Mythologic ties to the historic development of language

[Kyriakos]

Recently i came across a very interesting fact, that there existed a Gigas (it means Giant) in ancient Greek Mythology who was half-man and half-bear, and his name was Agrios.
This was interesting to me since Agrios is a word still in common use today, in fact it is the main word that means "savage". It always struck me, therefore, as a particularly wild term, and i was pleased to note its foundation being equally savage and dangerous, that of the Thracian giant Agrios.

Having ancient Greek terms survive in modern Greek is nothing new, but many times we use words which are not synthetic, they are not made up of more terms, and therefore their origin of meaning seems to be unknown. In the case of Agrios it is traced back to mythology, and i wonder how many terms have a similar, even pre-historic foundation.

And it so happens that most (although not all) of the mythological beings have as names terms which are not synthetic. Other times they are, such as the Ekatogxeirai (literally means one hundred-handed), or the known cyclops Polyphemos, whose name comes from Poly (a lot) and Pheme (reputation) but a large amount of mythological beings have names that seem to have lost the ties to obvious meaning.

If you want to you can mention other examples from whatever real language that has this effect. I realize this topic is a bit too specific, but hopefully it could generate some discussion.

 

[cybrxkhan]

It's quite possible that the terms and the deities were borrowed from a now-extinct language (i.e., from the inhabitants of Greece before Indo-European speakers came, or from other civilizations from the Near East or Middle East). Also, it's quite possible that the words originally were synthetic a long time ago, but since people kept using it time after time, they forgot its original components; or, the original components changed sound through sound change so that they are no longer recognizable today even though they have for some reason remained in the names of the deities; or that the original components are no longer used but the word for the deity was (for instance, in English, the "be" in "behead" originally had its own meaning, that is, to remove a body part, so you could say stuff "be-ear", but that would make completely no sense today).

Also, there's nothing that says that names for deities have to be synthetic. I mean some languages don't even do a lot of this kind of thing.

If any of that makes sense?

I still think it's pretty interesting, regardless, finding the etymologies of names. Names tend to be act a bit weirder than other words during historical linguistic changes.

 

[aelf]

Actually, I'd say that the relation between words and their meanings have no necessary 'foundation', whether it be found in objective reality or in myth as you understand it. The fact that the meanings of words simply change overtime with use (or are lost with lack of use) seems to be indicative that, whatever etymologies seem evident, to say that words carry certain properties (e.g. 'wildness') inherited from mythical origins seems a little too neat and therefore far-fetched. Old meanings (or something close to them) may stick around, but there isn't a narrative of "mythologic ties to the historic development of language" to be found behind such a phenomenon.

 

[Kyriakos]

It's quite possible that the terms and the deities were borrowed from a now-extinct language (i.e., from the inhabitants of Greece before Indo-European speakers came, or from other civilizations from the Near East or Middle East). Also, it's quite possible that the words originally were synthetic a long time ago, but since people kept using it time after time, they forgot its original components; or, the original components changed sound through sound change so that they are no longer recognizable today even though they have for some reason remained in the names of the deities; or that the original components are no longer used but the word for the deity was (for instance, in English, the "be" in "behead" originally had its own meaning, that is, to remove a body part, so you could say stuff "be-ear", but that would make completely no sense today).

Also, there's nothing that says that names for deities have to be synthetic. I mean some languages don't even do a lot of this kind of thing.

If any of that makes sense?

I still think it's pretty interesting, regardless, finding the etymologies of names. Names tend to be act a bit weirder than other words during historical linguistic changes.

Interesting points, Cybrxkhan

Yes, it seems very possible that many of the mythological names belonged to a previous language. I have read, for example, that the names of the heroes in the Homeric Epics were utterly alien to the Greeks of the later eras.
And they still may have been at some time recognizably synthetic, but they are no more.
It is interesting that such incredibly ancient terms are in common use today as well, albeit usually without their origins being conscious.