Aiwropais Ahvos jah Thiudos

Wed May 24 11:53:18 UTC 2006

Hi Vladimir!

  As a fulfillment of my own prophecy to provide some etymologic reference on that controversial matter about chud’...
  You seem to mistrust your colleagues at the Academy of Sciences, so I’ll confine myself with Max Vasmer. He’s not Russian and therefore maybe less likely to participate with that scientists’ conspiracy you told of :) His Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch was published in 1950-1958 in Heidelberg and re-edited in 1986-1987 by Moscow “Progress” publishing house. He asserts as well (vol. 4, p. 378) that _chud’_ is a name of the Old Finns once populating regions of Pskov, Novgorod, Archangelsk and Olonets, and that the primordial meaning of the word is usually held to be “Germanen” with its origin brought back to Gothic thiuda.
  Regarding the “Chudskoye” (Peipus) lake, it was not his idea to explain it from Gothic *thiudisks saiws “Deutscher See” as I wrongly said but that of the “Learned Estonian Society in Dorpat” (Sitzber. der Gel. Estn. Ges., 1920: 112) which he cites (ibidem), however critically. He reports also the lake’s popular name Chukhonskoye ozero.
  Here I’d like to adduce another source. It is Russian-Estonian dictionary (Wene-Eesti Sõnaraamat. - Jurjew (Tartu): K. A. Raag’i kirjastus, 1904), p. 1015, where Russ. _chukhna_ is defined as follows: “so Russians call in general Finnish-related peoples of the Baltic Sea region – Estonians, Finns and others, including those Finns living around St.-Petersburg” (nõnda nimetawad wenelased üleüldse Läänemere-äärseid Soomesugu rahwaid - eestlasi, soomlasi j.t., iseäranis aga Peterburi ümber asuwaid soomlasi); hence _chukhonets_ M., _chukhonka_ F. “Finn, Estonian” (soomlane, eestlane); _chukhonski_ Adj. “Finnish, Estonian” (Soome-, Eesti-). With regard to _chukhna_ being a debased form of _chud’_, it wouldn’t look very convincing to assume that these semantics in spoken Russian could have resulted from a suspected historic prejudice in Russian scientific circles. It seems much more probable that this meaning has been retained in vulgo since the times of the first contacts
 between the Slavs and the Finns in this region.
  Incidentally, Vasmer denies a Finnish etymology for “Volga” (vol. 1, p. 336-7) leading it together with Czech Vlha (the Elbe basin) and Polish Wilga (the Vistula basin) back to PSl. *Vilga (reduced -i-), cognate to OChSl _vlaga_ “moisture” (different ablaut stages) and words of other IE languages with similar meanings. It’s not Volga but Vologda which comes from Vepsä våuged (< *valkeða), Fin. valkea, Est. valge “white” (p. 340)
  Regarding that RA of Ptolemy, it was not my idea of connecting it with Avestan Rangha and Sanskrit Rasa but Vasmer’s (it just remained nameless in my memory after reading it some time ago). Looking at Mordvin names of Volga - Rav, Ravo, Rava (ibidem) - one could really suppose some Gothic mediating form like *Rahva or *Rawi... Btw. Tatars use Kara Idyl (“black Itil”) alongside with Idyl alone for Volga as distinguished from Ak Idyl “Kama” or “Belaya” (ibidem).
  To finish with Vasmer, on p. 346 he tells of Swedish Ålhava “Volkhov river” attested in a 16th century record < Fin. Olhavanjoki, Olhava.

  Ualarauans

  P.S. Didn’t that nazi think-tank von Braun work for the U. S. after 1945?

åÇÏÒÏ× ÷ÌÁÄÉÍÉÒ <vegorov at ipiran.ru> wrote:
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