Iberia

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Richard Coates wrote:

> Further to Larry Trask's posting about this name: it should not be ignored
> that it very closely resembles (at least the nominative form of) the native
> name for Ireland, reconstructable as *_i:werjo:_, and latinized as
> _(h)ibernia_ with /n/ imported from oblique case-forms.

Let me just add another aspect to the discussion: When I browse through
all the Iberia/Hibernia/Ebro etc. terms I'm left with the impression
that the Ancient world used Iberia etc. to denote all kind of places in
the outer periphery of the then known world (Spain, Caucasus). In other
words: Anything was 'Iberia' as long as there existed a local motivation
to apply this term. A local motiovation could have been any place name,
river name (Ebro for the Spanish regions ?), ethnonym (Armenian iver-k
(asp. k) for the Georgians) or what so ever as long as it 'sounded'
alike or resembled 'Iberia' in its phonetics (the same happened to the
European term 'Georgia' (in the Caucasus) which shows assimilation of
Persian Gurji etc. to 'Georgia' - here, the Christian connotation of St.
Georg plays an important role as well as the name of Gregor in terms of
the early Georgian orthodoxy). Note that we can observe the same 'folk
semantics' or 'folk constructions' for the term Albania: Because the
Ancient World knew lots of place names (esp. associated with high
mountains) that contained something like alb- (Alpes, Albion (celtic),
Alba etc.) a more general term 'albania' emerged that was used for
regions with high mountains. When the Alwan people (Classical Armenian
aluan-k (velar l, asp. k (plural)) in now Northern Azerbaijan came into
the horizon of the Ancient World (4th c. BC) their name was
reinterpreted on the basis of this general term, which gives us the
Classical name 'Albania', then used for both the Balkan und Caucasus
regions. The pity is that some people belief in the reality of such
correpondences which are - in fact - nothing but folk constructions in
the dimension of the geographic knowledge of the Ancient World.

Wolfgang
--
********************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut für Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Universität München - Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 - D-80539 München
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180 2486 (secretary) // ++49-(0)89-2180 5343 (office)
Fax:  ++49-(0)89-2180 5345
Email: 	W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Web:   	http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
********************