ἀσταγανά

HED A & E/I:451 cautiously suggests that the Hesychian gloss ἀσταγανά· ἱμάς ‘leathern strap’ represents the borrowing of “a possible (Luwoid?) cognate” of Hittite ištagga(i)- ‘bowstring’ (the words were first connected by Furnée 1972a:377). The word is, however, not included in EDG and is missing in the other Greek etymological dictionaries (DELG and GEW I), too, probably because Hesychius did not provide any language classification for ἀσταγανά (similarly HEG A-K:422 [“unverwertbar, da ohne Herkunftsangabe”]). Nevertheless, it does not necessarily mean that this word is non-Greek, on the contrary, one may even argue that it was not classified because it was evidently Greek, cf. also LSJ that does include this word. It is not included in the overviews of alleged Anatolian loanwords in Greek, either (Yakubovich 2010d:113f., 146f., Yakubovich 2013a:118–120; Sh. Hawkins 2010a:224f.; Gasbarra & Pozza 2012a:189–196, Gasbarra & Pozza 2019a:57–70; Hajnal 2014a:110f., Hajnal 2018a:2041f.; Oreshko 2018a), not even in the most comprehensive one (Simon 2018a). HW 2nd ed. I:229 claims that the connection of the two words is “sehr unsicher”, but without a single argument.

The Hittite word was explained by Neumann 1961b:79 as the cognate of ON stag, OE stæg ‘rope, cable’. On the Hittite side this was accepted by Čop 1963a:31 n. 23a, Gusmani 1968a:69, and HEG A-K:422, but it was booked by HED A & E/I:451 with a question mark (it is not included in EDHIL, which implies that he treats it as a loanword, but without having refuted Neumann’s idea this treatment is not relevant). On the Germanic side this proposal was followed by Orel 2003a:369 (but not included in Kroonen 2013a, which is, however, known to include only a selection of Proto-Germanic words despite its title). As far as the connection with ἀσταγανά is concerned (setting aside the problem of the velars and the morphology), if Neumann’s etymology is correct, it implies that the other Anatolian languages, including Luwian, would show an initial consonant cluster *st- (except Sidetic, which behaves like Hittite from this point of view) and not ast-, which excludes an Anatolian origin. If Neumann’s etymology is not correct, there is no phonologically regular way to explain ἀσταγανά from any reconstructable Anatolian cognate of ištagga(i)-.

[Zs.S.]

Last updated: 27 July 2020