Accent of some Slavic theonyms

[Ralph Cleminson]

On   Thu, 22 Apr 1999   Jim Rader wrote:
>
> Most of the deities are taken from a few passages in the <Povest'
> vremmenykh let>, and I can conjecture haphazardly enough on the
> phonetics of the vowels and consonants.  Stress poses a problem,
> however.  Do people who teach or lecture on early Slavic
> religion/culture have some sort of communis opinio on the stress of
> these names?  Vasmer stresses some, though not all of the <Povest'>
> theonyms, and I'm happy enough to go along with his placement of
> stress (though I really don't know how he came up with the stresses,
> seeing that these texts, if I recall correctly, were not accented).

The Chlebnikov text of the PVL, which admittedly is rather late (16th
century), is accented.  Looking at the list of gods in the entry for
the year 6488, we find (all in the accusative):
'Peruna
'Xorsa
'Dazhd6'boga (accent on both syllables!)
Stri'boga
Se'margla
'Mokosh6.

This may be useful as far as it goes.  If anyone has access to
facsimiles (or originals!!) of earlier MSS, they may be able to tell
us more.

R.M.Cleminson,
Professor of Slavonic Studies,
University of Portsmouth,
Park Building,
King Henry I Street,
Portsmouth PO1 2DZ
tel. +44 1705 846143, fax: +44 1705 846040