The curious case of Albanian coincidences

[A. Papadimitriou]

In general the idea that both the names Priamos and Paris were some short of titles which could have meant originally 'first' and therefore 'leader' is interesting.

 

[Johane Derite]

This is interesting overall but the thing that is unlikely is that the verb 'to be' existed in the personal name. You should search for Indo-European or {Albanian (or proto-Albanian)} suffixes that make sense.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categoryroto-Indo-European_suffixes

You should take into account how words were formed. What suffixes were used to form nouns from verbs or from adjectives etc
If you connect it to a word like prij (the word from which it descends because languages change) and an accepted IE (or proto-Albanian) suffix what you say will become more convincing.

Also there is the folk etymology which exist in the Wikipedia article. (which is not necessarily correct of course)

And the fact that there is a name Piyama-Radu attested in Hittite texts and some think that this person is the same as the Priamos of the Greek sources (although that isn't necessarily correct either)

Also note. There is also the Latin word primusthe Lithuanian word pirmas (=first)

Thanks for this man.

"Jam" is the first person version of "to be."

Cognate with "Am" in English and "(Eimí)" Ancient Greek :

εἰμί (eimí)



Ancient Greek

Alternative forms

• ἔμμῐ (émmi) – Aeolic
• ἠμῐ́ (ēmí) – Cretan

Etymology

From Proto-Hellenic *ehmi, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésmi (“I am, I exist”). Cognate with Old English eom (English am), Latin sum, Sanskrit अस्मि (asmi), Old Armenian եմ (em), and so on. More at *h₁es- (“to be, exist”).






But you're right this is a reach, and its more likely just a PIE suffix I am not yet familiar with.

But i think like you mentioned, it isnt too far fetched that its linked to some sort of Primus/Pirmas cognate title.

 

[Ernekar]

It's so strange how so many coincidences (and nothing more according to our neighbours on our north, east, and south borders) happen when it comes to the Albanian language and archaeology.


This is a bronze coin found in what is today "Ohrid" but according to archeological consensus used to be the Ancient Greek city of "Lychnidos."

First thing to note is the coin doesn't name the city as Lychnid-os but Lychni-dion


I was interested to see the etymology of "Lychnidos" and was surprised to see this explanation from the wikipedia link:

"In antiquity the city was known under the ancient Greek: Λυχνίς (Lychnis) and Latin: Lychnidus,^[6] probably meaning "city of light", from Greek λυχνίς (lychnis, gen. lychnidos), "a precious stone that emits light",^[7] from λύχνος (lychnos), "lamp, portable light".^[8] By 879 AD, the town was no longer called Lychnidos but was referred to by the assimilated native people as Ohrid, possibly from the Slavic words vo hrid, meaning "on the hill", as the ancient town of Lychnidos was at the top of the hill.^[9][10] In Macedonian and the other South Slavic languages, the name of the city is Ohrid (Охрид). In Albanian, the city is known as Ohër or Ohri and in modern Greek Ochrida (Οχρίδα, Ωχρίδα) and Achrida (Αχρίδα)."

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohrid?oldformat=true






Well, the reason I was surprised is because the word "Liqen" (q in albanian is pronounced like "ch" in "cheese") means Lake.

Liqen-i means "The Lake." It should be obvious it comes from the same PIE root as English Lake also.


This is Lake Ohrid from space:

So I guess my question is this:

Archeological, ethnographic, linguistic, and now Y-Dna and Autosomal DNA all corroborates that Albanians have been neighbours with Greeks for a very long time.

So why, in contrast to the Greek language, which is the #1 most studied Language on earth is Albanian among the least?

Even if Albanians had never contributed even ONE historically relevant person in all their existence, the language should be of interest by mere virtue of being right next
to the most studied one. And there are plenty of more recent historical figures in from the small Albanian population reaching from artists (Gjon Mili), a pope (Giovanni Francesco Albani), to statesmen (Francesco Crispi) and so on
to prove to even the most racist haters that at least in more recent history there have undoubtedly been important Albanian individuals.


In Ancient and Classical studies it is not even the slightest bit controversial to work on etymoligies and theories of origins of cultural phenomena by surmising foreign influence. It is very common that
for something unexplained a scholar may refer to Sumerian, Phonecian, or other very far away Semitic cultures based on trade routes and such.

But God forbid that one mention a possible neighbouring population that has too many negative stereotypes in contemporary life!

Neighbouring peoples don't interact at all in the case of proto albanians and ancient greeks. This is very scientific.

I hope everyone here noted that the Albanian etymology for "Lychnidos" is much more straightforward and less convoluted than the accepted one yet is entirely absent from the Wiki page.

Anyway, enjoy this video about Lake Ohrid aka Lychnidion:

I found out that another lake, lake Sevan in armenia, has a curious name which made me think of this post:

In classical antiquity, the lake (Sevan) was known as Lychnitis(Ancient Greek: Λυχνῖτις)

Can there be some relation? Or is it a coincidence that the word Lychni is used at two different lake sites?

