Toponomy is the technical term for the study of place names. The subject fascinates many people and led to the formation of a special group of experts at the United States Interior Department for the classification and cataloging of American place names. In England considerable effort has gone into such study over the past several hundred years. Eilert Ekwall wrote the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names in response to such interest^CODEPN. Albert Baugh discussed the phenomenon in his History of the English Language^HEL. It is a fruitful study in the social history of man.
 

England is rich in place names which reflect its checkered social history. From the pre-Roman Kelts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Norse marauders of the eighth century, and the French Normans, England has witnessed the successive implantation of different languages and names by each of those people.
 

many others. The Anglo-Saxons also used their word dun for moor, down, height, hill, and mountain^ASD. Many dun names are known: Ashdown, Bredon, Hambledon, Snowdon, Hendon, Dunham, Dunton, Dundon, and so on. Dundon is a marriage of the Anglo-Saxon dun with the Keltic don; literally it would mean "the hill of Don." Duncombe could be "the moor of the deep valley." But in the blending of dun with don we cannot easily determine if Bredon, Snowdon, Hendon and others may come from the Kelts or the Anglo-Saxons. The use of Don as a prefix on Doncaster suggests that the don name carried significance at very early times, prior to the Romans, since it was used in combination with the Roman caster.

From these examples we see how difficult it is to assign place names. But when a river with the Don name is found across Europe and into Asia, we observe an underlying cause which pervades all Indo-European lands.
 

In a preceding chapter I briefly mentioned that certain words were used across the Indo-European regions for domestic practices which included agriculture and animal husbandry. It is useful to examine this phenomenon in more detail.
 

If we find a word common across Europe and into India it seems sensible to believe that it had a common origin. Such deduction involves two important criteria for linguistic studies. First, that the word has the same sound, and second, that it has the same meaning. However, both criteria may not be obvious. The Indo-European (I-E) word for father is found in Latin pater, Greek patir, Sanskrit pitr, Dutch vader, Gothic fader, and Old Irish athir. Obviously "t" can exchange with "d," or the initial "p" may become an "f," as in the Teutonic languages, or may be lost altogether, as in Irish athir. These changes across languages are well established linguistic phenomena.
 

Shift in meaning may also occur. A word may lose its original literal significance but the new use, to fit linguistic criteria, must show vestiges of its original use in an historical language. In this present study we encounter phenomena which lie on the edge of linguistic science but which provide new and deep insights into our planetary past.
 

For example consider the I-E root dom. It is found in Indian Vedic literature as dama- = "house," in Iranian dam- = "family or house," Old Slavic domu = "home," Greek domos = "house," Latin domus = "house," and in English borrowed from Latin: domicile and domestic. The last two words demonstrate two senses of the dom- root -- a place of residence and a settled style of life.
 

Emile Benveniste, in his absorbing book, Indo-European Language and Society, showed that originally the dom root meant "home," the gathering place for the family, and not "house," the structure in which they assembled^IESL. In Greece the word gradually shifted over to mean merely the structure; another Greek word, oikos, was eventually used for domestic life. Benveniste also showed that from the dom- root came the Latin dominus, the master or lord of the home. Later this use evolved into application to a civil Lord.
 

If this derivation is correct it accents our problem with the Don and Dona titles. Given the clear evidence of the Hebrew Don verb we have strong support for our earlier deduction that the Iberian Don did not come from the Latin Dominus but that it carried independently from some other, far more ancient, practice. Rather than the Latin Dominus being the source of the other titles we now find it sitting alone with an origin that is secondary and derived from a different path. Since the Semitic Don must be older than the Latin Dominus we are led back to the question of the origin of the I-E dom form. Also since the n-to-m shift is a common linguistic phenomenon is it possible that the I-E dom = "home" derived from that personality named Don? Did an original group of I-E people name the home in honor of Don because he was the one who instituted the social practice of a settled home? If so it would mean that a very common and basic word in the I-E languages derived from an earlier Semitic source. This raises an equally important question. How many I-E words can be traced back to an influence which originates in that Semitic groundspring?
 

This possibility also raises another difficulty. If dom came from Don, and if Don carried down through time for the titles of Europe, and then if Latin Dominus derived from dom, why would the title for Lord in Rome come back to an identical use through such an involved route? If the establishment of the home was due to Don then it might be natural for his descendants to refer to the home with that name, with "n" to "m" inflection difference to distinguish the home from the man.
 

As a further example of inflectional differences consider how the title Don survived in the I-E languages but not Adon, while the title Adon survived in the Semitic, but not Don. The differences probably are due to different social attitudes held by different groups of people. In the first case a respect was shown for the individual who deserved that title; in the second a relationship was emphasized between that individual and others.
 

Don." Thus we see how convoluted the various forms may become and that Latin Dominus is merely another example of linguistic phenomena that reflect unconscious deep respect for that ancient Father of mankind.

