Talk:հոյն

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Iranian[edit]

@Vahagn Petrosyan: After now having worked through some rounds of tree names, I must conclude that this Armenian one հոյն (hoyn) is just the word for blood reflected in Classical Persian خون (xūn) and see the cognates there (one of the cases where ō became ū from Middle to New Persian already).

Languages fain drop elements in organism names that have no meaning. In the particular case of the name of the cornel, Russian кизи́л (kizíl), Ukrainian кизи́л (kyzýl), Belarusian кізі́л (kizíl) stands against Tatar кызылча (qızılça), Ottoman Turkish قزلجق (kızılcık) etc., Azerbaijani zoğal being the usual name against Persian زغال اخته (zuğāl axta) and almost never زغال (zuğāl), and Arabic زُوقَال (zūqāl, cornel) attests it early and thus stability of such usage.

I just found from the Proto-Turkic *kiān (blood) Persian قان (qān, birch) and I already mentioned Latin sabīna. For this reason خون (xūn) is not attested in a term for “cornel” though خون جبال (xūn-i jibāl) means the gem “cornelian”.

The variant հիւն (hiwn) even has its parallels in the vocalisms of some of the other descendants of the Iranian “blood” word. Fay Freak (talk) 22:35, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Fay Freak: this is uncertain until the meaning "cornel" is found in Iranian. Besides, if you look at the Cornus mas range, it does not go into Iranian lands. Vahag (talk) 21:11, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Cornus sanguinea range
Cornus mas range
Iranian Empires 100 BC
Armenian cornel compote, continuing an ancient tradition.
@Vahagn Petrosyan: As you yourself have seen, it is not the only species within the genus but there is also for instance Cornus sanguinea of which I appended the map.
I think you skewed the “Iranian lands” in Armenian interest, as we should take into account historic states. You were surrounded by Iranians, from which the Romans, who totally knew the cornel, struggled to fight you off (“bone of contention between Rome and the Parthian Empire”), of which the Ossetian speakers currently totally are within the ranges, although they don’t seem to use this word for “blood” now (modernly: тог (tog)), nor may you deny that Iranian people of power ruled Armenia directly within (quote Vahagn Petrosyan: “I am not even sure Orontids spoke Armenian”), so in any case it is specious to assume that at any given time all species were unknown to and untermed by Iranians, even without cornel being canned into preserves (أَنْبِجَات (ʔanbijāt)) as has always been popular. Fay Freak (talk) 21:55, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do not doubt that an Iranian borrowing is possible for any concept. The question is the probability. In this case I do not believe the borrowing from the "blood" word is probable for several reasons. It is not attested as a designation for "cornel" within Iranian. The forms attested in the relevant languages cannot account for հոյն (hoyn), namely Parthian goxan, guxn, Middle Persian xōn. The latter would give **խոյն (**xoyn). I do not believe in the existence of borrowings from other Iranian languages in Old Armenian. Martirosyan's derivation is phonetically regular. The typological parallels are good. There is also something about the connection of μελία (melía) with cornel in {{R:arc:Löw-Flora|page=465|volume=I}}, but I don't know how to use this work. Vahag (talk) 20:02, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vahagn Petrosyan: Löw says, clearer in Pflanzennamen as linked at مُرَّان (murrān), that Syriac knew no name for the ash and Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq knew no Syriac nor Arabic name and did not understand the word μελία (melía) when dealing with his translations. Against دَرْدَار (dardār) meaning “elm, ash” Classical Syriac ܕܕܪܐ (daddārā) means “elm, oak”. And he explains in Flora II 286–287 that from ash bark an ink was made and hence the borrowing of μελία (melía, ash) Jewish Palestinian Aramaic מילה‎ only attested in one textual dependence in the Jerusalem Talmud in the plural מילין was treated as “oak” as one made ink from the oak gallCAL suggests μηλίς (mēlís, yellow pigment) instead, which can also be equal to μηλέα (mēléa, apple tree), modern μηλιά (miliá) but is apparently from the name of the region Μήλος (to be distinguished from Μηλίς).
There it suits to add that unlike for Iranians for both Syriac and Arabic speakers it is likely that they did not know the cornel either – not even naming the ash after all – and it was only for the Greek borrowing قَرَانِيَا (qarāniyā) to permeate the Arabic language peripherically; in the Modern Age the Turkish appears reported for the vernacular but is left unmentioned on the web. The tree denoted by the Akkadian cannot be pinned down.
As seen in Pflanzen 249 and Fleischer linked in spear senses of course Aramaic מוֹרָנִיתָא / ܡܘܿܪܴܢܺܝܬܴܐ (mōrānīṯā) translates, in works translated from Greek, κράνεια (kráneia, cornel tree; spear) as far it means “spear”. Therefore, knowing these correspondences of translations while not knowing the plants, and that is what {{R:arc:Löw-Flora|page=465|volume=I}} states, Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq translates κρανέα (kranéa), a variant of κράνεια (kráneia) in Geoponica and still to the Modern Age a hapax, with مُرَّان (murrān).
But one may doubt whether in living speech, as a word inherited from PIE, the meaning of a term for an ash or ash-implement can be swapped in such a ghostish way to suddenly mean “cornel”, even if circuitously through referring to a kind of stick (which would mean the Armenians did not know the plants either). Can’t at the same time explain the Armenian as a ghost word and as inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Fay Freak (talk) 22:40, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]