Etymology of Prague?

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Marc L. Greenberg wrote:

> Paul, I assume you are no longer discussing Prague, as the assumption
> with regard to the p- in Praha is that is was borrowed from some
> archaic and unknown I.E. dialect. As for the Slavic *breg-, Germanic
> berg correspondence, I confess I fail to see the problem. Germanic
> brother/Bruder, bear correspond to Slavic *bratr- 'brother', *brati
> 'take', both of which had I.E. *bh-.

Actually, I was, in part.

If Slavic borrowed *preg/*prog/*prg from an archaic IE dialect, the
timing is critical for its reflexes in the daughter languages. For
example, if the word existed in the common ancestor of Slavic and
Germanic, then any Germanic reflexes should have *f-. But Slavic *p- and
Germanic *f- cannot be forced to mesh with G *berg, Sl *breg with PIE
*bh-; thus we cannot equate (or even relate) it to Cz Praha.

On the other hand, if Slavic borrowed it at a later stage after the
Germanic consonant shift, then Germanic *p- could be a reflex of PIE *b-
(not *bh-, of course), and *that* could correspond to Slavic *b-. Once
borrowed into Slavic, the Germanic *p- from PIE *b- would merge with
native Slavic *p- from PIE *p-, and the result should be doublets in
Slavic for much the same reason as East Slavic has glava/golova. So if
Cz Praha goes back to Common Slavic *prog- from Germanic *prag-, we
should also expect native Slavic reflexes such as *brog- directly from
PIE. Here, too, we cannot force the inclusion of G berg, Sl *breg with
PIE *bh-.

To sum up, I was having a problem seeing how to relate G berg, Sl *breg
to Cz Praha, or indeed even to Common Slavic *prog. The semantics is
vaguely tempting if we look at the other putative "Urbian" items, but I
don't see how to fit this square peg into the round hole of Cz Praha.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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