The main medieval Germanic cognates of elf are Old Norse alfr, plural alfar, and Old High German alp, plural alpî, elpî (alongside the feminine elbe).[7] These words must come from Common Germanic, the ancestor-language of English, German, and the Scandinavian languages: the Common Germanic forms must have been *ɑlβi-z and ɑlβɑ-z.[8] Germanic *ɑlβi-z~*ɑlβɑ-z is generally agreed to be cognate with the Latin albus ((matt) white), Old Irish ailbhín (‘flock’); Albanian elb (‘barley’); and Germanic words for ‘swan’ such as Modern Icelandic álpt. These all come from an Indo-European base *albh-, and seem to be connected by whiteness. The Germanic word presumably originally meant white person, perhaps as a euphemism. Jakob Grimm thought that whiteness implied positive moral connotations, and, noting Snorri Sturlusons ljósálfar, suggested that elves were divinities of light. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf inneresting
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:32:08 +0000
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