“Proto-Uralic” *waśke ‘metal, (? copper); decoration’ and Its “Derivatives” in the Permian and Ugrian Languages

Abstract

The traditional etymology of the PU *waśke ‘metal, (? copper)’ is of great importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Uralic culture and the time of the disintegration of Proto-Uralic. Continuing some older works and considering the results of the latest research, this etymology is considered as fictitious, breaking up into at least three etymological nests: Finnic-Mordv. *vaśa-kive ‘axe-stone’ (etymology of T.-R. Viitso, where *vaśa- denotes ‘axe, adze’, a borrowing from Aryan + PU *kive ‘stone’), Proto-Perm. *veś ‘non-ferrous metal; metal decoration’, Proto-Sam. *wesä ‘metal, metal decoration’. The last two words can be independent borrowings from a language close to Tocharian (*wəsa ‘gold’ < PIE). It is impossible to restore a Proto-Ugric word for metal associated with these etymologies, since Hung. vas ‘iron’ (s [љ] < *č), Khanty *waχ ‘metal; iron’ and Mansi *wes in *ǟϑ-wes ‘lead’ cannot be phonetically related to each other in any way. Mari βaћ ‘ore’ also cannot be considered a normal reflex of *waśke but is rather a semantic development of Mar. βaћ ‘root’ (< PFU). The names of silver in the Permian (Perm *özüś > Udm. azveś, Komi eziś) and Hungarian (ezьst) languages have a special history, they are in no way related to other Finno-Ugric names of metals and are loans from Alanian *жzvestж (> Osset. жvzīst ‘silver’), which can be dated to the second half of the I millennium BC — the first half of the I millennium AD. The names of tin / lead in the Permian and Mansi languages (Perm *os-veś ~ Mansi *ǟϑ-wes) are also etymologically unrelated to either the fictitious PU *waśke or the Permian-Hungarian name of silver, but represent a common innovation, where the second component is Proto-Perm *veś ‘non-ferrous metal; metal decoration’, and the first component is a color designation (? ‘grey metal’ cf. Hung. ősz ‘gray-haired’). The composite emerged in the second half of the I millennium BC — I millennium AD, in the region from the middle and lower Kama region in the west to the southern Trans-Uralian taiga forests in the east. Probably, this innovation relates to the development of the Perm and West Siberian “animal style” phenomenon. The article also discusses some features of conducting discussions in modern Finno-Ugric studies.