A deeper source of Cretan Britomartis

Solinus spoke of Βριτόμαρτις Britómartis as a native Cretan name for Artemis, the Greek goddess of moon and hunt, which he claimed had underlyingly meant virgo dulcis 'sweet maiden'^[1] and Hesychius doubly equates his Cretan gloss βριτύ with Greek γλυκύ 'sweet'.

Apparently though, from what I've dug up so far, this is all that's ever written on the subject of the etymology of her name, an important question that's tossed aside for airy interpretations of local mythology to fill up the latest tome weighed by the pound. Out of desperate curiosity, I consulted Wikipedia to see if any of those busy bees had found just a smidge more than the status quo but predictably the groupThink swarm proved once again worthless. There's far more to the origins of this name but the following exploration is curiously absent in any book I'm aware of on the subject despite being, I believe, highly illuminating.

The first element, brito-, may remind us of the Greek example of ἄμβροτος 'immortal' from Proto-Indo-European *n̥-mr̥tós 'non-dying' showing how easy it is for /m/ to strengthen to /b/ before another resonant. In light of Hittite militu- '(honey)sweet'^[2], a characteristically Indo-European u-stem adjective derived from milit- 'honey', there should be no doubt where the first element comes from. The second part of the compound, -marti-, is contrastingly sourceable to Assyrian mārtu 'daughter, girl', a purely Semitic feminine form of māru 'son, boy'. These linguistic connections complement the already well-known Anatolian and Near-Eastern influences on Crete.


NOTES
^[1] Solinus, Polyhistor, 11.8.
^[2] Puhvel, Hittite Etymological Dictionary, version 6 (2004), p.155: miliddu-, maliddu 'honeyed, (honey)sweet'.


SEE ALSO
Paleoglot: My sweet honey bee

Battling the Indo-European axe

The Proto-Indo-European root *péleḱu- 'axe' seems to me to be contrived. While the correct centum-satem correspondence between Greek -k- and Sanskrit -ś- is reassuring, it by no means validates the reconstruction. First, we have two fullgrade vowels in two consecutive syllables which immediately gives the alleged root an un-Indo-European appearance. Second, the root rests solely on the strength of a comparison between just two cognates: Greek πέλεκυς pélekus and Sanskrit परशु paraśú-. Third, their respective word accents don't match.

On the other hand, there seems to be a controversy concerning the skeptic's attempt to relate the above lexemes with Assyrian pilaqqu which has been long claimed to mean 'axe' but which, given the new reading of 'spindle', is thereby discredited. Ironically however there remains Assyrian palāqu 'to fell, to slaughter' to contend with, a verb on which nominal derivatives like naplaqtu 'knife' were built. Surely this is fundamentally not an Indo-European word and a Semitic source like this one remains preferable over a PIE root that begs even more questions than it's worth.

Yet, while we're on the subject. Are we sure that Sanskrit परशु paraśú- is really connected to the Greek? Consulting the online Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, an alternative form, पर्शु parśú-, is also provided. Unless I'm overlooking something, this only adds further doubt to the comparison. I wonder in what way any IEist can provide reassurance that these two words should be related. Note also Akkadian parāsu 'cut off, cut into pieces, separate' which should warn us that, considering many competing sources of this word available, these cognates could be red herrings. It would help greatly if we could at least establish the antiquity of this word in Proto-Indo-Iranian by way of further evidence.