida:ros (Attic side:ros), unless one
assumes the word was borrowed directly from Latin.

It might be more interesting to compare the Grk. word with Basque
zilar ~ zirar ~ zidar ~ zildar "silver" (< *sidar ?).

>This
>semantic association was quite possible in early times when Man had not yet
>found how to smelt iron and iron was a precious rarity available only as
>natural nickel-iron alloy in meteorites.

Meteoric iron is indeed the earliest source for the metal, as
seen for instance in Sumerian AN.BAR "[lit. sky silver] iron".

That's what makes a Celtic *i:sar-no- derived from "Vasconic"
*isar "star" semantically plausible.  Unfortunately, there is
zero evidence from Basque itself for the use of <izar> in a
metallurgical context.  Basque for "iron" is <burdina> (maybe
originally "ore", if compounds like burdin-gorri [=red] "copper"
and burdin-(h)ori [=yellow] "brass" are not recent coinages).

For completeness, the native Basque metal names are:

GOLD    urr(h)e
SILVER  zilar ~ zirar ~ zildar ~ zidar
LEAD    berun ~ beraun
IRON    burdin(a) ~ burdun~a ~ burni(a)

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam