Etymology of dialectal Swedish nårot and narg as reflected by Balto-Finnic loanwords: Finnish naarmu ‘scratch, scar’, Estonian näru ‘rag, tatter, frazzle’

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Swedish dialectal words nårot ‘worn-out’ and narg ‘a piece of wornout cloth’ have not been etymologically treated so far. I here connect them with a family of Balto-Finnic words, likewise still lacking an etymology: Finn. naarmu ˜ narvas (<*narwa−), Est. näru (<*narwo-) and narvas ˜ narmas, etc. In these Balto-Finnic words, the -v- has in most attested forms undergone a sound substitution to -m-, known to have taken place in some Germanic loan words in Balto-Finnic. I propose that the above dialectal Swedish words can be explained as old wō/wa–stems, related to West Germanic words like Ger. Narbe, OE nearwian ‘to constrain’, etc. Thus, it appears that Finn, narvas-, naarmu, Est. näru, etc. are Proto-Germanic loan words in Balto-Finnic, and that the words later died out in the Germanic languages, only to be retrievable through dialectal Norwegian and North Swedish data and reconstructable through comparison with the Balto-Finnic loan words.