this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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We can't be completely sure of that, as it's based on inductive reasoning, and indirect evidence. ...but nor I can be completely sure either if my lunch will be actual chicken or if the butcher sold me Cthulhu's flesh shaped like chicken tights. So eventually we need to draw the line and say "nah, we know this well enough".
And in the case of Γαῖα / Gaîa, the presence of a coordinated term γῆ / gê "land, earth, soil" (NOM.PL γ(έ)αι /g(é)ai ) is strong indicative that the god was named after the concept, not the opposite. That word pops up all the time in compounds, even for mundane things like γεωργός / geōrgos "farmer" or γεωμετρία / geōmetríā "land measuring → geometry".
It also fits rather well how epithets are assigned to gods, and often evolve into names themselves.
Now, if the word is from PIE *dʰéǵʰōm "earth" or some Pre-Greek substrate is another can of worms, that is far more dubious. The presence of forms like Δᾶ / Dâ hint me the later; possibly the original language used something like *ɟea, and different Greek dialects adapted that */ɟ/ into /d/ or /g/. Curiously the forms that pop up in compounds for other nouns use /d/, like Demeter ("mother De").
The most fascinating part about all this is that the Greek culture goes as far back as the last ice age where the Greek genesis myth references things that could potentially refer to those geographic circumstances. There were also a lot of invasions and colonization of that area and the new people tended go absorb some of the culture from the defeated ones which is where some of those names come from. Like it's fascinating that Gaia is a pretty important goddess, but wasn't really honored and mentioned as much as the dodecatheon and neither was Uranus. Almost like deist entities.
I've read people suggest that some of these almost prehistoric names come out of onomatopoeia. What do you think?
It's beautiful, isn't it? We look at the past, and it opens a small window to an even earlier past.
It's a bit off-topic but here's another example that I find also fascinating - horses in the Greek myths. What's up with the divine twins Castor and Pollux being always pictured with horses? Or Poseidon, a sea god, creating land animals? Or the association between horses and glory in battle?
Sure, horses are useful, but less so in a rough terrain; and the Greeks weren't exactly mass breeding horses, they were mostly a resource for rich people. Almost like they inherited some myths that only made sense in another environment full of open fields, where horses were a way of life.
And just like the genesis myths talk about what happened from the PoV of the natives, those horse myths talk about the origin of the invaders, as steppe nomads near the Pontic Sea. And then suddenly you find a lot other similar myths, in other Indo-European cultures; such as the Rigveda with the अश्विनः / Aśvinaḥ ("horse possessors", divine twins, who save people from the sea), or Germanic tales about the sea invasion of Britannia being led by Hengist (stallion) and Horsa (horse).
It makes me feel like everything is connected, and perhaps we shouldn't be even talking about "Greek culture", but just that Greek portrait of human culture.
But I digress. (Sorry, I tend to talk a lot about Indo-European culture, it's one of my passions.)
Personally I find it possible but unlikely. I think that they get those short, almost "bah!"-like forms due to erosion, caused by sound changes and the borrowing process.
It's simply that we don't know enough about its etymology further back to "see" a well-structured word. All that we see is that "gê", sometimes "da".
Yup! She's a goddess, but she lacks all the whistles and bells that you'd associate with the Olympians, because she's more like a divine aspect of nature. By worshipping her you aren't just worshipping some abstract entity in the middle of nowhere, you're worshipping the very soil that gives you sustenance.
It's interesting that you mentioned Ouranos, as it's another god with a rather transparent name: οὐρανός/ouranós is the sky vault, where the stars are attached to. Your association is spot on - he's also a divine aspect of nature, a step further from humankind than the Olympians.