On the Etymology of Some Difficult Words in the Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary

The article offers a modern etymological interpretation of several “difficult” words included in the Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary (BED). It claims that the modern Bulgarian words глутница (glutnitsa) and gluta (gluta) “pack of wolves” are formed from the Turkic (Oghuz) root *kurt – “wolf” but are probably late Pecheneg loanwords. Despite the presence of many personal names with this (or similar) root, the problem of the absence of original Bulgarian lexemes, formed with the Turkic root kurt meaning “wolf” remains unresolved. This article presents an attempt to solve the problem in question by deriving the indicated Bulgarian and Proto-Bulgarian personal names from the word *kurd – “a blacksmith”, an ancient term from Caucasian mythology. After iron metallurgy became a more efficient way to obtain iron, the original meaning of *kurd – “sky, celestial, meteorite stone from the sky” changed to “blacksmith, iron, sword” and spread widely under different phonetic forms. On the other hand, the phonetically similar Oghuz root kurt – “wolf” appears to be a late medieval euphemism for the word denoting the animal in question , formed in Oghuz languages on the basis of an Indo-European root borrowed from the Slavic word *hort – “fast, fast dog, wolf”. There is no satisfactory etymology in BED for the Old Bulgarian words лош (losh) “evil, bad, cursed” and сулица (sulitsa) “spear”. In the article, these words are assumed loanwords from the East Iranian language of Proto-Bulgarians. The Proto-Bulgarian word лош (losh) is regarded as phonetic variant of *duš, an ancient Indo-Iranian (Avestan-Sanskrit) word with the same meaning, obtained on the basis of the well renowned phonetic transition *D > L. This phonetic transition is known to have taken place in the southern (Saka) branch of the East-Iranian languages during the 3rd century BC. The linguistic phenomenon *duš > loš in the language of Proto-Bulgarians supports the kinship of this language with the southern (Saka) branch of the East-Iranian languages. Relatedly, the word сулица (sulitsa) “spear” is regarded as a close phonetic variant of σάρισα (sarisa) – the name of the long spear in the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander the Great during his conquest of Persia and Bactria. It is assumed that the word σάρισα (sarisa) was adopted by the Proto-Bulgarians in Central Asia and transferred to the Old Bulgarian language. From there, it spread to the written languages of the medieval Slavic states.