Talk:List of English words of Etruscan origin

Untitled 2004 post

defenestrate is a great word... --Dante Alighieri | Talk 00:25, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

Untitled 2005 post

I thought "April" came from the Latin word for "opening". RickK 06:12, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

from L. (mensis) Aprilis "(month) of Venus," second month of the ancient Roman calendar, dedicated to the goddess Venus and perhaps based on Apru, an Etruscan borrowing of Gk. Aphrodite. Replaced O.E. Eastermonað, which was similarly named for a fertility goddess. [1] Bogdan | Talk 09:13, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. Wish I had an OED.  :-( RickK 09:14, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

Atrium

I removed atrium because most current references (all that I've seen) support (while often with some reservation) the derivation from PIE *ater-, 'fire, blackened, etc.'. This etymology is backed up by classical references (cf. Servius), but more important, according to some historians, the hearth was often located in the Roman atrium. The Etruscan idea largely derives from Varro, who wrote that atrium derives from the name of the Etruscan town Atria, where supposedly the atrium-style originated. Alexander 007 23:56, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Ceremony and Ceasar source: *"Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española" by Guido Gómez de Silva (ISBN 968-16-2812-8)--Hraefen 20:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

My two cents

I personally see many problems with this list but I can't go into it right now. Mainly, a lot of bogus etymologies and made-up Etruscan words. I shall return! --Glengordon01 16:30, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay I'm back. As I said these Etruscan words need to be justified with either actual Etruscan texts (such as a CIE reference number, for example). I see none of this here. Sometimes glosses were made by classical authors but these need to be carefully examined. Some are genuine; some are completely dreamed out of thin air. Caution is due, as always.

atrium

As Alexander 007 says, Latin <âtrium> can be etymologized without imagining an Etruscan word that may not be attested. Oh indeed, there are similar-looking words which we may find in Etruscan, but proving that they actually mean atrium has not succeeded whatsoever. However, to be true to the modern knowledge on Proto-Indo-European (we're talkin', since 1950 or so), IE *ater- is now written with laryngeals, which are no longer considered controversial since the days of Julius Pokorny, and the days since the discovery of Hittite for that matter. Unfortunately the American Heritage dictionary still uses these outdated Pokornyisms and displays *ater-. Any recent book published in the past forty years however will show otherwise. The root should now be reflected as *h₁eh₂ter-. In IE, *eh2 produces the later long vowel *â that we see in the non-Anatolian languages like Latin. In Anatolian proper (to which Hittite belongs), the laryngeal is in fact preserved. No matter, atrium is in no way proven to be Etruscan. --Glengordon01 22:40, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• You're obviously well-versed in IE and I assume that all your comments are made in good faith, but i think that you should read (reread?) WP:Verifiability where it says " As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Rather than concentrating on the merit of the works that led someone to include something on this list, let's focus on providing balanced viewpoints. What I mean by this is, let's not take 'atrium' off of this list, but rather, add to the body of the page your reasons (with citations of course) why the Etruscan derivation is doubtful. This way, all viewpoints are given and the readers can decide for themselves which is true, or at least be aware of competing theories. I am aware that much of Pokorny's work has now been revised, but as long as a major English dictionary is continuing to base their etymologies largely on his work, any word included on this list based on that work should not be removed. I look forward to seeing any additional viewpoints that you can bring to this page (or any other etymology page for that matter). Good luck.--Hraefen 23:20, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• On a related note, does anyone know of a good resource which is similar to American Heritage's IE index, but which reflects the modern revisions of Pokorny etc which Glengordon01 was referring to above? I would really be interested in comparing this to Pokorny. Thanks.--Hraefen 23:33, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Ironically, we find the verifiability within the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngeal_theory. Claiming that the Laryngeal Theory is unverifiable, even online, is like denying the existence of gravity. I've explained already why Indo-European can no longer be reconstructed this way. You should at least make sure that the wikipedia doesn't have resources already available on this subject. --Glengordon01 23:58, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• I think you're misunderstanding the whole point of what I said...I never said that what you're saying is more OR less verifiable than anything else. I only said (I think it was pretty clear) that all views should be expressed. We can talk about the finer points of reconstructed IE roots all day long, but that doesn't change the fact that on Wikipedia, anything from a credible source (American Heritage Dictionary definitely qualifies) should not be removed, rather other information (with verifiable sources) should be added to give balance to the issue at hand. If you disagree with this, then you fundamentally disagree with WP:Verifiability (did you read this?), one of the three core policies of Wikipedia. I thought I was being pretty diplomatic here and you have now made this whole thing an exercise in condescension.--Hraefen 15:13, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

WP:Verifiability is about _hearsay_, not about established theories.

