What's the deal with Svutaf?

Who is the young, winged Svutaph or Svutaf in the above drawing of mirror ET Vs S.15?^[1] Many attempts have been made to explain it. Some consider it a transcription error or the real name in reverse. No one has clear answers and the mystery lingers like locker-room odour.

It turns out that Vesuna is an Umbrian goddess.^[2] Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante suggested an "Umbrian influence" on the subject matter of this mirror.^[3] Since word-final -f or -φ is uncommon in Etruscan, it seems likely to me that Svutaφ is Umbrian too. Proto-Italic *-ns became Umbrian -f.^[4] So this fricative occurs in word-final positions quite a lot in that language and can help explain the unexpected spelling in this name.

If we consider an Umbrian origin, it's interesting to note the common comparison of this name with Latin suādēre 'to persuade'. So is this all suggesting an underlying Umbrian deity named something like *Svādaf? On that note, we should recall a Roman goddess of persuasion named Suāda.


NOTES
^[1] This rough illustration was published in De Grummond, Etruscan myth, sacred history, and legend (2006), p.120.
^[2] Opuscula romana, vol 31-32 (2008), p.22; Iguvine Tablets, 4.11-12: Vesune Puemunes Pupřikes 'To Vesona of Pomonus Poplicus'.
^[3] Bonfante/Bonfante, The Etruscan language: An introduction, 2nd ed. (2002), p.210.
^[4] Schwartz/Arbeitman, A Linguistic happening in memory of Ben Schwartz: Studies in Anatolian, Italic, and other Indo-European languages (1988), p.389: "Parallels exist for the change of final *-ns to -f, e.g. Umbrian sif ACC PL 'pigs' < *sūns."

An etymology for 'Rome'

I think I finally got it. This etymology has eluded me for a while but with so much to look up I left it on the backburner, simmering like a spicy gumbo. Nonetheless, it frustrated me at every turn. In almost every book, there's always the same answer: "unknown origin". Worse yet, some lazy etymologists tack its origin on Etruscan without any substantiation whatsoever, often without even being qualified in this language, effectively explaining one mystery with another.^[1] How convenient. However, just last night, I had a brainwave and it all seems to have fallen into place. Here's what I believe to be the most optimal solution I can muster.

I dare say the name of 'Rome' was originally Umbrian, not Etruscan nor Latin: *Rūma. It would literally have meant '(Town of) flowing waters', from *rūmōn 'river; flowing water', a securely Indo-European formation built on the root *reu- 'to flow, to run (as of liquid)' and the derivational suffix *-mo-. When we gander at an ancient dialect map, we see that the ancestors of the Umbri probably covered the area of Etruria before the arrival of the Etruscans. It also helps that an ancient name for the Tiber, the river running into Rome, was Rumon according to Servius.^[2] I can find no possible, attested root in Etruscan at all to help us unlock its meaning nor has anyone else published anything convincing and competent to this effect, so an Etruscan origin seems the least likely in all of this.

When the Etruscans finally came, they would have adopted the Umbrian name, thus Etruscan *Ruma. Note that Etruscan has no phonemic long vowels. In fact, the Etruscan language has no phonemic contrast between u and o either. Therefore, probably being pronounced [ˈɾo.mə] (assuming u in open syllables was pronounced as high-back /o/), the early Latini would have adopted it as Rōma (its original meaning in Umbrian presumably lost or obscured at this point).

Further word associations, immaterial to the debate of Rome's etymology, such as the pun with Latin rumis 'teat' created the myth of the nursing she-wolf protecting the founding twins, Romulus and Remus. Sound good? Good.


NOTES
^[1] Gessman, The tongue of the Romans: Introduction to the history of Latin and the Romance languages (1970), p.8 (see link); Pulgram, The tongues of Italy: Prehistory and history (1958), p.256 (see link).
^[2] Servius, Aeneas 8.63 (see link): "Nam hoc est Tiberini fluminis proprium, adeo ut ab antiquis Rumon dictus sit, quasi ripas ruminans et exedens."; Servius' passage is acknowledged in Partridge, Origins: An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1977), p.2809 (see link). The fact that the author claims "more likely from Etruscan Ruma, the name of an Etruscan clan" despite being comparatively much less secure, even after already elucidating a perfectly rational and sufficient origin through Rumon, is a puzzling but typical display of obscurum per obscurius that continues to irk me as a reader.

