Iberia

[Eduard Selleslagh]

At 12:10 11/12/00 +0000 (and the follow-up message), you wrote:
>Ed Selleslagh writes:

>>  -In Antiquity both Georgia and Mediterranean SE Spain were already called
>>  Iberia, puzzling the writers of the time. In Spain the name seems to be
>>  related to 'ibar', Basque (Iberian?) for 'river (valley)'(cf. the river
>>  Ebro, Lat. Hiberus, another example of a river 'River'?). Note that ancient
>>  Georgia also consisted essentially of two major river valleys parallel to
>>  the Caucasus, so it could have been called 'ibar' by non-Kartvelians.

>The idea of deriving the name 'Iberia' from a Basque word has long been
>popular, but there are big problems with it.

>The central Basque word here is <ibar>.  Today this word means 'valley',
>and it is not systematically distinguished from the other 'valley' word,
><haran>.  However, there is some textual evidence pointing to an
>earlier distinction.

[total snip]

As you must know by now, I am fully aware of all the things you wrote. But
I didn't envisage tracing the word back to the Basques themselves: I was
implicitly suggesting that the word (if it is the basis of Hiberus and
Iberia) might be of (non-attested) Iberian origin, and had popped up in
later times as the  Basque word 'ibar' (Remember, this was in the framework
of a possible influence of Iberian on a possibly much older Basque/Pyrenean
language). Anyway, I never intended to start a new thread on this ( that
has been done before on the Basque list) but to explain some things about
the actual history of Basque-Caucasianism (and the 'Vasco-Iberismo') and
the ideas that float or floated around in that environment, to some
interested people on the list, and to point out that not everything in that
context is pure fantasy or nonsense, even though unfortunately, there is
quite a bit of that around..

Ed.