None of the hitherto proposed attempts at explaining the origin of the East-Slavonic numeral sorok ‘40’, is satisfactory. This refers almost equally to those propositions that derive it from Greek (F. Miklosich, A. Brückner, V. Jagić), Turkish (O.N. Trubačëv) or from Old Norse (M. Vasmer).
The author of the current article puts forward a yet another solution, this time pointing to the Ugro-Finnic languages. As the basis of the borrowing, the Udmurt proto-form *śor-ku/*sor-ku is advanced, which was adapted to *sorkъ > sorokъ on the East-Slavonic ground. A possible semantic evolution leads from ‘marten pelt(s)’ > ‘a bundle of pelts’ > ‘a bundle of pelts of forty pieces (as many as was needed to sew one fur-lined overcoat’ > ‘a numerical unit (measure) used in trade’ to ‘a stand-alone number 40’. The proposed etymology corresponds well with the context of Ugro-Finnic – East-Slavonic linguistic and extralinguistic contacts.

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird – ausgehend von einem Eintrag in dem von K. H. Menges nachgelassenen Manuskript des “Etymologischen Wörterbuchs der türkischen und anderen orientalischen Elemente im Serbokroatischen” – den möglichen Ursprüngen von Serbokroatisch čêrga ~ čȅrga ‘(kleines) Zelt, Teppich, etc.’, Bulgarisch čérga ‘(gemusterter) Teppich, Läufer (mit Fransen) etc.’ sowie verwandten Formen in verschiedenen slaw. und türk. Sprachen (sowie im Ungarischen, Rumänischen und Albanischen) nachgegangen. Diese werden hier auf ein Bulg.-Türk. *čärgäg ~ *čärgä- zurückgeführt.

Once more on the origin of SCr. čȇrga ~ čerga ‘(small) tent, carpet etc.’
The present paper investigates the possible origins of SCr. čȇrga ~ čerga ‘(small) tent, carpet etc.’, Bulg. čérga ‘(patterned) carpet, long narrow carpet (with fringes), etc.’ and related forms in Slavonic and Turkic, as well as in Hungarian, Romanian and Albanian. The starting point is an entry in K.H. Menges’ posthumous Etymologisches Wörterbuch der türkischen und anderen orientalischen Elemente im Serbokroatischen. The forms are derived here from Bulg.-Tksh. *čärgäg ~ *čärgä-.

The stingray, τρυγών, is not named after the turtledove τρυγών (from τρύζω ‘to coo’), as is usually assumed: the fish is not a ‘sea turtledove’. It should rather be analyzed as *ptrug-on- ‘the winged one’, with the zero grade of πτέρυξ, -υγος ‘wing’: the ray’s fins are similar to wings, and their slow flapping movement gives the impression that the ray flies rather than it swims. A zero-grade form of the name of the wing is attested in Iranian (Av. fraptərəjāt ‘bird’), but is probably not to be sought in Slavic *astrębъ ‘hawk’. The etymological form, then, should be reconstructed *(π)τρῠγών; the attested form is τρῡγών, with long [u:] warranted in metrical occurrences, and analogical after that of the bird name τρῡγών ‘turtledove’, because of the synchronic system in which many bird names were transferred to fish, the bird name behaving as the model. Thus two originally distinct words, τρῡγών ‘turtledove’ and *τρῠγών ‘stingray’ merged into one single word.

Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Untersuchung der Lehnwege von Wörtern, die im Rumänischen und seinen Nachbarsprachen nachgewiesen werden können, und die orientalischer (osmanisch-türkischer, arabischer, sowie persischer und seltener kurdischer) Herkunft sein können. Andererseits werden Lehnwege einiger rumänischer Wörter angeschaut, die aus nordöstlicher Richtung auf das Sprachgebiet gelangt sind, wobei es sich zuweilen um durch das Ukrainische übermittelte turksprachliche Wörter, zum Beispiel tatarischer Herkunft, handelt. Der jeweilige Lehnweg beleuchtet stets Gesichtspunkte aus der historischen Epoche, der er zugeordnet werden kann. Ausgangspunkt sind rumänische mundartliche Wörter, die auf den Sprachkarten des Sprachatlasses ALR S. n. II nachgewiesen werden können. Zur Einordnung ihrer Herkunft und ihres Lehnweges stehen sprachgeografische, lautliche und semantische Kriterien zur Verfügung.

