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Day: March 26, 2016
How did names like Anatoly and Arcady become names in Russia?
Partial answer: from St Anatolius: Anatolius of Laodicea and Anatolius of Constantinople. Saints’ names are the default source of given names in Orthodoxy. The question then becomes, why this saint’s cult was so much stronger in Russia than in Greece—I’ve never heard of a Greek called Anatolios, and the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit has only […]
Historical Linguistics: In simple terms, what are the laryngeal consonants h₁, h₂, h₃? What do they have to do with the word “name” in various languages? What do they have to do with Proto-Indo-European?
This is self-indulgent of me, but this is how I presented the laryngeal theory to my poor Historical Linguistics students in 2002. Saussure (1879): let’s look at Ablaut in proto–Indo-European: e:o:Ø Greek patéra, eupátora, patrós [father.ACC, of.good.father, father.GEN] eR:oR:R̩ where R is a resonant (jwrlmn): R=w: Greek eleusomai, eiléːloutʰa, éːlutʰon [I.will.come, I.have.come, I.came] […]