PART V

LINGUISTICS

The foregoing discussions are intended for survey purposes only. I did not include many items which build on my thesis. For example, by following names and traditions, I was able to discover two other paths by which the late Iberi migrated into Europe.
 

The first of those is recognized by the word kumri or kimri. It is found as the Hebrew root, khamar. It was used widely in the ancient Near East to describe a people who had red skins. This name can be followed from Asia Minor, through the Balkans, into Germany, and eventually into the British Isles where today the people of Wales remember themselves by their old name, the Kymri.
 

Brown, Driver, and Briggs, show khamar as a verb which means "to be red." In Arabic it is used for "dye red," "redness," and "reddish brown, apparently a skin color." In Job 16:16 it is translated in some versions as "my face is reddened from weeping." The verb also means "to boil up" or "to ferment." It has the following inflections:
 

1) Kimmer = Pi'el singular third person past tense.
2) Kimri = Kal singular female imperative.
3) Kimru = Kal plural male imperative.
4) Kammri = Pi'el singular female imperative.
5) Kamru = Kal plural third person past tense.
6) Komer = Kal first person present tense.
 

Gomer is sometimes thought to derive from gamar, a cognate word which means "to end," in the sense of completion or failure. However, K-to-G phonetic changes could have given the name Gomer from Komer. The Kumri, Gumri, and Gamir place names in Asia Minor are all phonetic variations of this root. The designation Kimmeri/Gimirrai, as a description for red skin color, may have developed from groups of red-skinned Iberi who integrated among the native tribes around the Black Sea. The appellatives Kimmeri, Kimri or Gimmeria denoted the visible skin color rather than the Iberi tribal designation.

The name has a phonetic variation in Cymbri, (recognized as a Teutonic/Keltic tribe), and was used widely to name geographical features. Thus we can recognize how the Kimmerians were merely part of a larger flow of Semitic Iberi in the middle to late first millennium BCE.
 

A second group of people were the Gauli. They gave us the Keltic name.
 

Ga'al is a Hebrew verb root which means "to be redeemed." It is used extensively in the Bible.
 
 

Ga'alee (Roman Galli as the inhabitants of Gaul) is the singular female imperative of the Kal = "Redeemed!"
 

Ga'alt, from which "Kelt" probably derives, is the singular female second person of the past tense, literally = "you were redeemed."
 

According to Timagenes, a writer in the reign of Augustus,

". . . the Gauls are all exceedingly careful of cleanliness and neatness, nor in all the country, and most especially in Aquitania, could any man or woman, however poor, be seen either dirty or ragged."
 

Although the record of the classical writers is sparse Pliny reported on the refinements of their personal care. He stated that they had invented a special soap for personal bathing, special ointment to improve the complexion of the woman, and fine perfumes. Other writers described refined toilette devices. Although Julius Caesar referred to them as "those trousered barbarians" other writers described the gracefulness of the female dress and the personal ornaments of both sexes. Typical of a view expressed by the Romans is that of Ammianus Marcellinus:

"Nearly all of the Gauls are of a lofty stature, fair and of ruddy complexion. They are terrible from the sternness of their eyes, very quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole group of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong and with blue eyes; especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and brandishing her sallow arms of enormous size, she begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult. "
 

Note the description of their ruddy (red) complexion.

The people designated Gauli widely mixed with other Iberi migrations to blur distinction among their respective movements. The Iberi of Ireland and Scotland are now known as Keltic people.
 

Thus I have identified four major routes of migration of the "red" Iberi into Europe. These are the Puni, the obvious Iberi, the Kimmeri/Kymri, and the Keltic Galli. The evidence shows a blending and blurring of peoples which confused designations by the ancients. This history prevents precise separation of the several movements.
 

I offer this information to show the wealth of material which is available to us,--- if we wish to make use of it.
 

I shall now discuss some words we commonly use everyday which had their origin in an ancient Semitic source.
 

When we open the meaning of the original Don and Dona names we find vast new vistas in understanding.
 

I shall illustrate first with "judgment." This is the Semitic meaning of the Don and Dona names. This influence came into the Indo-European languages in various disguises.
 

The don form is found in Portugal as dom. The "n to m" change is found many places other than the Latin dominus.
 