WP:Verifiability is about _unpublished stories_, not published works.

The American Heritage Dictionary is just an English dictionary, not a book on Proto-IE.

A specialized work like Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture is published and verifiable.

EIEC is published by qualified experts.

EIEC does not show *ater-, nor can it because it accepts the modern Laryngeal theory.

Laryngeal theory states that *â (as in <âtrium>) can only come one possible source, *eh₂.

Universities world-wide now accept this theory, and have for decades.

Julius Pokorny died 36 years ago; this book was published only 9 years ago.

I can't help your misinterpretations of condascension because these are all published and verifiable facts.

--Glengordon01 01:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• OK. You're still not understanding what I'm getting at and I think it might be intentional. You seem to like to argue whether anyone is arguing with you or not. I never doubted anything that you've said. Do you understand that? Do you? I'll say it again. I never doubted anything that you've said. You're going out of your way to prove something that I never doubted. The ONLY thing that I wanted to get across was that sourced info on wiki should not be removed, but other info which supports OR contradicts it can be added. Let's just drop this line of conversation unless it becomes an actual point of contention. But something tells me you don't want to.--Hraefen 02:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I can't help it if you aren't clear in expressing your viewpoint. Plus, I'm not taking anything off so why are you full of angst? I'm merely _adding_ to Alexander's input so don't have an aneurysm. Peace. --Glengordon01 08:50, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

April

I'd like to add that this etymology is also highly suspect. The reason is that I personally know of no reference to an actual Etruscan word <apru> anywhere. Sure, I could be wrong. No one can be on top of everything afterall, but if the word does exist, you'd think someone would have kindly supplied a reference number showing where the word lies. I see no reference number. It could be made-up for all I know. So I think this etymology should be withdrawn until it can be justified. In fact, April_31 explains the Latin term <aprîlis> as deriving from <aperîre> 'to open' (as of flower buds in the spring). So lacking a valid Etruscan source for the term, while simultaneously having a possible native source, probably nails the coffin on this lid. There's a good chance it ain't Etruscan. --Glengordon01 00:07, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

It appears a few times in the Tabula Capuana, thought to be a kind of ritual calendar. Johundhar (talk) 07:56, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

arena

Hmm. Now isn't <arêna> a Latin word? Latin and Etruscan are different languages. They aren't even related. Again, reference number to Etruscan texts? Is this a gloss from a classical source perhaps? Gotta find something to back this up or it should be withdrawn. I notice a pattern actually. Is it simply because this word ends in <-na> that it is assumed to be non-Latin. That would be a hasty conclusion since there are native Latin words that happen to end in <-na> as well. If we had a real Etruscan word to go on, we'd be in business but... Thoughts? --Glengordon01 00:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

autumn

I have to admit at first glance Latin <autumnus> looks deliciously Etruscan but yet again we have no real Etruscan word anywhere! It seems that because of the variant <auctumnus>, many consider it related to the verb <augeô> 'I increase' as for example in this link, [[2]] (Please excuse my French, hehe): 'autumnus ou auctumnus. Ce mot vient d'augeo, qui veut dire augmenter [...]' (English: 'autumnus or auctumnus. This word comes from augeo, which means to augment [...]'). This refers to the bounty or excess from harvest at that time of year. So here's another native word mistaken as Etruscan again. --Glengordon01 00:35, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

belt

I was going to fight this one until I found McCallister's Etruscan Glossary link [[3]] which vaguely mentions some sort of gloss 'by Romans'. You live, you learn. Well, I think it would be nice if I knew which Roman(s) in particular made this gloss. I don't know off-hand but have been personally looking into all this Etruscan mumbojumbo in the past six months in particular. The site refers cryptically to [g/lb83 60] but the Bibliography page is not working currently. There's a 98.2% chance that it refers to page 60 of a 1983 book, "The Etruscan Language", by Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante (hence g/lb). I must look that up for myself. Still, we must be careful since classical authors (like modern authors) may have had other reasons (political, personal, poetic, ironic, etc) for claiming these things. This word at least has potential as far as I can see. --Glengordon01 00:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Caesar

