Basque <egun> 'day'

[Larry Trask]

Ed Selleslagh writes:

>  Your response is interesting, as it says that the Turkish word is from
>  the name of the sun; apparently the Basque word is also related to
>  'daylight', at least according to some.

OK.  Basque <egun> 'day' has no etymology, and is clearly native and ancient.
The combining form of this word is either <egu-> or <egur->, showing
alternations which are quite regular in ancient words.

The nearly universal word for 'sun' is <eguzki>, which consists of <egun>
plus a compound noun-forming suffix <-z-ki>, where <-ki> is a suffix
forming concrete nouns, and <-z> is the instrumental suffix, which has
a habit of turning up in odd places.  The whole thing is, roughly,
'day-thing'.

The Zuberoan dialect has for 'sun' <ekhi>, which is almost certainly
from *<egu-ki>, the same as above but without the <-z>.  The development
of *<egu-ki> to <ekhi> would in fact be quite regular in Zuberoan.

For 'daylight', the most widespread word today is <eguargi>, with <argi>
'light', and the compound is parallel to the English one.  Some varieties
have re-formed this as <egunargi>.

Hiding behind all this is the seemingly ancient stratum of words formed
on *<ortzi> ~  *<osti>.  The precise significance of this is uncertain,
but its numerous compounds point to the range of senses 'sky, cloud,
thunder, storm'.  One of the derivatives is <oskarbi> 'clear sky', with
<garbi> 'clean'.  Best bet for the original sense of *<ortzi> is 'sky',
I think, but the evidence is not decisive.  The modern Basque word for
'sky' is <zeru>, from a Romance development of Latin <caelum>, roughly
*<tselo>.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk