Latin and Slavonic for `moon'

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<<I'd like to suggest that the word did not pass from Gothic to Polish but
from Gothic to Russian and then to Polish....>>

In a message dated 4/10/99 2:38:50 PM, you wrote:
<<-- that would require time-travel, since neither Polish nor Russian existed
at the time of Gothic-Slavic contact, and the Goths had moved west by the 6th
century.>>

You may need new sources.  Just about everywhere Gothic is discussed you'll
find references to the attestation of East Gothic being spoken in the Crimea
in the 16th Century.  See, eg. P. Heather, The Goths, p. 259, Blackwell
(pb1998); Hawkins in Comrie, The World's Major Languages at p, 69.  I seem to
recall also that the missionary-oriented Enthologue mentioned awhile back on
this list actually had it that a bible published was published in the
language in the 1300's - I can't substantiate that.  (As a sidebar, a Danish
grandparent of mine - not that she was an authority - would occasionally
refer to some Slavs as what I remember as "Gotar" which of course confused
me.  One explanation might be a name-tranference that may have happened in
the middle ages.  There was for example "a chronicle from the 12th Century
written by Archbishop Grgur of Bar (a city in Boka Kotorska, a region now in
Montenegro ).  The chronicle represents the oldest historiographic work of
Croatian Middle Ages. There exist two redactions, Croatian and Latin.  In
Croatia, it was called 'Ljetopis popa Dukljanina.' In Latin, it was titled
'Libellus Gothorum'.")

Actually the run mcv gave was << 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')>>, which has it coming into I guess Common Slavonic.  I'm
having a bit of trouble seeing the king>priest>moon progression, I think I
have a solid historical alternative that is phonetically closely related but
I'm really struggling with the linguistics.

The hard part is the << kuning-, from *kun-ja "kin" (*gon-) and Germanic
suffix-ing/-ung>> because *gon- is already in Greek *gno-, possibly before
German was invented.  After all, if you follow Mallory or Dolukhanov the
proto-Slavs were the Agricultural Scythians in 500BCE and therefore had
contact with the Greeks before the Germans. (Unless you accept a BSG) And of
course if the P-slavs were IE they should have had a *gon/*gnu or *kon/*knu
and i-stems quite before they met the Goths.  But anyway...

Regards,
Steve Long