Re: CHAT Easter & East (was: Country Related: Christmas)

At 9:33 am +1300 24/12/98, Andrew Smith wrote:
>On Tue, 22 Dec 1998, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>> EASTER
>>
>> The goddess was Eostre or Eastre, according to dialect, and her festival
>> was at the Spring equinox.  This is the etymology given by the Venerable
>> Bede but many now consider it to be 'folk etymology'.
>>
>According to one source I refer to for Brithenig customs Easter is related
>to IE cognates which means 'dawn'; Eos, Aurora, Ushas so it could mean the
>Festival of the Dawn Goddess OR the Month of the Dawn, refering to the
>season, which is comparable with April being derived from Aperire, to
>open.  It could also give a connection between dawn and east.
Yep - I've also seen this connexion given.  But simply connecting 'Eostre'
with Greek 'eos' looks very much like folk etymology to me.  Especially as
the ancient Greel was not uniformally 'eo:s' in any case.  The Attic Greek
was probably 'heo:s' and Ionic & Homeric was 'e:o:s', but the Ionians
"dropped their aitches" early on.  We come across also Corinthian 'a:wo:s'
(with a wau or 'digamma').  They derive regularly from an earlier *ha:wo:s
<-- *a:who:s <-- PIE *a:wso:s.  The latter develops regularly in Latin to
auro:r-a.

I have seen it suggested that both Eoastre/Eostre and the Old English
e:ast- (east) are derived also from PIE *a:wso:s.  But there seem to me
difficulties with such a derivation.

Ray.