Iberia

[Stefan Georg]

Thanks, Wolfgang, for this excellent lesson. In connection with it, I
have to mention that a few weeks ago we had a public lecture here (I
didn't attend) on the "two ancient Albaniae", in the Balkans and the
Caucasus, arguing that there is a connection after all, because of,
surprise, the name ! It was read by a certain Dr. Hecht ...

>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/
>********************

--
Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332