Ζεύς?

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Lukas
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Ζεύς?

Post by Lukas »

Χαίρετε!

I read on the Internet that Ζεύς is used for the nominative, and a form of it is used for the vocative. But then I read that the oblique cases are based on Δίς. Are these two different words or are they formed from the same root?
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Ásgerður
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Re: Ζεύς?

Post by Ásgerður »

Zeus comes from the indo-european word Dyeus who was a sky god. It just has an irregular inflection and that's why it looks different in the oblique cases I think.

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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Ζεύς?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Ζεύς [m.] Zeus (Il.). «IE *dieu- ‘heaven’»

•VAR Boeot. Lac., etc. Δεύς, voc. Ζεῦ, gen. Δι(ϝ)ός, dat. (loc.) Δι(ϝ)ί, dat. also Διϝεί (e.g. Διϝεί-φιλος), Myc. di-we, acc. Ζῆν, since Hom. also Δί-α and Ζῆν-α (whence Ζην-ός, -ί); nom. Ζήν (A. Supp. 162 [lyr.]; or perhaps voc.), Ζάν (Pythag., Ar.), Ζάς (Pherec. Syr.), gen. Ζανός (inscr. Chios IVa [?] etc.); note Δᾶν (Theocr. 4, 17); more forms in Schwyzer: 576f., Leumann 1950: 288ff.

•DIAL Myc. dat. di-we /diwei/.

•COMP As a first member in univerbations: with gen. Διόσ-κουροι, also Διεσ-κουρίδου (Priene etc.), with dat. Διϝεί-φιλος, with various stem forms e.g. in διο-γενής; also Ζηνό-δοτος (for Διόσ-δοτος), etc. As a second member in ▶ἔνδιος, ▶εὐδία, etc., see also ▶αὐτόδιον.

•DER See on ▶δῖος.

•ETYM The old Indo-European word for ‘heaven’ and name of the god of heaven and of daylight, preserved especially in Anatolian, Indo-Aryan, Greek and Italic: Ζεύς = Skt. dyáuḥ ‘(god of) heaven, day’, Lat. Iovis, from IE *diēus. Also related is Hitt. šīu-, šīuna- ‘god’ (on which see Kloekhorst 2008 s.v.), with cognates Pal. tiuna- ‘god’, Lyd. ciw- ‘id.’.

Other old correspondences are Ζεῦ πάτερ = Lat. Iūpiter, Ζῆν = Skt. dyā́m, Lat. diem (whence a new nom. diēs, Diēspiter). The other oblique cases Διϝ-ός, -εί, -ί, and Δία agree with Skt. diváḥ, divé, diví, dívam, of which Δία and dívam are parallel innovations.

Recent formations in Greek are Ζῆνα (after Δία), whence Ζηνός, -ί, which continues the old acc. *diē(u)m with early loss of the *u, which is also seen in Skt. Dyā́m. The α in Ζάς, Ζάν, Ζανός spread from Elean Olympia, where η became ᾱ, see Leumann 1950: 288ff. (following Kretschmer Glotta 17 (1929): 197).

It is has been assumed that IE *dieu- is an agent noun of the verb seen in Skt. dī́deti ‘shine’, Gr. ▶δέατο ‘shone’. However, this is doubtful as the verb was *deih2-, with final laryngeal, which is absent from *dieu-. Beside *dieu-, there is an old appellative for ‘god’ in Skt. devá-, Lat. deus, Lith. diẽvas, etc., all from thematic IE *deiuo-, which probably meant ‘the heavenly one’, as a derivative from the noun for ‘heaven’. It is probable that this thematization started from an older nominative *dei-u- (see Beekes 1985: 85); we are dealing with an original hysterodynamic u-stem. After separating the suffix, it is possible to compare IE *di-n- ‘day’ as well, as found e.g. in Proto-BSl. *d(e)in- ‘day’, Lat. nūn-dinae ‘market-day’, Skt. madhyáṃ-dinaṃ ‘midday’, etc.

Beekes, R. (2010). A. Lubotsky (Ed.), Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Vol. 1 & 2, pp. 498–499). Leiden; Boston: Brill.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter

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