 

[Ygorcs]

About some of those proposed etymologies for ancient names transcripted by Greek authors of the past, I think it's really necessary to remember that one shouldn't rely too much on using modern language terms to propose a certain etymological form of a term that was probably in use some 3000-3500 years ago (using it as a tentative beginning for a new hypothesis is okay, but it should really be just the 1st step).

That isn't just a bit misguided, because it inverts the chronological order of the linguistic evolution of sounds and words (one tries to make a modern etymology fit an ancient word, not the exact contrary), but it can also lead to very wrong paths of investigation if one doesn't first make sure that: 1) the perceived similarity between the word and the hypothetical modern language-based etymology still remains if we go back to the ancient forms of those terms; 2) that that kind of morphological process to devise new terms was really productive, effectively used in the ancient language; and 3) that the necessary phonological changes, that are assumed to have occurred to explain how the original etymology gave way to the subsequent word as we know it, aren't mere "ad hoc" suppositions to fit the hypothesis, but that in fact that they also happened in other words in similar phonological positions in the syllables.

For example, in the case of "Priam" I think the hypothesis presented by Johane Derite is plausible, but the mere similarity between an ancient expression of a certain language and the word found in other language would by itself by insufficient, let alone the phonological similarity between a modern expression in a neighboring language (Albanian) and the thousands of years old term in the ancient Greek language (especially without a demonstration that it is likely that names formed that way - "adjective + I am" - were really a thing in the morphology of that ancient language).

I think that, based on the reconstruction of PIE and the attested forms of the diverse Albanian dialects across the last centuries, some linguists must have already managed to derive some of the main phonological and morphological changes that must've occurred in the intermediary stages of that evolution from PIE to Albanian.

It would be really interesting if, based on that, it could be demonstrated that proposed etymologies like "I am the chief" (Priam) and "The first" (Paris) really should have sounded like "Priam" and "Paris" in that phase of Proto-Albanian, and how the borrowing of those foreign words into Greek should've led to their final form, and not another closer to the original one (particularly the final -is in Paris).

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

We can never be sure about those words because there is a chance that the Greeks (or other people for the names we have from other sources) had changed them to fit their own case system & phonological system etc.

This certainly happened sometimes in Medieval and even Modern Greek until a few centuries ago. For example Benjamin Franklin is called Veniamin Franklinos.
I think Lithuanians and Latvians are doing it even today, as far as I know e.g. Karlas Marksas, Karlis Markss etc. Though, I think in Lithuanian there is a tendency to drop it. (?)

Either way I forgot to say that the word ποδάρκης exists in Homeric Greek. It is used as an epithet for Achilleus. It is a compound word. The first part pod- (=feet) and the second part related to the verb ~arkeo:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...tic+letter=*p:entry+group=155:entry=podarkh/s

Many would support that the names of the Trojans the poet uses in the Iliad were made up because many of them appear Greek while it is assumed that the Trojans weren't Greek. In general, anything is possible. Maybe someone can say that the Greeks understood the meaning of their names and translated a part of them etc.

Personally I have considered the possibility that they were speaking a language related to Phrygian*. But that isn't provable. Also there is a possibility that in the Bronze Age there was a dialect continuum in Balkans and therefore some of the languages spoken could have been more similar than what it is assumed.

Either way, though, since both Paris and Priamos have two names each, the idea the the names Paris and Priamos represented titles seems to me possible to support.

*Trojans being related to Phrygians isn't supported by anyone as far as I know, although it is consistent with some ancient sources. On the other hand , there is at least one person (RSP Beekes) who supports that the Greeks didn't really fought in the Trojan War, but Phrygians did instead, which seems a very weird suggestion but whatever... So he would think that Trojans were speaking Anatolian IE probably, which is something that has been supported but it is not provable either.

 

[ilir]

Nice thread
very interesting T'amel (milk) and T'err (darkness)

also Pari (without S) it's used today for the leading persons in the Gegh clans. Like Bayraktar.

It would be great to a have a thread where we can explain words etymology from albanian.

 

[Johane Derite]

In Albanian, the word for "thursday" is not related to "Thor" as it is in english.

In Albanian the word for thursday is "Enjte."

This is what Vladimir Orel, the Russian linguist who is one of the only foreign linguists to have worked on Albanian etymologies says:

From Proto-Albanian *agni, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁n̥gʷnis (“fire”)), apparently translating Latin Iovis diem.



So, he is correct in tracing it to "agni" and "fire" yet then he goes on to say that it must be a translation of latin, i.e. a borrowing.

How can a linguist seriously in the same sentence link a word organically to its PIE root, and then say that it must actually be
a translation of "Lovis Diem" .

En or Enji is the Illyrian god of FIRE.

Agni (/ˈæɡni/ AG-nee, Sanskrit: अग्नि) means fire, and connotes the Vedic fire god of Hinduism.

 

[Johane Derite]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_(deity)

 

[AlbanianHighlander]

Get a hold of your grammar before replying to these educated gentlemen.

 

[AlbanianHighlander]

Telling this to that Greek guy.