What's in a name? I never learned in school why the Greeks called their highest god Zeus while the Romans across the street called the same deity Jupiter. They sure don't sound the same as we learned them. I wondered about it, and even asked a few times, but the school answer I got was ambiguous: "Because they spoke different languages." I nodded my head, maybe even uttered a quiet, "Ah, of course," and let it go.
A couple days ago, at the ripe early pre-middle age of 36, I came upon the answer myself, so I shall now pass it on to you... just because I can.
Please note, if you are running low on gray matter memory space and think it may be risky to add another useless bit of trivia to your brain, you may want to skip this article.
Since Zeus is attributed to thunder and lightning, as depicted in such texts as Homer's Illiad and Milton's Paradise Lost, it seems ironic that the Greek name gets its life from the Indo-European root word dyeu-, meaning "to shine". Secondary meanings inlcude "sky", "heaven", and "god". When used as a syllable for part of a word, dyeu- became *dyu- or *diw-.
In the Illiad, Greek prayers to Zeus begin with "Zeu pater" (tranlated: "o father Zeus"), where Zeu is traced back to the stem *dyu-. The Romans also favored this visage as their patron deity; however, as my English and World History teachers of yore were happy to divulge, the Romans and the Greeks spoke different languages. Taking the same meaning, the Romans called him "Iuppiter" (translated: "father Jove"), -pitter being a reduced form of the Greek pater, "father".
Were I to stop there, it would be easy to cry foul and say "Zeus and Jove are two entirely different names!" Well... it turns out that Jove comes from the Latin Iov-, from which comes the first part of "Iuppiter's" name. An older Latin version of Iov- was Diov-, illustrating a corollary to the Greek *Diw-. The two come from the same Indo-European root word, dyeu-.
And thus we get: Zeus --> Zeu pater --> Iuppiter --> Jupiter
Zeus, Jupiter, and more?
There was also a deity in the vedic hitorical period (2000-1000 BCE to about 600 BCE) called Dyaus Pitar in Sanskrit; Dyaus means "sky", and Pitar means "father". The Indo-European root words can be seen in the Sanskrit version, as well.
But it doesn't stop with Southern Europe. The Sanskrit Dyaus is closely realted to the Indo-European word for god, "*deiwos", which appears in the name of Old Norse and Old English god Tiw, or Tyr (who was the primary deity in the region before Odin).
Fun Fact within the Fun Fact: It is from the name "Tiw" that we get modern name Tuesday: "Tiw's day".
My primary source for this article:
bartleby.com
A couple days ago, at the ripe early pre-middle age of 36, I came upon the answer myself, so I shall now pass it on to you... just because I can.
Please note, if you are running low on gray matter memory space and think it may be risky to add another useless bit of trivia to your brain, you may want to skip this article.
Since Zeus is attributed to thunder and lightning, as depicted in such texts as Homer's Illiad and Milton's Paradise Lost, it seems ironic that the Greek name gets its life from the Indo-European root word dyeu-, meaning "to shine". Secondary meanings inlcude "sky", "heaven", and "god". When used as a syllable for part of a word, dyeu- became *dyu- or *diw-.
In the Illiad, Greek prayers to Zeus begin with "Zeu pater" (tranlated: "o father Zeus"), where Zeu is traced back to the stem *dyu-. The Romans also favored this visage as their patron deity; however, as my English and World History teachers of yore were happy to divulge, the Romans and the Greeks spoke different languages. Taking the same meaning, the Romans called him "Iuppiter" (translated: "father Jove"), -pitter being a reduced form of the Greek pater, "father".
Were I to stop there, it would be easy to cry foul and say "Zeus and Jove are two entirely different names!" Well... it turns out that Jove comes from the Latin Iov-, from which comes the first part of "Iuppiter's" name. An older Latin version of Iov- was Diov-, illustrating a corollary to the Greek *Diw-. The two come from the same Indo-European root word, dyeu-.
And thus we get: Zeus --> Zeu pater --> Iuppiter --> Jupiter
Zeus, Jupiter, and more?
There was also a deity in the vedic hitorical period (2000-1000 BCE to about 600 BCE) called Dyaus Pitar in Sanskrit; Dyaus means "sky", and Pitar means "father". The Indo-European root words can be seen in the Sanskrit version, as well.
But it doesn't stop with Southern Europe. The Sanskrit Dyaus is closely realted to the Indo-European word for god, "*deiwos", which appears in the name of Old Norse and Old English god Tiw, or Tyr (who was the primary deity in the region before Odin).
Fun Fact within the Fun Fact: It is from the name "Tiw" that we get modern name Tuesday: "Tiw's day".
My primary source for this article:
bartleby.com
1 comments:
Thanks for writing this.
Post a Comment