'Caesar' had been popularily related to a native source, <caedêre> 'to cut' (hence <caesum>), with a fun story about Ceasarian birth. This is seen now to be a fantastic folk-etymology but no one appears certain about its real origins at all. In fact, it's got me curious now. But, what attested Etruscan word satisfactorily explains this name? Burden of proof tells me that this name should be taken off until justified. --Glengordon01 09:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

ceremony

If 'ceremony' is from Latin <caeremônium> 'that pertaining to Caere', then we have to establish that the city of Caere is somehow an Etruscan name in order to justify it being listed here. A link to the Perseus Project shows the sources of the classical theories out there on the origin of Caere. Classic authors think that the city was founded by Pelasgians but that term was always kind of vague. Some are obviously contrived etymologies, real dillies. There are no guarantees at all, although it seems that the Etruscan language was at least the middleman for this term. Ultimate origin though? Not necessarily. --Glengordon01 09:46, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

person

This is all based on one possible interpretation of Etruscan <φersu>. The word is located next to a male individual on a mural in the Tomb of the Augurs. He wears a mask and hence the popular interpretation that <φersu> means "masked person". In some strange leap of association, since classical actors wore masks, <persona> is automatically assumed to be of Etruscan origin (?!). Forget the fact that he has a Persian-like beard, with Persian-like clothes with a Persian-like name next to him from a tomb created during the height of the Persian Empire. So you may be forgiven if you think that the published authors may not know what they're talking about and that you start suspecting that <φersu> means "Persian" instead. --Glengordon01 01:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I should also add that while people keep on asserting "he wears a mask", the picture we see from the Tomb of the Augurs doesn't show us this with any clarity at all. Looks like his normal face to me. --Glengordon01 02:05, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I reneg on the mask. I can detect faintly that it could indeed be a mask because of differences in hue between the face and the body, making it more likely that the man is an actor in a typical classical play. Nonetheless, I'm even more convinced that <φersu> means "Persian" (specifying then the person's role, not accoutrement) because of the Greek word for "Persian", Περσου <Persou>. This would ironically mean that Etruscan <φersu> is in fact a Greek loan! --Glengordon01 01:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

satellite

Satellite is from Latin <satelles> 'attendent' [[4]]. The word <satnal> however is found in a few Etruscan inscriptions like the inscription named "TLE 128": <partunus vel velθurus satlnalc ramθas clan avils XXIIX lupu> "Vel Partunu, Velthur and Ramtha Satlna's son, years died 28" [[5]][[6]]. As we can see "sat(l)nal" here is a name, not a word, with the genitive ending <-l> signifying "of, from". It is certain that it does not mean "attendent" but the myth is still propogated by "Etruscan-is-a-Latinic-language" fetishists. Etruscan is not related to Latin. So despite being published, the theory is wrong and "satellite" cannot be Etruscan anymore than "igloo" can. The next question is where Latin <satelles> comes from, for real this time. I'm not a Latin expert but my bet lies on <satiâre> 'to satisfy', which is what attendents do for their masters afterall. That verb is not Etruscan either. It's native, stemming directly from Proto-Indo-European *seh₂- (Pokorny *sâ-). --Glengordon01 09:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I located another inscription with <satnal>, again in the genitive case with the ending <-l>, that of TLE 135: <camnas larθ larθal satnalc clan [...]> "Larth Camna, son of Larth and of Satna [...]" [[7]]. Again I hope this now makes it clear why <sat(l)na> is simply an Etruscan name and has nothing to do with "satellite". --Glengordon01 09:57, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

sentinel

Since we know from the satellite example above that <satnal> is a name in the genitive case, we know that this entry is yesterday's meatloaf as well. --Glengordon01 10:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

spurious

I found a link that supports this association [[8]]: "From Late Latin spurius, from Latin, illegitimate, probably of Etruscan origin." Note, that it says probably without any further explanation. Well, this can't be true based on the facts that we know, because the only word known in Etruscan resembling "spurious" is <spur> (sometimes spelled <śpur>) meaning "city" (found in TLE 676, for example) . How do we get from the meaning of "city" to "illegitimate" (!!) in a serious way without succumbing to amateurish folk etymology and word games? Nonetheless, it _is_ published, like so much else, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still make me cringe. --Glengordon01 10:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

