![Old European hydronymic map for the root *al-, *alm- Krahe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Old_European_hydronymic_map_for_the_root_%2Aal-%2C_%2Aalm-_Krahe.jpg)
Old European (german: Alteuropäisch) is the term used by
Hans Krahe
Hans Krahe (7 February 1898 – 25 June 1965) was a German philologist and linguist, specializing over many decades in the Illyrian languages. He was born in Gelsenkirchen.
Work
Between 1936 and 1946 he was a professor at the University of W ...
(1964) for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European
hydronymy
A hydronym (from el, ὕδρω, , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a ...
(river names) in
Central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
and
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
.
[Hans Krahe, ''Unsere ältesten Flussnamen'', Wiesbaden Edition Otto Harrassowiitz (1964)]["Old European" in this sense is not to be confused with the term as used by ]Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, ...
who applies it to non-Indo-European or pre-Indo-European Neolithic Europe
The European Neolithic is the period when Neolithic (New Stone Age) technology was present in Europe, roughly between 7000 BCE (the approximate time of the first farming societies in Greece) and c.2000–1700 BCE (the beginning of the Bronze Age ...
.
Geography
Krahe writes in A1, chapter III, "Introducing preface" Number 2
[ that the old European hydronomy extended from Scandinavia to South Italy, from Western Europe including the British Isles to the Baltic countries. Of the three Mediterranean peninsulas, Italy was most completely included, whilst the Balkan Peninsula was only scarcely covered. He writes that what he presents for hydronomy also applies to mountains and ranges of mountains, and continues with "Karpaten" and "Karawanken", certainly within the Slavic settlement area, omitting the Bavarian/Austrian "Karwendel" though.][ This area is associated with the spread of the later "Western" Indo-European dialects, the ]Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
, Italic, Germanic, Baltic
Baltic may refer to:
Peoples and languages
* Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian
*Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
, and Illyrian branches. Notably exempt is Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
.
Krahe located the geographical nucleus of this area as stretching from the Baltic
Baltic may refer to:
Peoples and languages
* Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian
*Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
across Western Poland
Poland ( pl, Polska) is a country that extends across the North European Plain from the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south to the sandy beaches of the Baltic Sea in the north. Poland is the fifth-most populous country of the Europe ...
and Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
to the Swiss plateau
The Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau (german: Schweizer Mittelland; french: plateau suisse; it, altopiano svizzero) is one of the three major landscapes in Switzerland, lying between the Jura Mountains and the Swiss Alps. It covers about 30% of ...
and the upper Danube
The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...
north of the Alps
The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...
, while he considered the Old European river names of southern France, Italy and Spain to be later imports, replacing " Aegean-Pelasgian
The name Pelasgians ( grc, Πελασγοί, ''Pelasgoí'', singular: Πελασγός, ''Pelasgós'') was used by classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergenc ...
" and Iberian substrates, corresponding to Italic, Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
and Illyrian "invasions" from about 1300 BC.
Origins of names
Krahe continues in III A 5, "Geographic Area and age of the paleoeuropean hydronomy", that the overwhelming majority of river and stream names originate from words which in the historical single languages cannot be found or cannot be found any more. He uses mainly Indo-European roots to allow the river names in question to speak (rule 1) of which more than 10,000 are listed.
In III A 2, "Etymology and Semasiology of the paleoeuropean river names", Krahe states that the oldest strata are composed by prerequisites of nature and that the river names especially refer to the water itself (rule 2), and that words referring to humans and culture are newer. Both rules are important arguments for considering the old European hydronomy of southern France and the north of the Iberian Peninsula as a result of secondary implementation (A 1, number 3) due to a postulated immigration around 1300 BC.
In "Morphology of Paleoeuropean river names" (III A 1, number 3) Krahe concentrates on suffixes (simples and multiples) and distinguishes eleven different ones in a table. He attributes geographical (Central European vs. South European or Eastern), functional (for example affluent) or temporal (before or after a change of consonants or vowels) functions to the suffixes of the river names (rule 3). For the temporal function he claims the existence of a system of phonetic change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
s (''Lautverschiebung''), however he does not include prefixes in his considerations.
Krahe's concentration on Indo-European roots and the omission of prefixes had serious negative consequences, because ever later focus was placed on those more than 10,000 roots, sometimes on Old Irish
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...
