(Sharing an experience here) I had this crazy thing last Wednesday. I was walking around and suddenly I see WOTAN on the wall. I thought to myself about Wodnas Werjan, and realized it should be a D, not a T. Anyways, I move along the same road past some jackdaws and magpies and sit down on a bench to listen to Rhetoric by Aristotle for a while. I get up, I turn around and see the building behind me has WALRAVEN on it. What a wonderful Wednesday it was.
The possessive form! That must be the form for he was given the middle day of the week! Wednesday. Though we pronounce it When's Day, it must have been pronounced Wed-nes Day, perhaps Wed-ens, but Wed-nes seems to equal the example he mentioned, "Wođ-nas"!
Wednesbury, a roughly 1200 year old town in the midlands of the UK. Wodens borough. Ive never been in, and dont know its pedigree but pub The Woden always makes me smile. About 10 seconds from a church. So a nice little juxtaposition there i always think.
I think in Old High German it’s Wotan. In Old English it’s Woden. I think in reconstructed Proto-Germanic it is Wodanaz (though possibly the d should be that Thorn letter Jackson talked about that sounds like the th in the English word “this”), and this is the common ancestor form of the name from which all these later forms - Wotan, Woden, Odin (d pronounced th) - derive.
I believe in Proto-Germanic it is Wothanaz (where the th should be a Thorn, which I don’t have on my keyboard). However, I am not sure if the Wothnas form from the inscription in this video is Proto-Germanic, or is a later dialect/language, maybe Proto-Norse or something like that? Will have to watch the extended video when it drops later to check…
@@willmosse3684 That is indeed the reconstruction. What’s striking about this new runic discovery is that the word-medial vowel that is attested in the descendant languages is absent in the old inscription, suggesting it might be a later innovation in the descendants. Assuming that, a new possible reconstruction in the nominative would be *Wōðnaz. There are challenges to reconcile with this new proposal, though!
@@IanLeoden very interesting. It seems unlikely to me, however, that the medial vowel would emerge in like 8 different descendent languages independently. Which would surely suggest it emerged in the period before Proto-Germanic split, even if very late in that period? Or perhaps soon enough after a split began that changes could still sometimes carry across? Or that perhaps only the particular dialect used in this carving dropped the medial vowel, either only in this possessive form or in all forms, but that the medial vowel existed in most dialects? There may be multiple explanations that are more plausible than the same innovation emerging independently across multiple distinct languages? Fascinating spanner in the works though. I’ll have to watch the full episode. Cheers
@@willmosse3684 My intuition is that as well; I think it might raise more problems than it solves. But with syncope of the stem vowel (by which I mean the -a- of -az), we end up with a type of consonant cluster that historically has independently undergone vowel epenthesis in the descendants (some ðn(z)# cluster). Though it’s that same syncope that creates a lot of these clusters that persisted in Old Norse, so I don’t think we can make the relative chronology work. Another challenge of such an account is motivating the quality of that vowel, which is definitely not trivial!
Look up gOD ZUES an sons Apollo titions! Poisodin narcissi ADAm EVEn poo lice poo lies! Ho ley grail ex KA la ba ! Ley pray corns 🍀 cLover luck of the iris !
This series is great
(Sharing an experience here)
I had this crazy thing last Wednesday.
I was walking around and suddenly I see WOTAN on the wall.
I thought to myself about Wodnas Werjan, and realized it should be a D, not a T.
Anyways, I move along the same road past some jackdaws and magpies and sit down on a bench to listen to Rhetoric by Aristotle for a while. I get up, I turn around and see the building behind me has WALRAVEN on it.
What a wonderful Wednesday it was.
What a wonderful Wodensday to see another Aussie on this channel
Wotan is the Old High German name for the god.
Makes sense that Anglo Saxons refer to him as Woden. Since they originally lived in the Jutland region.
The possessive form! That must be the form for he was given the middle day of the week!
Wednesday. Though we pronounce it When's Day, it must have been pronounced Wed-nes Day, perhaps Wed-ens, but Wed-nes seems to equal the example he mentioned, "Wođ-nas"!
In the show Barbarians Thusnelda from the Germanic cheruski tribe refers to Odin as woden similar to wothnar
Well Wodan is his name in German.
First one is close to Woden. Which is a place name in my city.
Wednesbury, a roughly 1200 year old town in the midlands of the UK. Wodens borough. Ive never been in, and dont know its pedigree but pub The Woden always makes me smile. About 10 seconds from a church. So a nice little juxtaposition there i always think.
My grandmas maiden name is actually Wooten which was originally wottan and it derives from Odin at some point in time.
isn't Wodan also the name the pre christian germans called Odin?
yeah, Woden
I think in Old High German it’s Wotan. In Old English it’s Woden. I think in reconstructed Proto-Germanic it is Wodanaz (though possibly the d should be that Thorn letter Jackson talked about that sounds like the th in the English word “this”), and this is the common ancestor form of the name from which all these later forms - Wotan, Woden, Odin (d pronounced th) - derive.
Woden became Weden in Old English also .... hence Wednesday w drop before o vowels in Old Norse so Oðinn or Odins Day
In Dutch it's Wodan yeah
@@Azriel-ben-AbrahamAlso called Weda in frisian, the closest language relative of English.
Very cool! How would you write the non-possessive version of the proto-germanic Wothnas?
I believe in Proto-Germanic it is Wothanaz (where the th should be a Thorn, which I don’t have on my keyboard). However, I am not sure if the Wothnas form from the inscription in this video is Proto-Germanic, or is a later dialect/language, maybe Proto-Norse or something like that? Will have to watch the extended video when it drops later to check…
@@willmosse3684 That is indeed the reconstruction. What’s striking about this new runic discovery is that the word-medial vowel that is attested in the descendant languages is absent in the old inscription, suggesting it might be a later innovation in the descendants. Assuming that, a new possible reconstruction in the nominative would be *Wōðnaz. There are challenges to reconcile with this new proposal, though!
@@IanLeoden very interesting. It seems unlikely to me, however, that the medial vowel would emerge in like 8 different descendent languages independently. Which would surely suggest it emerged in the period before Proto-Germanic split, even if very late in that period? Or perhaps soon enough after a split began that changes could still sometimes carry across? Or that perhaps only the particular dialect used in this carving dropped the medial vowel, either only in this possessive form or in all forms, but that the medial vowel existed in most dialects? There may be multiple explanations that are more plausible than the same innovation emerging independently across multiple distinct languages? Fascinating spanner in the works though. I’ll have to watch the full episode. Cheers
@@willmosse3684 My intuition is that as well; I think it might raise more problems than it solves. But with syncope of the stem vowel (by which I mean the -a- of -az), we end up with a type of consonant cluster that historically has independently undergone vowel epenthesis in the descendants (some ðn(z)# cluster). Though it’s that same syncope that creates a lot of these clusters that persisted in Old Norse, so I don’t think we can make the relative chronology work. Another challenge of such an account is motivating the quality of that vowel, which is definitely not trivial!
It would be “Wōðanaz”.
Look up gOD ZUES an sons Apollo titions! Poisodin narcissi ADAm EVEn poo lice poo lies!
Ho ley grail ex KA la ba ! Ley pray corns 🍀 cLover luck of the iris !