"Wife" (was: Homosexuality etc.)

Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> Swedish used to have _viv_, also neuter. To my knowledge, it was never
> derogative, but it's obsolete in any case - your average Swede wouldn't know
> what it means.
Yeah, North Germanic decided to go with the widespread IE root kwen-, which
surfaces as "queen" in English and I forget what in Skt, but it means
"goddess".  This probably got somewhat pejorated too, down from "noblewoman"
or the like to just "woman".  In Gothic it meant "wife", oddly enough.

Speaking of Gothic, what's up with "aithei" [eTi] for "mother"?  It got into
Finnish as "äiti", but I can't find anything on its etymology.
Or did it (bizarrely) actually *come from* some kind of proto-Finnic?
The Uralic root is something totally different, which now survives in
Finnish in the sense "animal mother, dam".

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