The 'queen bee' of the highlands: An etymological analysis of the Albanian xhubleta

SCOL http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/revista_scol/site_ro/2014/revista_scol_2014.html, 2014

The onomastic material that I will present shows us that Aromanian anthroponymy incorporates elements of Greek, Slavic, Turkish or Albanian context amid which it has developed, in two stages: the profound or early one and the new or recent one. All that is left is that, through subsequent research and conclusions, we may be able to establish the division into periods as accurately as possible, but a fact remains certain: the recent period has not ended yet, and the Aromanian body of names is an integral part of the Balkan world, whose anthroponymic systems interact continuously, as it is in perpetual transformation. Turkish loans were made, notably by means of other Balkan languages, which took over Turkish elements, due to the cohabitation in the Balkan Peninsula, notions of administration, housing, tools, dishes, names of plants and animals, etc. From here, through the Aromanians' bilingualism or, more correctly, multilingualism these terms entered Aromanian.

Srědnjevěčni pčelari: stilj, oblěčenje, pribory (pol. 11 -pol. 15 stolěťja) Sophia GERMANIDOU Archaeologist, Greek Ministry of Culture, GREECE

Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2023

The honeybee originally migrated to the Levant and northeast Africa sometime during the early Pleistocene (300,000 BP) from her ancestral home in southeast Asia. The evolved honeybee is identified as Apis mellifera. Thanks to the pioneering studies of Eva Crane, there has been an increased interest in the role of bees and beekeeping and a desire to define the intimate relationship between bees and human societies. Recently, residue analyses have been performed on sherds, and from the results we are able to trace the spread of honey and beeswax over time and identify the practice of honey collection and beekeeping in a broad swath of the ancient Near East. Traces of beeswax have turned up in Neolithic and Chalcolithic contexts in the Levant, Anatolia, and Thracian Greece and on Cyprus and, later, Crete. The author uses his beekeeping experience to provide insights into ancient beekeeping practices.

On Persian xurda, Armenian xortakem and Caucasian Albanian xarṭaḳ-biyesun as well as several other Iranianisms in the Southern Caucasus.

In this book we collected important beekeeping findings, historical and archaeological, presented by Israel, Turkey, Egypt, the Cyclades and the Mediterranean in general, covering 4.000 years course of beekeeping practice through the centuries and new findings in relation to the local bee races. The articles are based on the presentations from the First International Beekeeping Symposium on Cyclades- Syros, which was completed by a collaboration between the Cyclades Chamber- Greece, the Eva Crane Trust- UK and the Hellenic Agricultural Organization “DEMETER” - Div. of Apiculture. The Symposium in Syros was dedicated to the memory of Eva Crane and the book is dedicated to the memory of Thanassis Bikos.

proceedings of: Ljubilej – Ljubljäum – Ljubilee – Ljubljanniversaire. IG / SIES / SÉIE Arbeitstagung (100 years of comparative linguistics at the University of Ljubljana), Ljubljana, 4–7 June 2019

In the present article, which builds on an almost overlooked suggestion by Eric Hamp, it is argued that Albanian motër 'sister' is not a direct reflex of Proto-Indo-European *meh₂ter- 'mother' (with an unexpected shift of meaning)-as assumed almost universally in the literature-but that it represents an early derivative of this word, probably *māt(e)rā < *meh₂t-(e)r-eh₂ 'of the [same] mother' or 'having the [same] mother'. Such an item may have been easily lexicalized as a replacement of the inherited word for 'sister'; cf. Greek αδελφ(ε)ός 'brother' < *sm ̥-gʷelbʰ-es-o-'of the same womb' or Spanish hermano 'brother' < Latin germānus 'of [one's own] kin, real, full'. Thus, despite widespread claims to the contrary, Albanian 'sister' can probably be explained via fairly trivial developments and does not document any extraordinary facts about (Pre-)Albanian kinship terminology or social structure.

Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2023

I consider the question of the source of the divine name Aphrodite, arguing that the etymology of the name indicates an Albanian and Illyrian origin. I first survey different etymological hypotheses and give reasons for rejecting them and then turn to motivating the Albanian sound changes necessary for taking the name to derive from Albanian sources. The historical and linguistic evidence will show that the Albanian phrase afro dita 'come forth the day/dawn' can be posited back to a Proto-Albanian *apro dītā a reflex of Proto-Indo-European *h2epero déh2itis. Modern Albanian afro dita refers to Aphrodite's celestial origin. Aphrodite was first and foremost known as the planet Venus, which can only be seen during the dawn. Only Modern Albanian afro dita 'come forth the day/dawn' indicates this exact time when the planet Venus is visible in the sky. The celestial concept of Aphrodite was adapted by a Pre-Proto-Albanian group (Illyrians) from the Phoenicians, who first brought knowledge of the goddess to Europe.

BASEES Annual Conference 2015, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, March 28, 2015 Olimpia Gargano, "Female Ethnology in the XIXth Century Balkans: a doubly challenging task. Albanian women in Lucy M. J. Garnett’s studies (1891)" Abstract The Albanian research field has early attracted a good number of female scholars. If in the XXth century the most well-known studies — though still not yet valued as they deserve — are those of Mary Edith Durham, Margaret Hasluck and Marie Amelie von Godin, there are plenty of female ethnologists, anthropologists and writers who left seminal works in the area of the Albanian language, culture and customs. A very special case concerns the British linguist, folklorist and ethnologist Lucy Mary Jane Garnett (1849-1934). The author of those which were probably the first translations (1885) from Greek texts of the Souliotes songs of Southern Albania, she travelled extensively in the Balkans, devoting a specific attention to female culture, traditions and way of living. This paper focuses on her studies about Albanian women, to whom she dedicated a significant part of her oeuvre Women of Turkey (1891). Our aim is to point out the peculiarities of the tools and procedures put in place by a female scholar when writing about the women belonging to a country very long considered as a remote corner of Europe, as well as in the ethno-anthropological field, very long considered as a male prerogative.

BeLiDa 1 - Thematic Collection of Papers, 2022

This paper explores the relation between the names of three Palaeo-Balkan tribes and their previously proposed cognates in Albanian: Taulantii to Alb. dallëndyshe 'swallow', Delmatae to Alb. delme 'sheep', and Dardani to Alb. dardhë 'pear'. In various ancient sources, these tribes and their territories are labelled as "Illyrian", but the linguistic and ethnographic scope of this term is obscure. Furthermore, only the first pair is unproblematic from the standpoint of regular Albanian sound change: Alb. dallënd- may continue an earlier Taulant-. On the other hand, the etymology of delme does not necessarily apply to Delmatae. Finally, dardhë and Dardani are not related.

The Hittite cuneiform texts dated to the 2nd millennium BCE contain some of the earliest information about the production of honey as an economic product and its consumption in daily life, as well as the theological perception of honey bees. Thanks to the information obtained from the texts, the material and spiritual role of apiculture have been tried to be revealed in this paper. According to laws, honey is a commercial product and is traded at a value. In addition, apiculture is a profession made with expert knowledge and the right of ownership of the honey bee colony and hive associated with this profession is legally protected. In the texts giving information about culinary knowledge, honey is added to bread as a sweetening product and used in the production of various sauces and some beverages. The aromatic properties of honey are also known. In this context, it is included in the mixtures used for incense in rituals. Also in rituals, some of its qualities were used in analogical spells. In mythological/religious texts, the honey bee is a creature that brings abundance and fertility in spring. In this context, it plays an important role in myths of finding the Disappearing Gods, the symbol of fertility. At the same time, it represents fertility, peace, and reconciliation as a creature associated with the Sun Goddess of the Earth, another symbol of fertility.

Based on the findings of the first Byzantine period from the excavations in Eleutherna (Sector II) (Crete), the study presents as a whole the architectural form of a small apiary and the various clay objects that constitute the basic equipment of a beekeeper’s kit (beehives, extension rings and also two partially preserved bee smokers, which constitute the first relevant evidence for the Byzantine era).