The 'god' word in Europe

I'm mired in a giant can of worms here. After pondering deeply the past week on all the exact details of the origin of the Etruscan word ais 'deity', I find myself not only skeptical of the direction this word traveled but also even more intrigued now of how widespread a common set of mythic traditions are. Most authors seem to be writing that the word ais spread from Etruscan into the various Italic languages. Whereas another interesting possibility I'm exploring is that it went in the other direction, from some Italic language (probably Umbrian *aisos) into Etruscan before 700 BCE.

If the Italic form was *aissos (perhaps from *h₂éisdtos '', let's say), it's interesting that the Germanic form for 'god' is so similar, *ansuz. At first I was thinking that maybe the *-n- isn't really there, maybe an etymological fantasy. However the association between different variants of the same names in different Germanic languages (eg. Ásgeir vs. Ansgar, literally 'god-spear') would assure us that the *-n- was probably there. It would almost look like a borrowing if it weren't for that *-n- in place of *-i-. Then again, what if the Germanic word were a borrowing and were originally **aisuz. With later contamination with the similar word *ansaz 'beam' due to a cosmic analogy between the structure of their universe and the structure of a house (ie. the roof = sky, the beams = gods, the supports = dwarves, etc.), we have a motive for the odd theoretical change.^[1]

Curiously, we also have the Celtic god Esus which, after reading up on the basics of his myth, I'm convinced he's equivalent to one the aspects of the Etruscan solar trinity, Tinia Thufl 'Tinia of Oath'. I've spoken of this trinity before. Esus is also part of a Celtic triad involving Taranis and Teutates, which again can be matched perfectly with Etruscan Tinia Thneth 'Tinia of Thunder' and Tinia Cilensl 'Tinia of Darkness' respectively.

So now I wonder if there's a chance that these forms spread from Italic to Celtic and onward to Germanic particularly between 500 and 200 BCE. I'll have to think through this some more. There's still so much to read. Will I live long enough to know everything? ;o)


NOTES
^[1] Bandle/Elmevik/Widmark. The Nordic languages: An international handbook of the history of the Germanic languages (2002), p.400 (see link); Liberman, An analytic dictionary of English etymology: an introduction (2008), p.49 (see link).

The origin of Perugia

I don't know about anyone else but I keep on tripping over new questions with apparently no answers and it can be very frustrating when no one else is asking the same questions (or at least not being vocal enough to ask them). Here's an interesting question with no clear answers: What is the etymology of Perugia.

Perugia was originally an Etruscan city founded in Umbrian territory. We know that the Latin name was Perusia and the Etruscan name can be reconstructed as *Φerusina based on Φersnaχs in TLE 363. Now what the dabnammit does it mean? What's its etymology? Where does this name come from? Blank. Unlike many other subjects that yield something of interest, searching online for Perugia's origin gives me either websites with random answers or published texts from the 19th-century with equally random answers. And don't get me started on how useless internet groups can be, full of the usual crackpots and trolls.

All I could find that was even remotely helpful was Antonio Sciarretta's website which displays a fearsomely long list of etymologies for a variety of European toponyms including those in the region of ancient Etruria. Let's examine. According to him the "second part of the name is usually [recognized] as a toponymic formant and compared with the one of Venusia (Lucania), Genusia (Apulia)." (ie. Perusia is to be divided up as *Per-usia). This immediately smells like false parsing to me since one could equally come up with other ad hoc 'toponymic formants' like *-asia and find examples like Ocrasia and Planasia to serve as 'evidence' with far too much ease to suit my skeptical nature. Sciarretta follows this with mention of wild attempts to link the name with birds (Latin parra)^[1] and rocks. The only statement here worth considering seems to be the last one when he offers that it's possibly from an Umbrian root *Perus-.

