| Today's Word: | *gwen- |
| Translation: | a woman, a wife |
| Related to: | Greek gunh (a woman, a wife) - from *guna |
| Latin - not found, another stem is used: fem- | |
| Common Celtic *bena (a woman),
gen. sg. *bnás (of a woman) >
Old Irish ben, Irish Gaelic bean, Scottish Gaelic bean, Manx ben, Cornish benen, Welsh benyw |
|
| Common Hitto-Luwian *gwana (a
woman) >
Luwian wanatti |
|
| Avestan g@ná (a woman) >
Persian & Tadjik zan |
|
| Sanskrit janis, gná (a woman,
a goddess) >
Kashmiri zanana, Singhalese gani |
|
| Phrygian bon-ekos (a wife) - a suffix added | |
| Armenian kin (a woman, a wife), gin | |
| Tocharian A s'än (a woman), Tocharian B s'ana - this strange change of gw > s' is regular in Tocharian | |
| Common Germanic *kwaen-, *kwen- (woman) >
Gothic qino (a woman), qéns (a queen), Old English cwén (woman, wife, queen), Old High German cwán, Old Norse kwaen > English queen, Scottish queyn (a queen), Swedish kvinna (a woman), Icelandic kona, kvennmaor, Faroese kona, Danish kvinde, Dutch kween (old cow), Frisian kwyn |
|
| Common Baltic *gen- (a woman)
>
Old Prussian voc. sg. genno (woman!), *gená (a wife, a woman), Sudovian *genâ (a woman, a wife) |
|
| Common Slavic *z'ena (a woman)
>
Belorussian z'ana, Bulgarian & Polish & Serbo-Croatian & Slovene & Czech & Slovak & Ukrainian & Russian z'ena, Sorbian z'ona |
|
| Notes: | The stem must be rather archaic - the original
meaning was not just "a woman", but "an honoured woman", which witnesses
that it was born in ancient matriarchate times. Germanic meaning "queen"
and Sanskrit "goddess" make this more than just a version.
The gender is in most cases feminine, which is natural; however, Old English is neuter. In majority of languages this noun was of a-stems. |
