Yes it has up to the 19th century ad...



According to the official history, there should have been no contacts between the Irish and the Serbs. If we consider the Irish to be the "Celts" and the Serbs to be the "Slavs", then according to the official history they had no chance of ever meeting and influencing each other linguistically and culturally, because "Celts" disappeared from central Europe before "Slavs" arrived there. Also according to the official history "Celts" never lived in the Balkans.

And yet, Balkans has unbelievable amount of "Celtic" toponymes ans hydronimes. I am talking about fields, streams, forests, lakes, mountain peaks...the things passing "Celtic" armies on their way to Greece definitely did not bother naming. There is also pile of "Celtic" words which are used in the Balkans (in Slavic languages) and in Ireland (in Gaelic) and nowhere else in non Gaelic and non Slavic world. And some of them have no root meaning in Gaelic and some of them have no root meaning in Slavic languages. How is this possible without the ancestors of the Irish once living in the Balkans? How is it possible that both "Slavic" and "Celtic" religious customs and myths and legends are so similar and not only that, but that some ancient religious traditions from Ireland can only be explained using Serbian counterparts because the actual meaning was preserved in Serbia but was lost in Ireland? And equally some Serbian traditions can only be explained using Irish counterparts because the actual meaning has been preserved in Gaelic language? How is it possible to have such overlap in the most ancient cultural layers in both nations without them at some stage living together or being the same?

The reason i postulate that this happened in Serbia is because this is where the center of metallurgy was in the ancient time and this is where the ancient Irish and Serbian legends say that the irish have departed from...

So i am not subscribing to anything, just trying to solve the above problem. To me "there is no explanation" is not an explanation.

Can you give examples of such toponyms?

Source?


There's not an "unbelievable amount of "Celtic" toponyms"; there's a very believable amount of chance resemblances. (Which are more likely than you seem to think.)


Sometimes "there is no explanation" is the explanation. As the Irish comic Dara Ó Briain puts it, "Just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you."

So far, though, I haven't even seen you doing that as much as rejecting established explanations (such as the etymologies of Éire, Hisar, garda, etc.) so you can replace them with ad hoc ones of your own. This kind of amateurish unsystematic approach hasn't been in vogue in scientific circles since the 18th century. It's like attempting to do archaeology on your own without the benefit of radiocarbon dating, phytolith analysis, magnometry, or any of the other innovations of the past two hundred years.

The Wikipedia article about that theory quotes this:

(Alinei's theory was again critically reviewed by Adiego Lajara (2002):[13])

Although some of Alinei's reflections on linguistic change are very interesting, it should be said that certain conceptions in his work -- such as the excessive immobility of languages or the relationship between types of language and progress in the prehistoric lithic industry -- are very debatable. Alinei's core theory -- continuity from the Palaeolithic --, runs into a serious difficulty: it obliges us to deal with words traditionally reconstructed for Indo-European, referring to notions that did not exist in the Palaeolithic as loans, when from the formal standpoint they are indistinguishable from those Alinei sees as being Indo-European in the Palaeolithic period.

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Hisar hill and the surrounding area have been continuously inhabited since 3000 bc. I don't know what kind of sources you are looking for, and i don't know of any one document that talks about it. The excavation is still going on. The iron works were only found few years ago. now they are discovering greek and roman artifacts and medieval ones as well.

This is from wikipedia site about city of Leskovac (Hisar is the old leskovac). You can see that even they have the old dating for the hisar fort, the new one is 14th century bc.




Here is an article about roman and medieval artifacts found in 2004. It is in Serbian:

http://arhiva.glas-javnosti.rs/arhiva/2 ... 0302.shtml

Here they talk about finding smelting furnaces from the 14th century ad. So the same site had been used for smelting iron from 1400 bc to 1400 ad...This to me is continuity...

http://www.juznasrbija.info/?view=lat&a ... ry=drustvo

And if you have read the articles that i have posted originally about the site you would have seen this:



So not just any Iron age ironworks. The guys new how to make pure 100% iron, which is currently impossible to reproduce even in most advanced laboratories...

So you will have to trust my word on this if you want or go and google it yourself if you don't. The site has been continuously inhabited.



How do you know? Did you study toponymes and hydronimes of the Balkans? Or are you just arrogant and dismissive? No one is attacking neither you nor anything you believe in. Science is not a religion, there is nothing to defend. It is all about truth and learning. So stop fighting, and wait until i present the toponimes and hydronimes that i am talking about and then you can analyse them yourself and make up your own mind.