This is all very interesting, and you sound like something of an expert, however it sounds like this is your original research. If you can supply academic sources for your claims (even your own published work) then it would be fine to amend the article accordingly. Ben Finn (talk) 17:37, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I would add, Glengordon01, that most of your arguments above seem to assume that we can only assume a Etruscan origin of a Latin word if we now know of a recorded Etruscan word that resembles the Latin one, and that because Etruscan and Latin are unrelated (at least at the level of being non-IE and IE respectively), Latin cannot contain words borrowed from Etruscan.

What your arguments seem to be gloss over is that (a) The Etruscan culture bordered and dominated that of early Rome for several centuries, making borrowing (in both directions) extremely likely, and (b) Etruscan was still spoken in Italy and in Rome itself during the lifetimes of many classical Roman writers. (You must be aware that the Emperor Claudius was Etruscan-literate and compiled an Etruscan dictionary, sadly lost, with the aid of native Etruscan speakers.) Where a Roman writer recognised as a generally reliable scholar asserts that a given Latin word is borrowed from Etruscan, does that not have sufficient weight as to be worth utilising as a probability? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.60.183 (talk) 04:54, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Capitalized

I have capitalized each word as per the general convention in a dictionary entry. --Bhadani 08:25, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

---

General convention of what sort of dictionary? Sounds like an ancient Old English convention. I've decapitalized it back to normal because this is English not German. Names are capitalized; general nouns (even in a list such as this) simply aren't. --Glengordon01 06:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Cites?

It would really be nice if this article had some citations. Its just a list of words that the reader has to take on faith are of Etruscan origin. There are few if any etymologies, and none are sourced.

I wanted to add a few cites, so, as with most articles that discuss etymology, I started with the online dictionaries: namely, Random House, Merriam-Webster, and The American Heritage Dictionary (I used to use Oxford too, but I no longer have subscription). I also started with antenna, the first word in the list. None of the three dictionary etymologies lists Etruscan. Fine. I went to the Etruscan Glossary and did indeed find that supposedly antenna, antemna "sailyard" came from Etruscan; however, I cannot find their bibliography, and as a lowly non-Etrurophone and a linguistic layman, cannot decipher the string of characters ("[mp68: 369, pa]") after the entry.

Now, I have read some of the talk, and I realize some of you do not have a high opinion of the dictionaries; however, it would help if you put in some of your citations too. Thanks. --SigPig 14:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

sentinel?

The online etymology dictionary disagrees with this wikipedia article by stating the etymology as follows:

sentinel: 1579, from M.Fr. sentinelle, from It. sentinella, perhaps (via a notion of "perceive, watch"), from sentire "to hear, perceive," from L. senire "feel" (see sense). http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sentinel

Thus, I hereby call the word's satnal-root into question.

I think you're referring to satellite. Ben Finn (talk) 17:42, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Antenna

The article says, antenna is ultimately from Greek, therefore (though it may have been borrowed into Latin from Etruscan), antenna is not an Etruscan word and should not be on the list. Likewise other words ultimately from Greek, which were borrowed into Latin from Etruscan, should be removed too. The word appearing in Etruscan is just a stage, like it appearing in Latin, French or English. Should we count it as a Latin word? No, and we should not count it as Etruscan either.

86.165.139.232 (talk) 09:14, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, if it was borrowed from Etruscan (which you seem to admit as a possibility, but which I have no opinion on at the moment), then it was indeed and Etruscan word at that point, whatever its ultimate origin. I do think it would be useful to divide these items into words that have an exclusively Etruscan origin (or at least that don't have a good etymology beyond Etruscan) versus words that came ultimately from Greek but were borrowed from there into Etruscan and then into Latin (probably the larger category). But if I don't get to it, others are welcome to do so, if they are feeling energetic!Johundhar (talk)

Antenna/person

Antenna's most solid attribution is Latin, and even in this page it links ultimately to Greek. Its inclusion is as preposterous as the exclusion of "person," which is recognized as likely Etruscan in origin by all major etymological dictionaries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheInimitableKaka (talk • contribs) 00:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)