🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul25.223032.17461@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:

>In English we talk about the Baltic Sea and say "The Baltcis"
>for the countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In Swedish
>we call the sea "\stersj|n" (The East Sea), but we still
>talk about "Baltikum" to refer to the area. I never wondered
>where this name comes from, it's only a name I assumed.

>However, while looking through a Latvian-English dictionary I
>found that Whiterussia was "Baltkrevija" in Latvia. "Huh, Baltic
>Russia?", I thought. Anyway, I looked up "balt" in the dictionary 
>and sure enough "balt" is the Latvian word for "white".

>But then comes the question is just "balt" = "white" a random
>coincidence, or is there really a connection with name of
>the area or the sea?

Interesting. My (small) ethymological dictionary gives a rather poor
description of the word "baltic", only mentioning that the English
"Baltic" comes from the Latin "(mare) Balticum", and further refers
to the Swedish word "b{lte" (belt) and suggests "the sea that forms
a belt (surrounding the nordic countries)", which I frankly don't
believe at all.
My English dictionary, otherwise filled with ethymological notes,
fails to give any explanation at all.

I think the Latvian word "balt" gives a much better explanation.
It's worth mentioning that the old Norse names for the Baltic countries
were Estland (still is in Swedish), Livland and Kurland, if I remember
 correctly. Don't know if they had any common name for all three of
them. The Swedish word "Balticum" must be a loan from Latin.

>Speaking of coincidences, the Swedish word for "street" is "gata",
>Latvia has "gate" (although "iela" is more widely used) and
>Lithuanian has "gatve". Here, however, it must either be a case
>of false cognates, or a loan in some direction.

"Gata" has a common Germanic origin. It's known in Old Swedish and
Old Danish with the specific meaning (city) street, and you find it
in the German "Gasse" (small street) and Gothic "gatwo". The Old Norse
word was "gat", meaning opening, passage, or hole. (Still around in
Swedish, "gatt", in "Kattegatt" and "spygatt".)  From Old Norse it
found it's way through Old Frisian "jet" (opening), to Old English
"geat", which today is known as the English "gate". (I think it's known
in Scottish and northern English dialects meaning "street" as well,
probably from Old Norse.)

With that background I think it's safe to say that it's a loan in
Latvian and Lithuanian from Swedish or Danish (both have had some
historical influence in the region).

--
 |\/|\/|\/| Per-Erik Martin,
 |  |  |/\| Department of Computer Systems, Uppsala University,
 |/\|  |  | Email: pem@minsk.DoCS.UU.SE