Re: "Ancestor" in IE langs

Paul Bennett sikyal:

> Having dug through AHD and Barnhart -- and having lost my copy of
> Darling-Buck :-( -- I feel no wiser than I did when I started
> looking.
>
> What are some common etymologies of words meaning "ancestor" in
> various IE langs? I can get the literal derivation of "ancestor"
> itself, as a compound of H2ent- and ked-, but I know there are other
> words, derived from pH2te:r- and probably g'enH1-. I'm trying to
> produce a word that is not merely a restatement of English, but is
> rather a genuine historically plausible word.
>
> Currently, the word "ancestor" in Thagojian is shaping up to be
> qantk�d�t, and that's quite a mouthful, and qantpaqtr�t is hardly
> better.
Well, here's a link to search results through the LSJ (that's the "Big
Liddell", the mother of all Greek lexica) for the term "ancestor". It has
the usual suspects:

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/enggreek?lang=greek&lookup=ancestor&type=begin

The shorter ones are genet�s, gone�s, and patra, from the roots you
mentioned.


--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"