Borrowing paths of some orientalisms and words of Eurasian origin in Romanian and other Balkan languages
The present paper attempts to track the borrowing paths of some words in Romanian and neighbouring languages, which are possibly of Oriental (Ottoman, Arabic, Persian and rarer Kurdish) origin. In addition, some Romanian words of Turkic (e.g. Tatar) descent are investigated which have come from North East, via Ukrainian. The starting point are Romanian dialectal words found in ALR S. n. II. For the classification of origins and borrowing paths, linguistic geographical, phonetic and semantic criteria have been used.

Im Artikel werden semantische Beziehungen zwischen drei homonymen ig. Wurzeln *ṷerĝ- (‘wirken, tun’, ‘einschließen’, ‘Kraft, Zorn’) und drei urslaw. Wurzeln *čara (‘Schale’, ‘Zauberei’, ‘Strich, Linie’) betrachtet. Alle ig. Wurzeln werden auf eine einheitliche ig. Grundform mit der Bedeutung ‘biegen, umgeben’ und drei urslaw. Wurzeln auf die Wz. *(s)kṷer- ‘schneiden’ zurückgeführt. Es ist nicht ansgeschlossen, daß ig. *(s)kṷer- eine der Varianten der ig. Wz. *sek-/seǩ-/sekṷ- mit der Bedeutung ‘schneiden’ ist. Alle drei Wurzeln können von einer Grundform *sē-/se- mit einer synkretistischen Bedeutung ‘schneiden/verbinden/biegen’ mit Hilfe der Determinative k, ǩ, kṷ gebildet sein.

The concepts of ‘cutting’ and ‘magic’ in Germanic and Slavonic languages
The article examines the semantic relationship between three homonymous IE roots *ṷerĝ- (‘to work, to do’, ‘to include’, ‘power, anger’) and three PSlav. roots *čara (‘shell’, ‘magic’, ‘stroke, line’). All the IE roots can be derived from the meaning of ‘to turn, to surround’, while the PSlav. roots go back to *(s)kṷer- ‘to cut’. It is possible that (s)kṷer- is one of the variants *sek-/seǩ-/sekṷ- with the meaning ‘to cut’. All the three roots can be built from *sē-/se-, synchronically ‘to cut / to connect / to bend’, with the help of the determinatives k, ǩ, kṷ.

Die skythische Abstammungssage in Herodot IV 5 7 enthält am altiranischen Namengut vier Personennamen und fünf Stammesnamen. Nach der hier angenommenen Deutungen werden der Urmensch Targítaos als ‘Vater der Menscheit’, seine drei Söhne als Urkönige ( xšay ) und Stammväter der historischen skythischen Stämme bezeichnet, Lipóxaïs ‘Herrscher der Halbinsel’ der Krimskythen (Aukhátai), Arpóxaïs ‘Kleinkönig’ der nomadischen (Katíaroi), jenseits des Flusses (Gerrhos) wohnenden (Trápies) Skythen, Koláxaïs ‘überall herrschend, d.h. Großkönig’ der königlichen Skythen (Paralátai); bei dem letzteren kann es sich um einen Thronnamen handeln, auf das königliche Roßopfer bezogen, das vermutlich der Sage über die skythische Verfolgung der Kimmerier zugrundeliegt.

Onomastics in a Scythian descent legend
The Scythian descent legend in Herodotus IV 5-7 contains four Old Iranian personal names and five tribal names. With the interpretations adopted here, Targítaos comes to mean ‘the father of mankind’, and his three sons become the primeval kings (-xšay-) and the progenitors of historical Scythian tribes. Lipóxaïs means ‘the ruler of the peninsula’ of Crimean Scythians (Aukhátai), Arpóxaïs means ‘kinglet’ of the nomad Scythians who live across the river, and Koláxaïs means ‘the ruler of all, i.e. the great king’ of the royal Scythians (Paralátai); the last case may be about a throne name, based on the royal horse sacrifice which underlies perhaps the legend of the Scythian pursuit of the Crimmerians.

This article offers a critique of Árpád Berta’s paper (2001) in which the author contends that the Bšk. tŷraž word for ‘wasp’ originated (via the Volga Bolgharian) from the Hung. darázs id. The present author attempts to point out the weak points in this interpretation, and proposes, instead, the PSlav. *dražъ as the source of the Hungarian and the Bashkir words for ‘wasp’. Thus, the article augments our knowledge of the possible Slavonic origin of the Hungarian and Bashkir words, and provides further details in support of the etymology presented by András Zoltán (2010; 2011).