, but scarcely on Gaulish
Gaulish was an ancient Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium ...
and other Celtic languages or Baltic languages
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 4.5 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. Together with the Slavic lang ...
and completely leaving out Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
. Delamarre later included for example under Gaulish ''dubron'' only rivers with "B" (or similar) leaving out other names, which Krahe would have called ''Schwundstufe'', i. e. "zero grade
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
", the form of a root characterized by the loss of a letter (basically a vowel), sometimes combined with the inversion of letters.
Krahe ignored the impact of Moorish occupation in Spain, which led to frequent combinations of Arab "prefixes" (always at the beginning) on Celtic "suffixes" as seen in Guadiana
The Guadiana River (, also , , ), or Odiana, is an international river defining a long stretch of the Portugal-Spain border, separating Extremadura and Andalusia (Spain) from Alentejo and Algarve (Portugal). The river's basin extends from the e ...
(''guadi'' "river" + ''anas'' "bayous, muddy", as it appears in Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...
). The tables "Comparison of old European hydronyms" show that, in contradiction to Krahe's opinion, hydronyms (and toponyms) can in some cases very well be explained even by modern Irish, Welsh, or French and certainly by Gaulish.
Krahe's influence on other scholars
Krahe has influenced archaeologists, linguists and particularly experts in Celtic languages:
Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, ...
(Lithuanian: Marija Gimbutienė) studied in Tübingen
Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in thr ...
, and received her doctorate of archeology in 1946 in the same department where Krahe lectured. Gimbutas developed the Kurgan
A kurgan is a type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central Asi ...
theory
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be s ...
.
Jürgen Untermann
Jürgen Untermann (24 October 1928, in Rheinfelden – 7 February 2013, in Brauweiler) was a German linguist, indoeuropeanist and epigraphist.
A disciple of Hans Krahe and of Ulrich Schmoll, he studied at the University of Frankfurt and the U ...
, a disciple of Krahe with dissertation 1954 in Tübingen was professor for Comparative Linguistics
Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.
Genetic relatedness ...
at the University of Cologne
The University of Cologne (german: Universität zu Köln) is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in the year 1388 and is one of the most prestigious and research intensive universities in Germany. It was the sixth university to ...
. He was an epigraphist
Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...
and Indoeuropeanist.
Antonio Tovar
Antonio Tovar Llorente (17 May 1911 – 13 December 1985) was a Spanish philologist, linguist and historian.
Biography
Born in Valladolid, the son of a notary, he grew up in Elorrio (Vizcaya), Morella (Castellón) and Villena (Alicante) where as ...
, with preliminary studies in Berlin, later professor of the University of Salamanca
The University of Salamanca ( es, Universidad de Salamanca) is a Spanish higher education institution, located in the city of Salamanca, in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It was founded in 1218 by King Alfonso IX. It is th ...
, was professor for Comparative Linguistics in Tübingen from 1967 to 1979. Together with Manuel Agud and Koldo Mitxelena
Koldo Mitxelena Elissalt () (also known as ''Luis Michelena''; 1915, Errenteria, Gipuzkoa – 11 October 1987, San Sebastián) was an eminent Basque linguist. He taught in the Department of Philology at the University of the Basque Country, a ...
he prepared an unedited etymological dictionary of the Basque language.
Other authors
Other authors with a focus on or touching on the topic old European hydronomy are listed below.
Xavier Delamarre
Xavier Delamarre (; born 5 June 1954) is a French linguist, lexicographer, and diplomat. He is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the Gaulish language.
Since 2019, he has been an associate researcher for the CNRS- PSL AOrOc ...
is a French linguist whose standard work is ''Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise'' (2nd revised and augmented edition Paris, 2003), with the subtitle "Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental". This is in fact the most comprehensive publication on Gaulish
Gaulish was an ancient Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium ...
words. Slightly more than 800 terms appear in alphabetical order derived from Gaulish-Greek, Gaulish-Etruscan and Gaulish-Latin or solely Gaulish inscriptions, printed classical languages, coins and some terms of Celtic substrate in Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language
Occitan (; o ...
. He presents all cases of appearance of toponyms and hydronyms in question, cites authors and roots, showing alternatives, and classifies, if necessary, as uncertain or questionable. He shows all river name examples with prefixes. For example, see "comparison of old hydronyms" adding "water", "clear", "hard stone", etc.
The German linguist Theo Vennemann
Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (; born 27 May 1937 in Oberhausen-Sterkrade) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a "Vasconic" and an "Atlantic" stratum in European languages, published since the 1990s.
He was ...
suggested in 2003 that the language of the old European hydronyms was agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
and Pre-Indo-European. This theory has been criticised as being seriously flawed, and the more generally accepted view is that hydronyms are of Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
origin.
