Interesting article that starts with the name of a Scottish reel and ends cavorting with nymphs in ancient Sicily, touching on all sorts of things--found while investigating the etymology of pelorus ("a compass-like sighting device, usually on a ship or aircraft, used for taking the relative bearings of a distant object, and consisting of a compass rose and one or two rotating sighting arms; perhaps from Pelorus, said to be the name of Hannibal's pilot"). I wondered which author transmits this name to us, and what the pilot's story was. The etymology goes further, of course: πέλωρος "prodigious, monstrous" is from πέλωρ, τέλωρ, "prodigy, monster", from Proto-Indo-European *kʷél-ōr dissimilated from *kʷér-ōr, a derivative of the root *kʷer- "to make". Words meaning "monster", like the word "monster" itself, have interesting etymologies. It strikes me that Arabic ʿifrīt عفريت "evil spirit of prodigious strength"--if from the Middle Persian equivalent of Persian آفريده "created (thing), creation, being"--is parallel. This is another of those cases of a word being borrowed into Arabic from Middle Persian with an inorganic ʿayin, like MP laškar as Arabic عسكرʿaskar "army", or Syriac ܝܫܘܥ Isoʿ "Jesus" as Arabic عيسى ʿIsā.
Pomponius Mela's account of Pelorus is here. The events took apparently took place after the battle of Zama, when Hannibal was exiled to Syria. Perhaps Hannibal thought that instead of leading him to Syria, Pelorus was engineering a rendition to Rome? Was Pelorus real, originally a Greek in Hannibal's hire who was familiar with the coast, and who has come to be known in legend by a name based on that of the promontory? It seems too much that Pelōros was his real name and that the events just happened to occur at Peloria.
2 comments:
The pilot story doesn't make much sense. When would Hannibal need a pilot? His armies were brought over from Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar, which you can navigate by eye (it's only 14 km), and then marched overland along the coast.
But assuming that it's true, then the name "Pelorus" must surely be a Punic one (though I do not know any root P-L-R), in which case the IE etymology is folk etymology.
Note that laškar > Hindi lashkari 'soldier, sailor' > Portuguese lachar > English lascar 'East Indian sailor'.
I really like the most commonly encountered proposal for the ulterior etymology of laškar (was it originally a hesitant offering of Hübschmann's?): a virtual Indo-Iranian *rakša-kara-, "protection maker," with dissimilation of the first *r to *l and a first element cognate with Sanskrit rákṣati, "he protects," and Greek ἀλέξω, and further afield, without -s-, Old English ealgian, "protect".
Post a Comment