That's a *móri
« previous post |
Following up on Rapscallion, here's another culinary pun with a lexico-musical connection:
When two names far apart
Share a PIE start
That's a *móri…— New-Cleckit Dominie (@ncdominie.bsky.social) November 3, 2024 at 11:57 AM
In the unlikely event that the musical reference escapes you, it's Dean Martin's 1953 hit That's Amore:
Dick Margulis said,
November 4, 2024 @ 11:13 am
And, of course, this version: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/14194579
Roscoe said,
November 4, 2024 @ 1:01 pm
See also the two Galicias (Spain and Eastern Europe).
J.W. Brewer said,
November 4, 2024 @ 2:06 pm
The current Gaelic spelling for "Moray" is said to be Moireibh or Moireabh and the lack of a final consonant in the English spelling is presumably because word-final "bh" is these days silent in Gaelic. But the pronunciation may have been otherwise 900 years ago, with the phoneme then represented by the now-silent "bh" (or its predecessor under somewhat different orthographic conventions) being Latinized as "v." If you believe the wikipedia etymologies (which for I know may be speculative but have no less speculative alternative), both Moireibh and what's currently spelled Morava in Czech are etymologically two-morpheme compounds, with the first morpheme indeed having the same PIE etymon but any resemblance between the second morphemes being coincidental.
Philip Taylor said,
November 4, 2024 @ 2:47 pm
« word-final "bh" is these days silent in Gaelic » — is that invariably the case, JWB ? What about Cobh (in Éire), pronounced /kəʊv/ ? Or were you referring strictly to Scots Gaelic rather than the wider Goidelic family ?
J.W. Brewer said,
November 4, 2024 @ 4:28 pm
@Philip Taylor: I was speaking of the current Scottish Gaelic orthographic conventions, since I should have thought it obvious that those are what would be relevant to a Scottish toponym. The spelling in the Gaeilge wikipedia entry is FWIW identical to that in the Gaidhlig wikpedia entry and also (without getting hung up on initial consonant mutation) to that in the Gaelg (i.e. "Manx") entry, but I don't know whether folks down around Cobh use a spelling pronunciation that adds an audible final consonant.
J.W. Brewer said,
November 4, 2024 @ 4:41 pm
Note FWIW that a different wikipedia article offers three old-time spellings: "Middle Irish: Muréb; Medieval Latin: Moravia; Old Norse: Mýræfi." This back when "Middle Irish" covered both Ireland and the Goidelic-speaking parts of Scotland and there were no Scottish/Irish distinctions in orthography. (Perhaps there were already regional differences in pronunciation that were ignored by the fairly small literate/scribal class?) The same article claims it's more likely than not that it's not originally a Goidelic toponym but was instead inherited from Pictish. I can't immediately ascertain what the Old Norse for the Czech Moravia might have been, but it modern Icelandic it seems to have been clipped down to Mæri.
Chris Button said,
November 4, 2024 @ 7:02 pm
Coincidently, yesterday I was just reading Edwin Pulleyblank's suggestion that *mori could be related to 海. Its unexpected Middle Chinese reflex does make the standard Old Chinese reconstruction problematic. Could he be onto something?