We find another I-E root in dem- = "to build." It is illustrated in the Greek root demo- = "to build or to construct." It is found in the Greek word doma = "a rooftop," which we still carry in English dome. It is in Greek oikodomos = "a builder or architect," the one who was the "home-builder." (Note our English word major-domo = "head of the domestic household.") The root dem- probably derives from dom-; dom- meant the home, the social apparatus, while dem- came to mean the structure. From this root derived the Greek noun, demas = "physical shape, appearance, or stature." It was used adverbially as "in the manner of," literally "according to the appearance, the form of," or "as it was built."
 

From the I-E dem- root other words developed in the Teutonic languages. With a "d-to-t" shift and vowel change dem- went to tim-. It is found in Gothic ga-timan and German gezieman = "to be in accord, to agree," literally "to be constructed in the same manner." A derived noun, dem-ro, gave us English timber = "wood for construction." The Gothic verb timrjan meant "to work in wood," (German zimmern), while the abstract noun ga-timrjo meant "construction,"^IELS.
 

Note that German changes "t" into "z," another well-known phonetic change following linguistic laws.
 

Thus we can see how the dom- root, which meant the home, the social apparatus, could easily be the source of the dem- root, in the sense of the structure. This inflectional change then led to a host of other words, all revolving around the material aspects of the residence rather than the social aspects.
 

Still other words derived from the dom- root. Greek damao meant "to subdue" or "to tame." It carried the sense of subjecting natural things, wild animals or uncultured man, to the rule of the home, to domestic control and tranquility. The Latin word was domare. Cognates in the Teutonic languages were Old High German zam and Gothic tamjan, known to us in Old English tam, modern English tame. A derived Greek word was a-damatos, "to be indomitable," so strong that all would be subject to that will. From adamatos we get our word adamant.
 

The same root was used other ways. Greek demos = "the people, the public" derived from dam-, the I-E word for family, which in turn came from dom-. The Greek usage can be explained as follows:
 

Originally a family has brothers and sisters. These marry to bring in mates from other families but they become part of the first family. They are regarded as family. As this family increases in size it becomes a "Grossfamilie," a clan which may live in the same community or geographical region but which occupies numerous houses. However, the name dam is still retained after generations to denote this large group related by blood. Eventually, to differentiate between the immediate family and the clan the word shifted in pronunciation and meaning. Dam went to demos in Greek and came to mean the entire gathering of people who no longer identified with one another as immediate family. They were now the entire social unit, the "people," or the "public." And from Greek demo other words spread into other languages. English now has demagogue = "people + leader." Democracy = "people + authority." Other words derived from this use of the root.
 

Thus we see how a single word, coming out of that Great Granddaddy, through simple phonetic inflections, can blossom out into manifold uses and hold its mind-forming sway on untold human generations. We also obtain some insight into how that original Semitic tongue left such an impact on the Indo-European languages.
 

In the previous chapter we noted the Semitic names for father and mother, ab and am, with their childhood uses, abba and amma, or, as we know them in the western world, poppa and momma. We also considered the possibility that atta was the childhood diminutive of Adon, the Semitic word for Lord, leading to our daddy. Furthermore we had the puzzle of the anna form; we could not determine if it derived from amma with an "m-to-n" phonetic shift, or if it derived from the female of An, representing a Mother God consort.
 

An inquiry into the I-E forms for family members, and their possible origins, is helpful if we tabulate them as they appear historically in various I-E tongues. The hypothetical original I-E is shown in the column headers with an asterisk.
 
 

We see that father and mother in their original I-E forms had the initial syllables of pa- and ma-, which we remember so well in English colloquial practice. These are obviously related phonetically and semantically to the Semitic ab and am, involving what linguists call metathesis, the interchange of the sounds in a word. (We saw this in Latin castra with an -ra and the Anglo-Saxon ceaster with an -er.) In the case of father the "b" also shifts to "p."
 

Other patterns may be noted. In all four categories we see a suffix of -ter, with the hypothetical original supported by a majority of endings. Specialists are not agreed on the origin of this suffix. No recorded evidence is available to show how it may have derived; some linguists believe the common form suggests origin by relational familiarity within the family, a colloquial derivation.
 

Old Irish substitutes -thir for -ter in aithir-mathir -brathir. Armenian loses the "t" entirely with an ayr ending in hayr-mayr-etbayr, and also with the greatest changes on the initial phonemes.
 

The word sister shows a striking contrast among the languages. The -ter ending shows in English, Gothic and Old Slavic (with metathesis); it is transformed to an "r" ending in the other languages illustrated. Linguists postulate that the word is made up of two elements, swe and sar, but they have no consistent view of the origins. The -sor in Sanskrit and -sar in Armenian and Tokharian suggested to Benveniste that the word could be broken up into two elements, swe- and -sor, following the common linguistic trend. He proposed that swe- may be a term for social relationship, while -sor was an archaic name for "woman."
 

Before proposing an origin for "sister" I shall consider "brother." However, the origin of the bra- for "brother" is also a puzzle for linguists, even more than the origin of "sister." Since the problems for "brother" and "sister" are both more involved I shall make a short digression into Indo-European practices as they show in historical cultures and as they reflect upon our inquiry.
 

