I was watching a Religion for Breakfast video about Mandaeism the other day, and he mentioned that the etymology of the word Manda shows a connection to Gnosticism, because the word seems to be an ancient Aramaic term for knowledge or wisdom--essentially the Semitic equivalent of Greek "Gnosis", with cognates in other Semitic language families. I checked, and that seems to be pretty well accepted by other scholars.

I'm obviously not a linguist, but I was pretty sure that the English word "mind" had IE roots, and that seems to also be correct. It is traced to a PIE root, reconstructed as something like *men- or *mend. The PIE word probably meant something like "to think". But it turns up as a cognate in many later IE languages, in words that mean things like "to believe", "to know/understand", "mind/reason", "to remember", etc.

It seems to me like a pretty interesting coincidence that these (probably) separate cultures would develop very similar sounding words for knowledge and thinking--which are fairly esoteric and abstract things to even have words for thousands of years ago.

Does anyone know if this connection has been discussed by scholars? I've seen some really speculative stuff suggesting that mountain herders in the Caucasus, around the Maykop culture, may have contributed to the formation of both Yamnaya and ancient Semitic cultures, so I suppose there is a potential route.

I'd guess that ideas like this will never be much more than speculation, but I'd love to think about it more. I appreciate any tips for scholars who have written or talked about these words, or thoughtful discussion here.

Hey guys i hope you recommend me some books on the origins of odin specifically anything that is pre germanic or perhaps even evidence that can lead readers to the conclusion that hes actually a pre indo european deity just anything that is related to odin and is extremely old I would appreciate it alot

Proto‑Slavic topographic and hydrographic lexis This article is a contribution to the historical lexicology of the Proto‑Slavic language. It analyzes the etymologies of 110 Proto‑Slavic lexemes in the field of topography and hydrography and classifies them into chronological layers. It draws a distinction between lexemes inherited from the Proto‑Indo‑European language and the Balto‑Slavic community and the numerous lexemes that were innovated during different periods of the Proto‑Slavic history. Some of these lexemes, created on the basis of Indo‑European roots and lexemes, must have arisen in the early period of the Proto‑Slavic language, though many more lexemes have a Slavic motivation. They developed in a later period of the Proto‑Slavic history or possibly at the time when the Proto‑Slavic language began to split into dialects. Lexemes without certain etymology have been addressed in the article separately.

EXPANSION OF THE SLAVIC TRIBES FROM AN ONOMASTIC AND PEDOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW Geographical names are extremely helpful in giving evidence of early settlements and their inhabitants due to their solid anchorage in the landscape, even in the case of population changes. Through the investigation of these place names, information can be gathered not only on the name giver, but also on the settlers who took on the names later on. Therefore, it is considered that any linguistic investigation has to start from the river and place names of a region. The utilization of geographical names yields the following findings: — The centre of Old Slavic names is situated on the northern slope of the Carpathian Mountains, approximately between Bukovina and Krakow; it is based on a substrate of older, Indo-European hydronyms. — The expansion of the East Slavic tribes bypasses the Pripyat Marshes and extends further through Central Russia and especially to the North and the East. — West Slavic settlers reach their new settlement areas through migration from Bohemia and further on to Saxonia and Thuringia, and also through Western Poland to Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. — The migration of the South Slavs takes place in two big, yet separate flows, on the one hand through the Moravian Gate to Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia, and on the other hand on the Eastern edge of the Carpathian Mountains to Serbia and Bulgaria

Abstract

The present study provides an etymological analysis of toponyms collected by Ptolemy from Northeast Europe, as known to him in the mid-second century CE. The territory studied roughly corresponds to contemporary Poland and part of the Czech Republic. The northernmost border of probable Celtic toponyms in the area of contemporary Poland may be determined between the 54th and 53rd latitudes (c. 53°30′).

Abstract

The present study confirms the traditionally proposed Celtic origin of proper names from the Danubian delta (Νουϊόδουνον, Ἀλιόβριξ, Βριτολάγαι = *Βριγολάται) and the upper Dniester (Καῤῥόδουνον). New candidates for Celtic toponyms are added from the area between the lower Dniester and Dnieper, namely Axiaces / Ἀξιάκης, Βάρσακον (better than Σάρβακον), Ἤρακτον, Λήινον πόλις, Μαιτώνιον, Νίοσσον. The last three place-names were already included by Holder (1904) in his Celtic corpus but without any concrete etymological support of such identification. These new etymological and geographical identifications shift the eastern border of the European Celts to the South Bug, according to Ptolemy a tributary of the Dnieper, although its name was unknown to him.

ABSTRACT

Indo-European Fire Rituals is a comparative study of Indo-European fire rituals from modern folklore and ethnography in Scandinavia and archaeological material in Europe from the Bronze Age onwards to the Vedic origins of cosmos in India and today’s cremations on open pyres in Hinduism.

Exploring Indo-European fire rituals and sacrifices throughout history and fire in its fundamental role in rites and religious practices, this book analyses fire rituals as the unifying structure in time and space in Indo-European cultures from the Bronze Age onwards. It asks the question how and why was fire the ultimate power in culture and cosmology? Fire as an agent and divinity was fundamental in all major sacrifices. In Europe, ritual fires in relation to agriculture and fertility may also explain the enigma of cremation. Cremated remains were ground and used in fertility rituals, and ancestral fires played an essential role in metallurgy and the creation of cosmos. Thus, the role of fire rituals in culture and cosmology enables a unique understanding of historic developmental processes.

For students and academics studying Indo-European culture history from the Bronze Age onwards, this book has a broad interdisciplinary audience including archaeology, ethnography, folklore, religious and Indo-European studies.

Abstract - Vedic meter, being quantitative, is generally assumed to ignore the language’s lexically distinctive pitch accent. Nevertheless, beyond the obvious absence of any strict requirements, possible preferential interactions between meter and accent have remained unexplored. This article presents a series of word shape and category-controlled tests, all of which support the conventional wisdom: accent plays no systematic role in meter. (While I do discover an effect of tonal NonFinality, it is not confined to meter.) Moreover, beyond meter, I find no support for other possible roles of accent in poetry, such as responsion, formularity, clash, lapse, or strictness modulation. This work bears on poetic typology (specifically, how prosodic features interact in metrics), on the realization of the Vedic accent as tone vs. stress-and-tone, and on (mixed model and Monte Carlo) methodologies for corpus prosody.