The Spanish philologist Francisco Villar Liébana argued in 1990 for the Old European preserved in river names and confined to the hydronymic substratum in the Iberian Peninsula as yet another Indo-European layer with no immediate relationship to the Lusitanian language
Lusitanian (so named after the Lusitani or Lusitanians) was an Indo-European Paleohispanic language. There has been support for either a connection with the ancient Italic languages or Celtic languages. It is known from only six sizeable inscri ...
. However, the idea of "Old European" was criticized by Untermann in 1999 and De Hoz in 2001.[
Villar Liébana is a supporter of Gimbutas against the theories of ]Colin Renfrew
Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, (born 25 July 1937) is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, an ...
. In his work, ''Indoeuropeos y No Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Prerromana'' (''"Indo-Europeans and Non-Indo-Europeans in Pre-Roman Hispania"'') he presents a nine root "series" and a few more collective "series", mainly of toponyms (Hispanic and non-Hispanic) but also including hydronyms.
For example, in chapter IV B VII[ Liébana discusses hydronyms of the series "uba" starting ][ with Maenuba (Pliny 3.8) = modern Vélez and, with the same name, a tributary of the ]Baetis
''Baetis'' is a genus of mayflies of the family Baetidae, known as the blue-winged olive to anglers. There are at least 150 described species in ''Baetis''. They are distributed worldwide, with the most variety in North America and norther ...
(Pliny 3.11) = Guadiamar
The Guadiamar is a river of Andalusia, Spain, and a tributary of the Guadalquivir. Its course runs entirely within the Province of Seville, flowing from Sierra Morena through the eastern border of Doñana National Park.
Mining disaster
In 1998, t ...
, Salduba (close to Málaga
Málaga (, ) is a municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 578,460 in 2020, it is the second-most populous city in Andalusia after Seville and the sixth most pop ...
). He compares modern rivers like Ubia, Ove, Fonte dos Ovos with, amongst others, the Danube
The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...
,[ and with historical Corduba (actual Córdoba, Andalusia).][ Wherever "uba" appears, like in the rivers Saruba = actual ]Saar (river)
The Saar (; french: Sarre ) is a river in northeastern France and western Germany, and a right tributary of the Moselle. It rises in the Vosges mountains on the border of Alsace and Lorraine and flows northwards into the Moselle near Trier. It ...
, an affluent of Mosel, Spanish fuente Sarobals (Huesca), Sarrubian (Huesca), he acknowledges only "uba" and not the root "Dan" in Danubius (corresponding to Dnieper
}
The Dnieper () or Dnipro (); , ; . is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. It is the longest river of Ukraine and B ...
and Dniester
The Dniester, ; rus, Дне́стр, links=1, Dnéstr, ˈdⁿʲestr; ro, Nistru; grc, Τύρᾱς, Tyrās, ; la, Tyrās, la, Danaster, label=none, ) ( ,) is a transboundary river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and th ...
) or the root "Sar" in others, which all are Indo-European roots.
Examples
An example is the old river name ''Isar'':
*Isar > Isar
The Isar is a river in Tyrol, Austria, and Bavaria, Germany, which is not navigable for watercraft above raft size. Its source is in the Karwendel range of the Alps in Tyrol; it enters Germany near Mittenwald and flows through Bad Tölz, Munic ...
(Bavaria)
*Isar > Isère
Isère ( , ; frp, Isera; oc, Isèra, ) is a landlocked department in the southeastern French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Named after the river Isère, it had a population of 1,271,166 in 2019.[Oise
Oise ( ; ; pcd, Oése) is a department in the north of France. It is named after the river Oise. Inhabitants of the department are called ''Oisiens'' () or ''Isariens'', after the Latin name for the river, Isara. It had a population of 829,419 ...]
(France)
*Isar > Yzeron (France)
*Isar > Jizera (Czech Republic)
*Isar > Aire
Aire may refer to:
Music
* ''Aire'' (Yuri album), 1987
* ''Aire'' (Pablo Ruiz album), 1997
*''Aire (Versión Día)'', an album by Jesse & Joy
Places
*Aire-sur-la-Lys, a town in the Pas-de-Calais département in France
*Aire-la-Ville, a municip ...
(Yorkshire)
* Isar > Yser
The Yser ( , ; nl, IJzer ) is a river that rises in French Flanders (the north of France), enters the Belgian province of West Flanders and flows through the '' Ganzepoot'' and into the North Sea at the town of Nieuwpoort.
