Etruscans

[Douglas G Kilday]

David L. White (6 Feb 2001) wrote:

>For people to maintain an
>ethnic identity over several centuries of "troubles" is not at all unsual.
>One may point to the Goths in the Crimea, the Wends and Kashubians in
>Germany and Poland, the millenium-long "Turkicization" of the Greeks in
>later Anatolia, etc.  A process of the Lemnian Trojan/Etruscans being slowly
>assimilated to the Thracians has nothing at all improbable about it.

Maintaining a *linguistic* identity on a small island in a high-traffic zone
for several centuries would be quite unusual. Continental comparisons are
hardly valid. To maintain pockets of linguistic conservatism on small
islands, you must have islands remote from most of the world's traffic, such
as the Faeroes.

>It [conjecturing Tursenoi = Tw-rw-s] is not so heavy.  The word Tursenoi
>almost has to have been borrowed from some non-Greek source, as /rs/ is not a
>native Greek sequence, and /turs/ is a form we might expect foreign /turs^/ to
>take in Greek.  An Egyptian source works perfectly well.

I agree that <Turse:noi> is not native Greek, but IMHO it was more likely
borrowed into Greek from Umbrian, other p-Italic, or "Italoid" (Messapic,
Venetic, etc.) than from Egyptian. It is more difficult for me to envision
the Umbrians borrowing a term for their own neighbors from Egyptian by way
of Greek.

I don't follow your phonologic argument. Medial /rs/ became /rr/ in
Classical Attic, including <Turre:noi> as well as appellatives like <arre:n>
'male', <cherros> 'dry land'. The occurrence of /rs/ in other Greek dialects
is not *per se* evidence for borrowing.

>No, I do not "have Etruscans bringing Etruscan from Italy to Lemnos".  I
>suggest merely that the mother (or perhaps aunt) polity was subject to
>influences, both cultural and linguistic, from its more glorious daughters.

>One may compare (very vaguely) the popularity of what is historically
>American music in Britain, post 1962.  If Britain can be Americanized (and
>it has been, in a lot more than music), then Lemnos can be Etruscanized.

A lot of things *can* happen, but all you seem to be promoting here is what
*might* have happened between Italy and Lemnos without presenting any
argument. It doesn't require a Ph.D. degree (or even a kindergarten diploma)
merely to contradict someone.

>Furthermore,  "land of the others" does not make much sense as an
>ethnonym.  Most people are surrounded by "others" (thus the "Middle-Earth"
>syndrome:  we are in the middle of the earth), so that such a term would
>necessarily have been vague.  And such basic words as "same" and "other",
>almost pronouns (certainly closed class words) are not to my knowledge
>ordinarily used in coining ethnonyms.  More garden variety adjectives and
>nouns are more normal.  The Greeks, for example, did not name any
>neighboring group the /heteroi/, and it would have verged upon bizarre if
>they had.  (Those that might have been called /heteroi/, in terms of
>practical meaning, were in fact called /barbaroi/.)  Latin /alieno-/ is
>effectively a legal term, not an ethnonym.

Yes, you have a valid point about ethnonomastic typology which casts serious
doubt on Alessio's derivation of Etruria from *Etro-rousia. Several Etruscan
words do show double forms which could be regarded as examples of epenthesis
or apocope of initial /e/:

(1) eca, ecn, eclthi, etc. demonstratives vs. ca, cn, clthi, etc.
(2) esals 'of two', eslem 'but two', eslz 'twice' vs. zal 'two'
(3) escuna 'allows' vs. scuna, scune, scuvse, etc.
(4) eprth- 'type of office' vs. purth, purt(h)-

A similar alternation of *Etrs-/*Turs- could account for the two series of
ethnonyms. The Recent Etruscan self-name was Rasna (trisyllabic with sonant
/n/) but Tursikina, apparently a gentilicium, in Heurgon's recension of the
fibula of Clusium (ca. 600 BCE) indicates that Turs- was in use earlier. A
variant *Etrs-/Etrus- is not implausible.

>> The basic root behind Tyrsenoi, Tusci, and probably Thouskoi is Tursk-,
>> which appears in Umbr. Turskum (numem) = Lat. Tuscum nomen 'the Tuscan
>> nation', and in the Arch. Etr. GN Tursikina. The /k/ of Etrusci does not
>> belong to the root (cf. Falisci, Falerii <- *Fales-).

As I now see, my argument about /k/ was empty. The Iguvian Tables contain
other ethnonyms, Naharkum and Iapuzkum, which indicate that the correct
division in Umbrian is Turs-kum, not Tursk-um. Sorry.

>If /sk/ can change to /s^/, regardless of front vowels, as in Old
>English, then there is enough similarity between the two to motivate
>possibly rendering /s^/ as /sk/, if speakers of a given language for
>whatever reasons feel so inclined.  /s^/ is back of /s/, and /k/ is back.
>Stranger things have happened.  It is a reasonable trans-linguistic
>mangling, as such manglings go.  Native reaction to non-native sounds or
>clusters can be quite diverse.  To expect a uniquely determined or
>universally favored outcome is naive.

It would indeed be naive to claim that /s^/ > /sk/ could *never* happen. I
simply registered my doubt that it happened *here*. If doubting is naive,
then you and I are both very naive.

Anyhow, given the plausibility of connecting Tusci and Etrusci, I must admit
that your theory has half a leg to stand on. I still see no reason whatever
to link Troia with these. As for Tw-rw-s "Tursha", without the informed
opinion of a competent Hamitist, we are playing ping-pong in the dark with
the phonology.

DGK