Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)

On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:10:01 +0000, R A Brown <ray@...>
wrote:

>What I find less convincing is relating this stem to the Greek forms
>that I cited in my last mail.
Found them. :)

>Some people connect the Celtic & Latin forms also with the ancient Greek
>/na:sos/ or /nE:sos / (according to dialect; the modern Greek is /nisos/).
I suspected that's what you meant before I knew for sure.  The Greek forms
seem to go back to *nexsos, if from a root *nexs-.  Now interestingly
enough, the IE root for 'nose' is very similar, if not the same:

Latin _na:ris_ (< *na:sis) 'nostril', _na:sus_ 'nose' (however, we should
expect _na:rus_ here, so this may be a loanword (from Greek?))

Greek _na:sos_ / _ne:sos_ 'island'

Sanskrit _na:sa:_ 'nose'

English _nose_ < Old English _no:su_ 'nose', possibly _snore_ if from
*sna:re

German _Nase_ 'nose'

Russian _nos_ 'nose'

All of these forms seem to point to an IE root *nexs- (> *na:s-).  However,
some descendants show a short vowel (Germanic, Slavic) and others a long
one.  Reconciling these different 'grades' has been an ongoing problem.
Anyways, it seems to me like the word for 'nose' could be metaphorically
extended to mean 'island' (after all, they often look like "noses" of land
poking up out of the water).  Then with a feminine diminutive, we'd get
*nxsláx > *nslá: 'little nose'.  Add the sound changes from IE to Latin and
we should get _insula_.

- Rob