In 'Beekeeping in the Mediterranean from antiquity to the present'. Eds F. Hatjina, G. Mavrofridis, R. Jones. 2017

Diachronica, 1998

Early Proto-Albanian probably had a dynamic stress on the first syllable. Early Latin loan-words stressed on the penultimate lost the unstressed initial syllable(s), cf. L amīcus >> Alb. mik 'friend', L imperātor >> Alb. mbret 'king', L vicīnus >> Alb. fqinj 'neighbour'. In contemporary language the stress is regularly on the last syllable of the stem, but there are exceptions, cf. lúle 'flower' (but muzé 'museum'), jétë 'life' (but këtë' 'this'), etc. It is possible that Proto-Albanian still had free stress, because this assumption helps us understand some vowel changes in word-final position, e. g. the development of stressed final *-ā toe , but unstressed *-ā to-ë (on which see below). 3.2. Vowels All length oppositions inherited from PIE were lost in Proto-Albanian. However, a new quantitative opposition in the vowel system developed, and was preserved in Old Gheg documents (where long vowels were written with two vowel letters) and in dialects. The long vowels apparently developed by lengthening under accent, e.g. Old Gheg aar /a:r/ 'gold' (Tosk ar) << L aurum, Old Gheg maaj /ma:j/ 'May' << L maius. The difference between long and short vowels does not exist in the standard language. Some unaccented initial vowels were lost by aphaeresis, and this process must have been very early, since it affected Latin loanwords, cf. Alb. pa 'without, before' < PIE *h2epó (G apó, Goth. af), Alb. mbi 'on, upon' < PIE *h2embhi 'around, about' (G amphí, OIr. imm), Alb. blatë 'wafer' << L oblāta, Alb. kishë 'church' << L ecclēsia (originally from Greek), Alb. shemë 'swarm (of bees)' << L exāmen 'swarm', Alb. mik 'friend' << L amīcus. The process must be later than the Tosk rhotacism of-n-, if Alb. rosë 'duck' is from PIE *h2enh2t-yeh2 'duck' (L anas, G nē֮ ssa, Germ. Ente, Russ. útka, etc.). 3.2.1. Short PIE vowels The distinction between PIE long and short vowels was lost in Proto-Albanian (though a new quantitative opposition was partially restored at a later stage, see below). PIE *(H1)e > Alb. je in open syllables, cf. PIE *h1es(s)i > Alb. je 'you are', PIE *h1ep-'take' (Hitt. e-ep-zi 'takes') > Alb. jep 'give'. In closed syllables (before-CC-) the outcome is ja, cf. PIE *g w hermo-'hot' (G thermós) > Alb. zjarm 'fire', PIE *selpo-'fat' (G sélpos) > Alb. gjalpë 'butter'. Both of these changes must be dated after Early Proto-Albanian, because they also affect Latin loan-words, cf. qiell 'sky' << L caelum, fjalë 'word' << L fābella, shalë 'saddle' << L sella, sharrë 'saw' << L serra. In closed syllables before nasals and in all syllables after consonants followed by liquids (*Cl-, *Cr-) the reflex is Alb. e, cf. PIE *penk w e '5' (Sktr. pán͂ ca) > Alb. pesë, PIE *d h reg' h-'run' (G tréhkhō 'run') > Alb. dredh 'turn'. In Alb. vej 'weave' < *webhnyō (PIE *webh-> Germ. weben, etc.), and in PIE *wes-'to dress, put on clothes > Alb. vesh (Skr. váste 'wears', L vestis 'clothes') there was probably a dissimilation *jej > ej, hence we don't have *vjej 'weave' and *vjesh 'dress'. In some Latin loanwords Latin-e-is reflected as-i-, e. g. Alb. grigj 'herd, flock' << L grege-, Alb. mëshirë 'pity, mercy' << L miseria 'misery, wretchedness'. These might

2005