Indeed, I can agree to an Umbrian origin because I myself get the impression of a specifically Italic root here. When we look at the Etruscan name, *Φerusina, and strip away the suffix of appurtenance -na, we're left with the root *Φerusi-. Yet the root has an odd shape for Etruscan. It's not possible to analyse it further since Etruscan roots invariably head the word and this would yield *Φer- with a nonsense suffix *-us(i)-. To add, the letter phi normally starts off foreign names, as seen in many clear Greek loans such as Φamn 'Phaon' (ET AS S.1) and Φersipnai (CIE 5091) or Umbrian ones like Φisie (Φisis [TLE 470] (gen.); cf. Fisius). This also lends to the theory that this is an Umbrian term.

As I find no sensible meaning and source given to this name as yet, I've thought of one possibility that doesn't involve sparrows or stones. In Latin if I'm not mistaken, we have the phrase per rūra 'through the fields' (nb. -s- > -r- in rūra). So could it not be simply that Perusia means just that? When I look at an aerial map of the terrain, I see that Perugia is situated in a patch of relatively flat land situated at the foot of surrounding mountains. Such a meaning then would be perfectly plausible.




NOTES
^[1] Bonfante, I Nomi di Assisi e di Capua, published in Italica, vol. 20 (1943), p.195 (see link).

The Iguvine Tablets and Etruscan

The Iguvine Tablets are texts written in Umbrian detailing rituals that have some bearing on Etruscan rituals. Etruscans lived side by side with Italic peoples like Umbrians and so it's not a stretch to think that they shared similar religious rituals despite the difference in language. So I'm teaching myself some Umbrian and staring at these texts. One passage in the Iguvine Tablets is interesting in relation to the Etruscan Liber Linteus and it goes like this:

Este persklum aves anzeriates enetu, pernaies pusnaes. Preveres Treplanes Iuve Krapuvi tre buf fetu. Arvia ustentu, vatuva ferine feitu, heris vinu heri puni. Ukri-per Fisiu, tuta-per Ikuvina feitu.

"Begin this ceremony by observing birds, those in front and those behind. Before the Trebulam Gates sacrifice three oxens. Offer grains, put ribs on a tray, either with wine or with mead. Sacrifice for Mount Fisian, for the nation of Iguvium."

I highlight the part that interests me in red. The reason why it's interesting is that it shows the importance to Umbrian priests of cardinal directions and of the observation of birds for omens. There is precisely the same emphasis in Etruscan religion. Additionally, it appears that hante-c repine-c (and its other attested forms: hate-c repine-c, haθe-c repine-c, haθrθi repinθi-c) is the equivalent of the Umbrian phrase pernaies pusnaes and is found throughout the text of the Liber Linteus.

I'm not sure if others translate Etruscan hante-c repine-c as "both ahead and behind" but Larissa Bonfante gives the value of "in front" to hante and so the translation of repine as "in behind" seems like a reasonable next step. If so, I wonder then if it could be a borrowing from Latin repōnere "to put away" (the prefix re- meaning "backward, behind") followed by reduction of the secondary vowels due to Etruscan's initial-syllable stress accent. This phrase however is in a slightly different context:

Cis-um pute tul θans haθe-c repine-c, śacni-cle-ri cilθl, śpure-ri, meθlume-ri-c enaś.

The word tul seems to refer to a boundary stone and θans may be the same word as the unsyncopated animate plural form tanasar (found in TLE 82 & 83) which seems to refer to mourners in a funeral procession. I presume that -um in the first word is the phrasal conjunctive seen elsewhere, meaning "and so" or "then". If so however, this means that cis is the genitive of ci "three". Then what is pute? It appears to be a verb in the preterite and we find the form puts ^[1] in TLE 131 (Laris Pulena's sarcophagus) and puθce in CIE 5730.

Anyways, the whole point of scouring the Iguvine Tablets is to look beyond just the grammar of Etruscan, and determine the greater religious context of these texts. Fun, fun, fun!

NOTES
^[1] Pfiffig equates Etruscan puts with Latin ponit '(he, she) places' and the German verb aufstellen 'to set up'. See Die etruskische Sprache: Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung (1969), p.138.