The more one researches their etymology, the more river gods one finds. The reason is quite obvious Indo-Europeans generally considered rivers sacred as they were a vital source for mobile peoples. We have the Vedic Danu. There are also many important rivers that have a linguistic connection with this name, such as the Danube, Don, Dniester, Donets, and Dnieper rivers, right? And there's something even cooler that isn't explored much; An alternative name for the Greeks was Danaanos. And the Danes descend from a Dana. Is there any connection? In the Vedas we have the Danavas. Apparently, there is no mention of a Danu or a river goddess with a similar name among the Hittites. Also, water bodies are frequently personified as entities in history. North Germanic polytheism
>>18491801All these names and myths are Iranian. 1/3 of European culture is copied from the Iranians. The word "path" is an Alanic borrowing from this time (cf. Ossetian fændag, 'way'). The names of rivers are Iranian; the influence is so great that the concept of European chivalry (which means the way of mounted warfare) was brought to Europe from modern-day Iranian areas. The mounted shock tactics of heavy knights charging their enemies were taken from the Scythians and the Parthians. Europe is literally our home
>>18491805? Off topic
>>18491808I'm just explaining my point We gave you these names, myths, and chivalry all the names of these Russian rivers you mentioned are Iranian, Scythians particularly.What's so hard to understand? Even the magic sword from Germanic mythologies is a poorly made copy of our mythology. Ironically, the European chivalry is Iranian, haha. Equestrian traditions among the Franks also derive from Alanian influences. You yourself said in your post that the cult of the river comes from mobile peoples the Europeans weren't mobile but agricultural.
>>18491805>Europe is literally our homeYou're not european, patel, you were conquered by europeans>The mounted shock tactics of heavy knights charging their enemies were taken from the Scythians and the ParthiansCharging your enemy on a bigass horse is just common sense, retard, Gauls did it, Germans did it
>>18491844I m Iranic.
>>18491844Iran was never colonized, try again Tim
Off topic...
>>18491801>And the Danes descend from a Dana. Is there any connection?Maybe. Apparently "Dane" goes back to Proto-Germanic *danizhttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/daniz>Possibly from Proto-Indo-European *dʰenh2- (“run, flow”). Or possibly from the same root as den (i.e. "lowland").Wikitionary mentions 2 choices:1. PIE *dʰenh2-2. Proto-West-Germanic *dani ("presumably from Proto-Germanic *danją" according to wiktionary)On closer inspection, *dani might be problematic as many words show a geminate *-nn- and it seems to refer more directly to a Proto-Germanic ją-stem, and not the i-stem of *daniz. I'm not saying there can't be related ją-stems and i-stems, but also note that Guus Kroonen has not given a treatment of Proto-West-Germanic *dani so Wikitionary is citing material that's very likely to be outdated. Those words deserve a careful treatment that at least accounts for the geminates.In Germanic, *daniz is (primarily) attested with a short *a, but Latin attests the unusual ⟨Dānī⟩ with a long ā.https://logeion.uchicago.edu/DaniIs there any way to explain this anomaly? PIE *dʰenh2- actually has another variant PIE *dʰeh2n-. This is because a laryngeal can metathesize around a resonant. Perhaps we actually haveLat ⟨Dānī⟩ < PIE *dʰeh2n-PG *daniz < PIE *dʰə̆h2n-Where *daniz reflects the leveling of the "zero-grade" root. This __could__ indicate Proto-Germanic had words with *ā ~ *a ablaut, but I don't know if there are other examples. Another parallel and more comparanda for *daniz should be sought.
>>18491928Thank you very much. The only decent answer here. Considering very similar words in Greek, Celtic, Germanic, and Iranian, perhaps we are dealing with an ethnonym?
>>18491939>>18491928The river valley was central to PIE life. Their winter retreat. They likely had a river goddess, Deh2nu. As is often the case, the best evidence for this comes from the IE peripheries (Gaelic: Danu, Indic: Danū). The name also survives in e.g. the Dnieper, Dniester, Donets.
>>18491940Don / Danu: Celtic roots (like the ancient goddess Devona), which signify running or sacred waters
>>18491801>Indo-Europeans generally considered rivers sacreddid they or did they just live almost exclusively by water basins for obvious reson just like any other primitive people (disregarding the fact that there never even was AN indo-european people)>>18491814>Russian riversdon is the only disputably russian river among them. russia is in the volga basin
>>18491946>>18491940What about the Latin name Danubius? which is quite close to Danu. Just a loanword?
>>18491928>PG *daniz < PIE *dʰə̆h2n-Actually, now that I think of it, the vowel shortening is better explained by a mobile accent and Dybo's law since a *dʰə̆h2n- would probably metathesize.
>>18491940>The river valley was central to PIE life.This
>>18491953Yeah, Dybo's law seems good. The accent was just leveled on the suffix reflecting virtual PIE *dʰeh2ní- whereas originally the accent could be both on the root and suffix in Proto-Germanic
>>18491950It's probably a loanBut it is a fact that the early Indo-Europeans had a deity for the river.
>>18491959>>18491953I'm a bit lost, could you explain your point?
>>18491961I think it's more likely the root ablaut was leveled as *dʰeh2n- with a full-grade, but the position of the accent still varied according to the inflection. Dybo's law makes vowels that would otherwise be long (due to compensatory lengthening after laryngeal loss) become short in pretonic position
Dænæ, Dacia, Danai, Dani, Tani, Tana, Dene, Danr, Danpr, Denm, Dani, Danoi, Dani" and likely also Dauciones.And connections with rivers around Europe/Russia through linguistics. Here are some of them:"Eridanus, Tanealva, Teno, Tana älv, Deatnu, Danastrum, Diupa, Daniper, Danaprum, Danapri, Tanaitae, Tanais, Dana, Danube, Danubium, Dacian" and possibly Qidan, Tangut, Hotan & Khotan, DonbetyrsAre there any evidence that danes or proto/quasi-danes or whatever you want to call it, have lived around Dniepr, Dniestr, Don, Donau rivers? Or even as far as Mongolia or Xinjiang in China!?