Latvian is the only Baltic language that presents a suppletive variation between a positive and a comparative: adverb daũdz ‘much’ / vaĩrs or vaĩrâk ‘more’. The question arises whether this composite paradigm is an innovative feature of the Latvian language or could be traced back to Proto-Baltic, and any answer to this question is strongly dependent on how we explain the origin of the Latvian comparative vaĩrs, vaĩrâk. The aim of this paper is to propose a new etymology for vaĩrs and to shed some light on the prehistory of this suppletive variation that appears to be unique in the Baltic languages.

This article investigates a certain irregularity in the Greek sound changes, namely that associated with the Greek form ϑ ήρ ‘beast’, assumed to come from the sequence */ĝhṷ/ but treated exactly like the aspirated labiovelar. It is shown that the examples upon which this hypothesis was built are in themselves quite doubtful and even though more examples of this change can be found, they still remain insecure. The sound change is then neither confirmed nor falsified but certain phonetic details of its process are investigated.

The paper aims to explain the origin of two old Italian words of Turkish origin, cassasso ‘a Turkish police officer’ and pettomagi/pettomanzi ‘Turkish officer(s) dealing with the possesions of the dead’. Contrary to a previous etymology of his, the author’s present opinion is that cassasso derives from the Ottoman-Turkish hasas, a spoken variant of the literary Arabism ‘ases ‘a guard, night-watchman, policeman’. As to pettomagi/pettomanzi, it is possibly a Turkish adaptation of Greek words as πεϑ αμός ‘death’, πεϑ αμένος ‘dead’ + nominal suffix -cI.

The paper aims to explain the origin of two old Italian words of Turkish origin, cassasso ‘a Turkish police officer’ and pettomagi/pettomanzi ‘Turkish officer(s) dealing with the possesions of the dead’. Contrary to a previous etymology of his, the author’s present opinion is that cassasso derives from the Ottoman-Turkish hasas, a spoken variant of the literary Arabism ‘ases ‘a guard, night-watchman, policeman’. As to pettomagi/pettomanzi, it is possibly a Turkish adaptation of Greek words as πεϑ αμός ‘death’, πεϑ αμένος ‘dead’ + nominal suffix -cI.

Der alte Hirsch- bzw. Rentierkult der Jenissejer hat mit der Rentierzucht nichts zu tun; es kann sich nur um die Sakralisierung von Jagdtieren, und zwar der Cervidae handeln. Interessant sind weitgehende Kulturparallelen in der türkischen und indoeuropäischen Welten mit Wanderwörtern für ‘Hirsch (Hirschkuh)’ und ‘Hirschkalb’. In Gebieten, wo nomadische Viehzüchter die einheimische Bevölkerung unterwarfen, wurde der traditionelle Kult durch den Kult des Pferdes verdrängt, als Übergangserscheinung konnte auch ein Pferd mit Geweih erscheinen.
Die cervidengestaltigen Attribute des jenissejischen Schamanen lassen von einem ‘Cervidentyp’ sprechen. Selbst das Wort für ‘Schamane’ lässt sich hier mit dem Begriff ‘Rentiere’ verbinden, und so kann die Typusbezeichnung ‘Schamane’ aus den Jenissej-Sprachen hergeleitet werden.

The ancient Yeniseian deer and reindeer cult in the light of the vocabulary
The old Yeniseian deer and reindeer cult is not connected in any way to reindeer herding. There are interesting and far-reaching cultural parallels in the Turkic and Indo-European worlds, linked to the words for ‘deer (doe)’ and ‘fawn’. The cervid attributes of the Yeniseian shamans permit us to separate a cervid type of shamans in general. The word for ‘shaman’ itself can be connected to the word for ‘reindeer’, and thus derived eventually from the Yeniseian languages.

A recent bimoraic analysis of the properties of (late) PIE laryngeals supports Rix’s theory of PIE CRHC (with implications for CRHV) in Greek and Beekes’ law of laryngeal vocalization following initial resonant. Beekes’ difficulties involving PIE *r are eliminated by demonstrating that Latin and Vedic, unlike Hittite, Greek and Armenian, always distinguish between PIE *rHC- and PIE *HrHC-. Lubotsky’s partly related law of laryngeal loss in Indo-Iranian is found to be supported by twelve (partly amended) etymologies out of Lubotsky’s original fourteen plus one new one. Alternatives are essayed for etymologies containing PIE *a proposed in refutation of these laws. Accentually conditioned voicing by *h3 is further promoted.

Two important etymological dictionaries (one of English and one of the Germanic languages) and a bibliography of English etymology appeared in recent years. The aim of this article is to critically present and compare, as well as to formulate a conclusion concerning the best possible future of an etymological dictionary.