*Aķsiö-huorġźös “sky-Huorgjos” >? Shurdh(i)? #dennydoeswords

The Albanian rain deity Shurdhi might reflect a survival of the Illyrian ‘pallid/cloudy one’ across the Adriatic Sea in the Balkans if Shurdhi originally meant something like ‘celestial/heavenly Huorġźös’ with an Alb. prefix sh- meaning ‘of the sky’ also found in several bird names #dennydoeswords

Thus I can etymologize Albanian va “ford, passage through water or difficult terrain” < PIE *w`dhwom < thematicization of a neuter u-stem < *we`dh- ‘to wade’, cognate with Phrygian *vedu meaning ‘water’ (neuter u-stem noun) #dennydoeswords

I freakin live for this stuff

#dennydoeswords yesterday’s big exciting breakthrough in my reconstruction of the old Illyric language(s) was identifying a sound rule: intervocalic *-Dw- shares the same fate as intervocalic *-d- (but not *-dh-!) > Modern Albanian -Ø- (it disappears without much of a trace)

I was so stoked!

#dennydoeswords “ork”, “orc”, and “ogre”, words referring to legendary humanlike monsters

< Latin Orc(h)us ‘god of the underworld’, or the underworld itself, or one of its dead denizens

<?? Messapic *huorġźös ‘pallid, ghastly’, cognate with Albanian verdhë ‘yellow’ <? PIE *sworgyos ‘cloudy’?

#dennydoeswords Wiersma: a West Frisian surname in -sma ‘man/person of __’, either:

< rare Frisian male given name Wier perhaps meaning ‘the true one’ < PG *Wērô, or else

< Frisian village of Wier, from an Old Frisian word werve meaning ‘hill settlement’ <? Proto-Indo-European *werbh- ‘enclose’?

#dennydoeswords also, less commonly, an unrelated but homophonous Proto-Germanic word *helmaz can be found which refers to plants with tall stalks or trunks, cognate with Ancient Greek kalamos ‘reed’

Altogether the name could be etymologized as ‘beloved helmet’ or ‘beloved stalk’

#dennydoeswords

William: a Germanic name from Proto-Germanic *Wiljahelmaz

*wiljô = will or desire, but in given names often has the meaning ‘dear’ or ‘beloved’

*helmaz = most often means ‘helmet’, and many Germanic masculine names refer to a warrior’s equipment

Now that I think about it, though, there is a root *wer- meaning ‘to burn’. Maybe peħwr was originally a compound, ‘protective or protected or fed (with fuel?) burning’? And maybe already by the common Indo European period it was reanalyzed as a *-wř/wn- stem rather than a compound? #dennydoeswords

From *ķeħkħ we also get a Scythian word for a type of axe or polearm, *sâğari whence AG sagaris ‘poleaxe’ #dennydoeswords

#dennydoeswords another ‘Illricism’ present in both AG and Albanian: Alb. thes ‘sack, cloth container’ and thesar ‘treasure’; Greek thesauros ‘treasury’

PIE tħep ‘to cram, insert, push down’ > tħeptyo- ‘container’ > Illyrian *thafts’io- > *thafts’iaŵros

*thafts’iaŵros > AG thesauros (borrowed)

I originally was trying to include Albanian thaj ‘to make sth. dry’ and adjective thatë ‘dry’ in this complex but now I’m leaning towards them instead being semantic extensions from thak/thek ‘tassel, tuft, grain awn’ < PIE ķe(ħ)k(ħ)- ‘stick, branch, dry plant’ cf. AG kankanos ‘arid’ #dennydoeswords