Latin and Slavonic for `moon'

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

>"Kunnig">"ksiezy"?
>Hmmm.  Until I hear otherwise from Miguel and the Lords of the Sound Laws, I
>am forced to assign this to the dark confines of the Dubious Etymologies file
>(in which of course many of my own derivations are also entombed.)

I already gave the sound laws for this one: Gmc. kuning(az) >
Slav. kUne~gU or kUne~gI (i-stem) > kUne~dzU/kUne~dzI (3rd.
palat.) > knjo~dz (loss of jers; Polish e~: > jo~) > ksia,dz
(Polish kn' > ks').

>But while we're at it let me give you my own dubious derivations:

>"kosciol" is possibly from something - way back- like "koczow-ac" (Pol) to be
>encamped, from "koczow-nik", nomad; "koczow-", to wander; "kos", horse
>blanket.

Pol. <kos'cio'l~> (Loc. kos'ciele), with the Polish "przegl~os"
(Umlaut) o < *e before hard dentals, is clearly *kostelU < Lat.
castellu.

>And get a load of this:
>"Kunnig"

Actually, kuning-, from *kun-ja "kin" (*gon-) and Germanic suffix
-ing/-ung.

>is from something like "konn-ica" (Pol), horsemen; "konn-y",
>mounted; ("koni-arz", horse-trader>?"kunning-az") from "kon", horse.

OCS konjI "horse", of unknown origin, possibly *kobnjo- (and
further *kopH- "hoof"?) and related to Russ. kobyla, VLat.
caballu, etc.

>Before the domestication of the horse, the root "kon-" referred only to the
>herd or herding dogs.  Once the horse became domesticated, the
>Slavs/Scythians/generic-IE-nomads,

Not generic IE, but (Tocharians aside) satem-IE, I'm afraid.
Iranian span-, spaka- "dog", Baltic Lith. s^uo, Latv. suns "dog"
[and Russ./Pol. suka "bitch"?].  You can't connect Slavic *konjo-
with the dog word.  Wrong guttural (though there is Latv. kunja
"bitch").

Incidentally, Lith. pekus, OPr. pecku "Vieh", with *k instead of
*k^ would seem to be another reason to cast doubts on *k^uon <
*pk^uon > Slav. pIsU.  The more I think about, the more likely I
find it that Slav. pIsU "dog" is simply "Spot", from *peik^-
"spotty, motley, tawny" (cf. the dog Kerberos < *k^erbero-
"striped, motley").

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam