Morum

Author(s): Eric P. Hamp

Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 167-169
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294447
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 MORUM.

Even though nothing conclusive can yet be said, it seems

worthwhile to bring together the major evidence on the mul-
berry, blackberry, etc.
* * *

Latin morrum'muire' (which gave loans to Germanic, leading

inter alia to English mulberry, and Lithuanian) was opposed
typically by gender to a tree or bush name morus, -uisf. 'murier',
and is pan-Romance. Ernout-Meillet (3rd ed., p. 738) see it
as a loan either from Greek or more probably from a Mediter-
ranean source as in the case of ficus, etc. Frisk (GEW 2.256)
sees Greek uo'pov as a possible source for morum despite its
length; he likewise sees Greek as a possible origin for Armenian
mor mori. I think, however, that we should reserve opinion on
the last in view of the Armenian stem-class. If the Armenian
is not borrowedfrom Greek there are still two possibilities open:
either they are loans from a common East Mediterranean source,
or the two languages inherit this term from an ancient common
history as they seem to with a good number of features.
Frisk also regards Welsh merwydden (which would be *mor-
wid-) as possibly from Latin, and thus all these forms could
conceivably have a Greek origin. This, however, ignores the
problem of the Latin vowel length and the Welsh vowel quality;
from Latin 5 we expect u (Rufawn < Rom&nus) or excep-
tionally aw (nawn < nona). Vendryes (Lexique etymologique
de l'irlandais ancien MNOP 1960, s.v. mer) more properly sees
Welsh merwydd(en) as borrowed from a Mediterranean source
which also gave Greek popov. (He also parallels the length of
mnrum with uowpa- ovKaLtvca, Hesych.) Also cited by Vendryes
we note in particular Cornish mor moren; he remarks simply
that this too is borrowed. But the vocalism of this late Cornish
form must surely be monophthongized from earlier moyr moyar,
as Williams (Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum, 1865. s. v. moyar)
assumes, and Jackson (Language and History in Early Britain,
1953, p. 359) implies acceptance. It therefore does not support
Welsh merwydden. I propose nevertheless that we have here a

167

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168 ERIC P. HAMP.

common British word, and a rather ancient loan, on the strength

of this Welsh form *mor-.
The OIr. mer (merib gl. moris) would, according to Vendryes,
be a borrowingfrom British Keltic, and would therefore not offer
independent testimony. It does however add strength to the
Welsh *mor-. The otherwise obscure vocalism (since Irish did
not suffer such umlaut phenomena) seems best accounted for
in this fashion.
Vendryes sees the Latin as borrowed from Greek (from an
o variant?) It seems to me that if British Keltic and Greek
show independent borrowings, and perhaps Armenian too, then
we must allow the same possibility for Latin. In sum, without
committing oneself, one must agree with Vendryes: "un mot
voyageur, en provenance semble-t-il, de la region mediter-
raneenne."
As to the form, Greek, Latin, Armenian and British Keltic
alike we must allow either *mor- or *smor-.
* * *

We must now turn to the etymon of OIr. smer 'blackberry'

etc. This together with Welsh mwyar, Cornish moyar, Vannetais
Breton muiar, clearly goes back to *smi(i)ar-. I have recently
(Revue de linguistique 12, 1967, 523-24; addendum, ibid. 1968,)
added to this the Romanian zmeurd 'raspberry', which is
matched in Latin fashion by the bush name zmeur; the modern
Greek ale9dpo would, contrary to common opinion, be borrowed
from Aromunian. The Romanian forms must come from a
preform *smi(i)or-. In dealing with these words I left the ques-
tion open whether the Romanian was borrowed from an ancient
specifically Keltic source, or whether the two groups stem from
some common substratum. In view of the Keltic residence in
early Dacia the former is a distinct possibility.
* * *

It is obviously tempting to try to unite these two sets.

Pedersen (VKG 1.67) tried to pair a Keltic smj- with a Latin-
Greek sm-, but this was rejected by Ernout-Meillet with much
good sense.
Yet, in view now of the vocalism *smi(i)or- beside *sm(i)ar-l

1Has this fallen into some sort of IE ablaut relation?

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 MoRUM. 169

the two sets become a trifle more compatible. Still we have no

warrant to unite them by any rules we know.
For the time being, we may tentatively propose a South
European word *(s)mor- and a Central European (Carpathian?)
*smi(i)or-.
ERIC P. HAMP.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.

ON THE PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY OF LAT.

CUNCTUS.

Domenico Silvestri has made a good case (Euroasiatica 6,

1970, Istituto Universitario Orientale, Napoli) for explaining
the background of Lat. cunctus on semantic lines that are sup-
ported by Hittite pancus'; the basic sense of cunctus would
have been a 'collective numerical totality'. Following Goetze,
Kulturgeschichte des Alten Orients, p. 80, *pangar- (in
pangariia-) would support pankus' in the sense 'numerical
plurality, unified total'. While Silvestri argues well for their
semantic similarity and suggestiveness, he expressly declines to
assert a clear genetic link in the Latin and Hittite forms (p.
16); he states that "una dipendenza di cunctus da un i.e.
*ponw-s. . .. non e dimostrabile." I believe that with some at-
tentive analysis we can make such a relation as likely as many
a cognacy which we accept. We need simply support the semantic
agreement with plausible phonetics and morphology of word
formation.
I am not myself convinced by Polome's argument (Pratidanam
1968, pp. 98-101) that pankus be related to *penkwe' 5 ', though
in a language such as Sanskrit the output of the two could
easily have crossed. If pankcu-is to be relalated to *pangar-, then
we may have *pnKu- and *p(o)nK-r- respectively; we represent
the indeterminacy between *k and *g by *K. In an old u-stem
we may well expect zero-grade.
Silvestri is bothered (p. 16) by the apparent fact that the
Latin assimilation *p -w kw > -kw occurs only with an e-
vocalism. Apart from the high frequency of *e, we also know
that Latin developed an e-vocalism from old syllabic nasals;

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