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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Do Zeus and Jupiter derive from `light' ?
In-Reply-To: ftilley@indirect.com's message of 27 Jun 1995 13:35:06 GMT
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In article <3sp1ea$pda@globe.indirect.com> ftilley@indirect.com
(Felix E. Tilley Jr.) writes:

>I believe deus, deva, zeus (gen. dios), and the English Tue as well as Jupiter
>derive from the proto-Indo-European word for day.  There is speculation that
>the PIE's had a deity called father of the day, or father of the sky or father
>of the heavens.  Note that the last two syllables of Jupiter appear to contain
>the word for father.

Indeed, Old English (or if you prefer, Anglo-Saxon) Tiu, Old Norse Tyr, is
derived from some form of *deiwos/*dye:us .  It appears that in the history of
Germanic mythology the god of the dead (Wodin) or the god of storms (Thor)
replaced the Sky Father as the chief of the gods.  (NB:  Odin was not the chief
god among the Danes at the time of Christianization.)
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