The source of the Ys ...
(Belgium)
* Isar > Ypres
Ypres ( , ; nl, Ieper ; vls, Yper; german: Ypern ) is a Belgian city and municipality in the province of West Flanders. Though
the Dutch name is the official one, the city's French name is most commonly used in English. The municipality co ...
, Ieperlee
The Ieperlee (or ''Ypres-Ijzer Canal'') is a canalized river that rises in Heuvelland in the Belgian province of West Flanders and flows via the city of Ypres (Ieper) into the Yser at Fort Knokke.
The river is long. Its name is derived from '' ...
(Belgium) (Respectively in French and Dutch)
*Isar > Issel (Germany)
*Isar > IJssel
The IJssel (; nds-nl, Iessel(t) ) is a Dutch distributary of the river Rhine that flows northward and ultimately discharges into the IJsselmeer (before the 1932 completion of the Afsluitdijk known as the Zuiderzee), a North Sea natural harbour ...
(Netherlands) there are several (parts of) rivers in the Netherlands called IJssel (Yssel), one of which was called "Isala" during Roman times
*Isar > Ézaro (Spain)
*Isar > Ésera
The Ésera (), is a tributary of the Cinca in the High Aragon. It is part of the valley of the Ebro and its drainage basin. Its etymology is Celtic and it is cognate with several European rivers: Isar, Jizera, Isère, Isel, IJssel
The IJssel ...
(Spain)
*Isar > Iseran (Savoy)
*Isar > Esaro (Italy)
*Isar-ko > Eisack
The Eisack (german: Eisack, ; it, Isarco ; Latin: ''Isarus'' or ''Isarcus'') is a river in Northern Italy, the second largest river in South Tyrol. Its source is near the Brenner Pass, at an altitude of about 1990 m above sea level. The river draw ...
(Italy)
*Isar-na > Isières[Jean-Jacques Jespers, Dictionnaire des noms de lieux en Wallonie et à Bruxelles, Ed. Lannoo, 2005, p. 344.] (Belgium)
*Isar-ellum > Izarillo "little Izar" (Spain)
*Isar > Iza (Romania)
Also relevant might be ''*ezero'' (the Slavic word for lake), ''ežeras'' (the Lithuanian word for lake) and the Acheron
The Acheron (; grc, Ἀχέρων ''Acheron'' or Ἀχερούσιος ''Acherousios''; ell, Αχέροντας ''Acherontas'') is a river located in the Epirus region of northwest Greece. It is long, and its drainage area is . Its source is ...
river in Greece.
See also
*Tyrsenian languages
Tyrsenian (also Tyrrhenian or Common Tyrrhenic), named after the Tyrrhenians (Ancient Greek, Ionic: ''Tyrsenoi''), is a proposed extinct family of closely related ancient languages put forward by linguist Helmut Rix (1998), which consists of th ...
*Rigvedic rivers
Rivers play a prominent part in the hymns of the ''Rigveda'', and consequently in early Vedic religion. Vedic texts have a wide geographical horizon, speaking of oceans, rivers, mountains and deserts.
The Vedic land is described as a land of ...
*Urnfield culture
The Urnfield culture ( 1300 BC – 750 BC) was a late Bronze Age culture of Central Europe, often divided into several local cultures within a broader Urnfield tradition. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and p ...
*Beaker culture
The Bell Beaker culture, also known as the Bell Beaker complex or Bell Beaker phenomenon, is an archaeological culture named after the Inverted bell, inverted-bell beaker (archaeology), beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the E ...
*Germanic substrate hypothesis
The Germanic substrate hypothesis attempts to explain the purportedly distinctive nature of the Germanic languages within the context of the Indo-European languages. Based on the elements of Common Germanic vocabulary and syntax which do not seem ...
*Pre-Celtic
The pre-Celtic period in the prehistory of Central Europe and Western Europe occurred before the expansion of the Celts or their culture in Iron Age Europe and Anatolia (9th to 6th centuries BC), but after the emergence of the Proto-Celtic languag ...
*Vasconic substratum theory
The Vasconic substrate hypothesis is a proposal that several Western European languages contain remnants of an old language family of Vasconic languages, of which Basque is the only surviving member. The proposal was made by the German linguist ...
Notes
References
Further reading
* .
* .
External link
Wasserwoerter Karte Hessen
accessdate 6-11-14
{{DEFAULTSORT:European Language (Old)
Agglutinative languages
*
Bronze Age Europe
Linguistic strata