[gothic-l] Re: Vladimir (bojar)

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi, Vladimir,

if i would look for a Turkic etymology for "boyar", I would think to
a plural form "baylar" or "beyler" from bay/bey, which are variants
of the Turkic rank name "Bek" (in Turkish, the plural suffix is -lar/-
ler, depending on the last vowel of the noun, and I suppose the same
is valid also for other Turkic languages, since this language group
is not very divergent, with some exceptions like Chuvash, Yakut,
Tuvan). But this doesn't look very plausible even for me, thus I
don't dare to promote this hypothesis, taking into account also that
I'm not a specialist in Turkic languages.
Having in view the fact shown by you that most Old Russian words
linked to feudal hierarchy are of Germanic origin, to look for a
Germanic origin of "Boyar" would not seem very hazardous. But I don't
know how a derivaton "bo jarl" > bol'ar or bojar would fit with the
phonetic change rules for such Germanic loanwords into Old Russian
(because I don't know these rules).
Regarding the examples provided by you, they are very interesting. I
knew only about the Germanic origin of knjaz' (from kuning), but not
about the other three. They may be derived also from Gothic, but
taking into account the historical context, they are rather from Old
Norse.
Once I was looking for Common Slavic words borrowed from Germanic,
more exactly from Gothic. I've found some, like hleb "bread",
mech "sword", lek "medicine" > lechit' "to cure", skot "cattle" and a
few others, but I suppose that there are more.

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "?????? ????????" <vegorov at i...>
wrote:
> *<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-
com:office:office" />
>
>
>
> Hi, Francisc!
>
>
>
> The point is just that I have found
> neither attestations nor the exact meaning
> of the conjectural Turkic (Old Bulgarian)
> word *[bojl] or *[bol']. Namely this fact
> prompted me to look for another alternative.
> My conjecture "bo jarl" conforms to
> a general rule. Most of terms of the feudal
> hierarchy in early medieval Russia were
> borrowed from Germanic rather than Turkic.
>
> Several examples are:
>
>     1) odal > [udel] "principality";
>
>     2) kuning > Old Slavic *[k(u)ne(n)g]
>         (with weak unaccented vowel and
>         nasal e) > Old Russian [kn'ag] (cf.
>         [kn'agin'a] "princess") > [kn'az']
>         (with the palatalized interchange
>         of consonants) "prince";
>
>     3) umbott(man) > [e(n)bot-nik] (with
>         nasal e and a Slavic professional
>         suffix) > [jabetnik] "overseer,
>         tax collector";
>
>     4) gird(man)/grid(man) > [griden']
>         "retinuer".
>
>
>
> In this line, the conjecture "bo iarl" does
> not look alien, does it?
>
>
>
> The etymology from [boj] is more than
> dubious. Not to mention that it is
> not correct grammatically, the word [boj]
> itself for "battle" was not in use those
> times. I seem the words [bran'] of [secha]
> would be more relevant for etymologizing.
>
>
>
> Vladimir
>
>



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