>>18491973Although it is possible the Danes inherited their name from the PIE root *deh2- (with suffix element *-n-), it's not clear how to use that information to trace them back to a particular locale as this was a common Indo-European basis for the name of rivers in general rather than a specific prominent one.
>>18491973>>18492212And now I have an idea in mind:What if the name of Denmark and the Danes or more of a reference to the watery landscape of Denmark itself?
>>18492232
>>18491805I agree with most of what you said but iranians are not the same people as they were 3k years ago.
>>18491876Whats the difference?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Iran
>>18492232>or more of a referenceis more of a reference
>>18491801>Danu or a river goddess with a similar name among the Hittites> An alternative name for the Greeks was Danaanos.And the Irish gods: Tuatha Dé DanannAs far as I can tell from the Irish myths these were the precursors to the Indo Europeans though; e.g. the Early European Farmers who were defeated by the current Irish; the Milesians. The last major migration into Ireland was Indo European.The Irish timeline indicates:Western Hunter Gatherers = Firbolg.Early European Farmers = Tuatha Dé DanannMilesian = Indo EuropeanIt's difficult to separate the EEF and PIE mythology, PIE myths are layered on top of earlier EEF myths.I suspect that Danu was an earlier than PIE agricultural creation, with rivers -> water -> irrigation -> farming.The PIE were mobile herders, had carts, cattle and horses.
>>18491801>We have the Vedic DanuShe is the mother of Vrita, Indra's serpent enemy. The reason the IEs associated serpents with rivers, as well as enmity against the thunder god, is that rivers have zigzag/serpentine shapes, and the waters of the rivers represent the chaotic chthonic (earthly) waters, while the waters of the sky (rain) of the thunder god represent the orderly celestial waters. The etymology of Vrita, like Vala, Varuna, and possibly Indra, means enclosure/obstacle, because the Dasa civilization was hydraulic (based on water control) for agriculture and, in the Aryas view, they deviated the rivers/water from their cattle to his fortresses, i.e. water prisons. That is why some Vedic verses describe Indra liberating not only the world's water, but also the cattle.>In the Vedas we have the DanavasThe term Danava does not appear in the Vedas, only in post-Vedic texts such as the Mahabharata. The Danavas are called Dasa, Dasyu, Asuras, Rakshasas, etc. in the Vedas.
>>18491814Farsi is just another PIE language.https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/indoeuropean-language-tree/138283#1You owe everything to the Ukrainians.
>>18491928>PIE *dʰenh2->PIE *dʰeh2n-What I said about the possible the possible laryngeal metathesis is based on Garnier & Sagot (2019). However, if you aren't paying close attention (I wasn't right here >>18492212 ), you might confuse this with another root and stem *déh2-nu "river". Compare:*déh2-nu "river"*dʰenh2- "to flow" > Lat ⟨fōns⟩ "fountain"The roots _look_ related, but we can hardly say when and how except for the laryngeal metathesis. It may go back to pre-PIE. *dʰenh2- isn't otherwise attested as *dʰeh2n-, but I can find metathesis in PIE *dénh2u- ~ *dn̩h2éu̯- >> ΔαναόςPIE *déh2-nu > Sanskrit ⟨dā́nu⟩But Proto-Germanic *daniz needs *dʰ, not *d, and metathesis is not otherwise attested in *dʰenh2-. Suffice to say, this casts doubt on the idea that *dāniz ~ *daniz reflects *dʰeh2n- since this would be the only word that does. So a correct account needs either more examples of *dʰeh2n-, an explanation for *d > dʰ in synchronic PIE or late PIE, or an alternative explanation of the long vowel in Latin ⟨Dānī⟩. A seemingly ad hoc idea might be *d > *dʰ in the cluster *dn-, with non-syllabic *n, but this wouldn't be the only example of mediae > aspirate beside a nasal. The dative plural endings *-bʰos ~ *-mos are believed to come from earlier *b (/ɓ/ or something similar) and *-bʰos was often generalized from its appearance after n-stems.The situation isn't hopeless. A little more data could solve the case. It's easy to miss these two similar roots are different and this causes confusion. The etymology of *daniz is still open.Garnier, R., & Sagot, B. (2019). Metathesis of Proto-Indo-European Sonorants. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, 73(1), 29-53.https://www.academia.edu/82088901/Metathesis_of_Proto_Indo_European_Sonorants
>>18492454I apologize for all the linguistic gibberish and brainstorming but the bottom line right now is that it's not straightforward to link the Danes to the Danaans and Danavas primarily because of this issue with PIE *d vs *dʰ, but you _can_ compare the Danaans and Danavas.
>>18491805>copied from the Iraniansiranian speakers of old =/= modern iranian
>>18491973>>18492232Danes originate from the islands and scania, settling jutland only in the middle ages. I could very easily imagine them seeing the straits as one big river, hence the Dan root
>>18492876>hence the Dan rootAll that etymological speculation above should just be deleted. You can't conflate *d and *dʰ in PIE or their outcomes in Germanic, but I did partly because I was working off memory and partly because the different roots are similar looking.Although perhaps we can see an association with water in the semantic field of *dʰenh2- via *dʰónh2-ti-s > Latin ⟨fōns⟩ "fountain, (well)spring", the long ⟨ā⟩ of Latin ⟨Dānī⟩ would be unexplained. It's possible this ⟨ā⟩ has nothing to do with a laryngeal though.Too many uncertainties and not enough data collected.