Just to start, in Serbia you can find Mountain Tara and river Tara, but also mountain taor which is how you pronounce Teamhair (tavor, taor (tabor)) the actual old name of Tara in Ireland.

In Serbian tabor is a military camp. Utaboriti se is to set up camp. Taborovati is to camp. Tavoriti is standing in one place, not moving. Tabor, Tavor, Taur, Tara....

And by the way there is no clear etymology for tara or Teamhair in Gaelic....

Have fun.



I like Dara. I have been living in Dublin for 20 years now and had a chance to see him many times. And he is funny, but he is also full of himself and full of the same Sh** you are now coming out with: "Just because i don't know about it and i don't understand it it doesn't exist and particularly if its not the established truth it is double rubbish". You know nothing about what i am talking about but you are dismissing it out of hand because you know everything and if you don't then its rubbish? Not very scientific...



Don't use big words on me. I am but a simple amateur...

Just found this:



http://www.knowth.com/tara-survey.htm

You set up tabor (military camp) on top of hills from which you can have a good view of the surrounding countryside...So in 9th century they still remembered (vaguely) the original meaning of the word. Now however we have this mumbo jumbo light dark crap which is "possibly more accurate".

This is a leap of faith on your part. Finding artifacts from two widely separated periods is no evidence of continuity. I dug a hole in my garden on Wednesday to plant a shrub. I will dig another couple of holes tonight. This does not mean that I've been digging holes in the garden continuously since Wednesday.


That's all very interesting, but it has no bearings on the points I raised.


Not of the Balkans specifically, but I am a linguist and toponyms are one of my areas of interest and have been for a couple of decades now.


I'm not getting defensive. I'm trying to explain to you the fundamental flaws in your methodology. If your methodology is badly flawed, it doesn't matter what data you present, your results will still be invalid. Case in point:
This is exactly what I'm talking about: Comparing a contemporary Irish word with a contemporary Serbian one when you're arguing for prehistoric contact is a fundamental methodological flaw. You need to compare the earliest attested forms of each name, since the forms of names can and do change significantly over time.

Since Irish orthography is rather conservative, even the spelling itself demonstrates that you are on the wrong track: medial mh in Irish comes from earlier *m. So there's labial consonant in the stem of the name Teamhair that isn't reflected at all in the Serbian toponym. Where did it go? (Or, conversely, how did it get added?)

Moreover, this only supports the point I made earlier about chance resemblances. It isn't hard to find placenames with "Tara" around the world. There's an island in Indonesia called Batu Tara. (Batu means "stone".) There's a town called Tara (太良) on the Japanese island of Kyūshū. Does this mean that the Celts settled East and Southeast Asia as well as Western and Southern Europe?


Tabor is an obvious borrowing of Turkish tabur "battalion; military camp". Any etymological dictionary of Serbian (or Hungarian or Rumanian or any of the other languages which have borrowed the same word) will tell you that.


There's a big difference between "X doesn't have a clear etymology" and "any etymology I propose for X is as good as any other". If you're really interesting in the origins of the name, I suggest you read the scholarly articles concerning it in The kingship and landscape of Tara from Four Courts Press. The leading theories are that it derives from a Proto-Indo-European root *tem- meaning "dark" or "cut" with the nominal suffix *ro-. Both of these elements are richly attested in Indo-European languages, as is deriving words in this manner.


I never claimed to know everything; neither does Dara. He's actually rather modest about his achievements. All the same, he has a degree in Mathematical Physics from University College Dublin. So when it comes to science and the scientific method, it's safe to say that he generally knows what he's talking about. And I have a degree in Linguistics from the University of Chicago. So again, it's not like I'm talking out of my ass when I say that your understanding of historical linguistics is faulty.

I don't know what your background is, but let's say you're an auto mechanic with years of experience working on cars. How well would you take to someone coming into your place of work and telling you they know better than you how to repair cars, that you're going about it all wrong, and that they can repair their own with nothing more that a hammer and some aluminum foil? Would you tell them, "Golly, you must be right; my whole life's work has been a waste!" Or would you say, "Have you noticed that your car doesn't actually run? Perhaps you might want to read a book on car repair before going at it again."

I'm telling you your car doesn't run. Not because I'm "arrogant and dismissive", but because I'd really like you to learn how to fix it for real.

I think that questions about, and friendly discussions of, the etymology of Irish words is within the scope of this forum. However, the parties involved in this discussion don't agree on what the appropriate standard of evidence is for this type of linguistic research. Without agreement on that, I don't think the discussion can go anywhere but further downhill. For that reason, I am locking this thread.

If you'd like to re-open the discussion, please feel free to contact one of the moderators.

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