The everyday word for brother in Greek is adelphos, not phrater. It comes from delphus, a Greek word for the womb. It meant a blood brother, one who was a brother by birth from the same mother. The use of adelphos in Greek led to the female equivalent, adelphi for sister. The word phrater devolved to designate those who were members of a phratria, a brotherhood under a social relationship in which the members understood themselves to be descended from the same remote father^IESL. An ancient Greek tradition celebrated the feast of Zeus Phratrios, Father Zeus. This was called the Apatouria, which the ancients interpreted as the homopatria, literally "of the same father." The word frater was also used in Latin as a designation for a brother who was a member of a fraternal group, thus our English word fraternity. In Latin the phrase for blood brother was frater germanus, or simply germanus. Curiously, the German word stuck to the citizens of Deutschland, which we know in English as Germany. Germanus led to Spanish hermano and Portuguese irmado.
 

This linguistic evidence in historical cultures shows a transformation away from older family designations to substitute words in order to recapture the notion of consanguinity. As the clan grew beyond the Grossfamilie it became socially unwieldly; it began to break up. In following generations the offspring no longer regarded themselves as blood brothers of those who lived more distantly but the word brother was still used. In order to distinguish between the members of the phratria, the clan, and a true blood brother new words had to be found.
 

Similar transformations did not take place among all I-E people. Many groups, including the Teutonics, held to the word brother for the blood brother. But the evidence from Greece and Rome offers insight into the structure of that early I-E culture.
 

regarded themselves as descended from the same father, homopatria. This social regard is illustrated by other  transformations used to designate expanding concentric circles of kinship: the family, the clan, the tribe, and the country.
 

The Greek domos and oikos were used differently by the several Greek dialects at different times. (W)oikos devolved to designate the home and not the clan. The Sanskrit and Latin vis and vicus no longer carried the significance of blood relationship, but rather communities of unrelated people or villages which were assemblages of people in houses. As a substitute for the idea of a blood clan Latin used the word tribus. For country it used patria, the I-E designation for father, again a haunting memory of the original father, and remembered in English patriotic. Genos and genus retained the idea of blood relationship in the notions of common ancestry but now altered from a tribal designation to that of an entire race. Janus, genos and genus are known in the Teutonic languages as kin, those who are blood related.

The Latin word vicus was borrowed by the Keltic natives of Britain from their Roman overlords as wic and is now found in such place names as Greenwich and Brunswick.
 

With this brief digression on the manner in which Indo-European words can shift in meaning as races grow and expand into ever widening circles we can better appreciate how words were transformed from an original Semitic source to different uses among people who separated from those Semitic origins.
 

We can now examine possible origins for the Indo-European "brother" and "sister."
 

"Och" is the Hebrew word for brother. Should we expect the I-E word for brother to follow a similar origin as father and mother? Such is not the case. Brother comes from another Semitic word entirely.
 

The common stem noted in the tabulation above is bra-.
 

A basic Hebrew verb root is barar "to clarify, purify, and select"¹³⁰⁵. This form parallels that of sarar, which we found went to sara in the female, and sar in the male. In similar manner barar goes to bara¹²⁶² and bar¹²⁴⁷. The Assyrian bararu meant "to be shining"^BDB. Bara meant "to shape, or create." The Assyrian baru meant "to make or create." The Assyrian cognate banu, with a change from "r" to "n," meant "to create or beget^BDB." From this shift in phonetics the Hebrew acquired the word ben = "son¹¹²¹." But the parallel verb root in Hebrew is banah = "to build"¹¹²⁹.
 

These parallel sounds and meanings in verbs is common in Hebrew and has been a puzzle for linguistic experts. There appears to be an intelligent pattern to word associations which is more than mere evolutionary drift.
 

Although it is not attested in early Hebrew, bar meant "son^BDB." Bar was applied to male offspring as those who were "created." It was used in Ezra 5:1 as bar-Iddo, the "son of Iddo." It was also used in Aramaic as bra = "to create,"^HAEL, where it was applied to "son" or "sons," in various forms as brai, bree, and so on. See Ezra 6:10, Dan 5:22, and so on. The bar or bra- form was used in other ancient Semitic languages.
 

Thus we see that the word bra- could easily have been carried over into primitive I- E as the word for son, but that it later came to mean brother.
 

The word for sister is more difficult; I can only suggest possibilities. The tabulation does not show a consistent stem. If the original word for sister carried the common suffix -ter then English, Old Slavic and Gothic forms suggests that the affix may have been of the form ses or swis. The sar of Tokharian, Sanskrit, Latin and Old Irish suggest that perhaps the word derives from the original Semitic sara = "princess" or "royal lady."
 

The earlier tabulation shows how the words atta and anna came into use among certain groups of Indo-Europeans. Gothic and Hittite both used these words for father and mother; They did not use pater and mater. Gothic does attest one use of the word fader but this is restricted to translation of the Greek in the Gothic Bible from Mark 14:36 where Abba = fader. This use of atta and anna across both I-E and Semitic people has been a puzzle for the linguists but we can now resolve this puzzle.