*arjom

Reconstructed from a personal name attested in Memphis, c. 585-550 (Kammerzell 1993a:169, 171).

[Zs.S.]

gen. sg.

Arjomś

E.Me 42

The attestation follows Adiego 2007a:354, checked against the photograph in O. Masson 1978a:Pl.XX,1. Schürr 1992a:134 cautiously suggested that Arjom is a dialectal variant of Arliom (see s.v.) and Adiego 2007a:354 also entertained the possibility that they are “variants”, “parallel” to Arliš / Ariš (Αρλισσις /Αρρισσις, see s.vv.). However, phonologically speaking, this case is in fact not a parallel; the identity of Arliš and Ariš is not assured; the assumed change *rli > *rj (or the other way round) is ad hoc; and, finally, the suffix -jom/-iom is well attested in Carian, see under Meaning. Schürr later (Schürr 2010c:201) suggested that Arjom is identical to Arliom, but the ‹l› was unintentionally omitted. There is, however, neither need nor evidence for such an emendation.

[Zs.S.]

Melchert 2013c:35 claims that the word underlying Arjom is “probably” the Carian cognate of the Luwian participle /ariyamma/i-/ ‘lifted, exalted’ from the verb āriya- (in fact, the question of the meaning and of the verbal stem is more complicated, see s.v.). This is both semantically and formally possible, nevertheless, -jom/-iom is a well-attested suffix in Carian personal names (Adiego, Tiverios, Manakidou & Tsiafakis 2012a:200, see also s.v. kbiom / *kbjom) and might be known even from Luwian (Šuppiluliyama, see Simon 2018c:122 with n. 3), but it is a denominal suffix. In other words, *arjom is built upon a Carian substantive *ar, which may even be attested (see s.v.). Unfortunately, their meaning remains unknown (Adiego 2007a:354 suggests comparing the stem *arj- with the Carian personal names Αριαυος and Αριδωλις, but the structure of these names is not transparent and -j- belongs to the suffix).

[Zs.S.]