Consider the English word, doom. It comes from the Old English dom = "judgment event." The Oxford English Dictionary lists numerous changes in meaning over the centuries: statute, law, enactment, decree, justice, equity, righteousness, formal judgment of decision, power or authority to judge, the last judgment of the world, and so on.
 

Obviously the Teutonic -dom has origin in some source connected to judging or judgment.
 

This stem produced such Teutonic words as king-dom, free-dom, wis-dom, and so on, with the sense of "statute, judgment, or jurisdiction."
 

The word has both phonetic and semantic relationship to the Hebrew don that cannot be ignored. From my investigations I reached the conclusion that the "n to m" shift was intentional, and not evolutionary. The Indo-Europeans, heavily weighted toward the attitude that Don was a god, refused to use his name directly in their language. They reserved application of "Don" to formal names and titles for those they believed were descended from that god. However, they transformed phonetics to represent his influence. Don went to dom. This phonetic alteration, based on the same original Don name, is found in many Indo-European applications.
 

Consider the more general 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 family 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. 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 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 independently with an origin through the domestic path. If the Semitic Don was the origin of the Don and Dona titles of IE Europe, the Semitic source must obviously be far more ancient than the Latin Dominus.
 

We are led back to the question of the origin of the I-E dom form. It is natural to ask if the I-E dom = "home" derived from that personality named Don? Did an ancient 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 once again that a very common and basic word in the I-E languages derived from that earlier Semitic source.
 

These examples, with the Don and Dona titles, the Teutonic -dom, and the general IE dom raise a crucially important question. How many I-E words can be traced back to an influence which originates in that Semitic ground spring?
 

Consider the Sanskrit duna, and its general IE companions representing water. We can postulate with considerable confidence that the word originated in that Great Source, Don. Through other inflectional variations he came to represent a basic necessity of life. He was truly respected. The ancients believed he was the well-spring of a whole host of practical applications.
 

As we reflect on this phenomena we are led back to consider how the Don title survived in the I-E languages but not Adon, while the title Adon survived in the Semitic, but not Don. Somewhere along the way a separation took place between those who respected the god, but did not look upon him as ancestral. Ancestry was limited to the noble class. They became the IE people. But the Semitic groups, as a general body, looked upon Don as ancestral. They did not consider him to be a god. In the first case with use of the Don title, a respect was shown for the individual who deserved that title; in the second case with use of the Adon title, a relationship was emphasized between that individual and others.
 

Further insights are offered by other evidence. In ancient Vedic literature the adjective damunah means "domestic (protector) of the house." The Armenian tanuter means "master of the house." In Sanskrit two similar phrases are dam-pitah and pater-dan, both meaning "master of the house." But pater-dan, literally, is "Father Don." Thus we see how convoluted the various forms may become, but in certain cases we may have a literal memory of that ancient father-god.
 

We can follow the dom influence in other inflections.
 

Another I-E root is 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."

Thus we can see how the dom- root, which meant the home, the social apparatus, could easily inflect into the dem- root, for 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 Forefather, 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 an impact on the Indo-European languages.
 

Benveniste expressed concern that the several word roots, dom-, dam-, or dem- were listed together under one category in the etymological dictionaries. He felt the individual terms were independently derived and that "there is nothing more than homophony between dem- 'family' and dem- 'construct'." He admitted that a cross influence existed but he felt the contamination from one to the other was due to a tendency to identify social groups with material habitats. From this study we see they are phonetically and semantically close because they derive from the same word, that ancient Great Father, Don.
 

I mentioned meanings in these words related to protection, or strength. Power and strength was another attribute of that ancient personality. We find it in many Keltic and Teutonic words.
 

A Keltic word is cumb; it means a "deep valley." It is found in such names as Duncombe, Holcombe, Winchcombe and so on. The Romans used the word castra = "camp" to denote their encampments. Villages and towns grew up around these camps or forts with names which later were adopted by the Anglo-Saxons. They turned castra into ceaster; we know the word today in Chester, Colchester, Dorchester, Manchester, Winchester, Lancaster, Doncaster, Gloucester, Worcester, and many others. The names Duncombe and Doncaster show the influence of that ancient Don. The Anglo-Saxons also used their word dun for moor, down, height, hill, and mountain. 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.

I shall now turn to a related discussion. Although I am not able to identify a Semitic source, I shall demonstrate that our ancient forefathers looked upon life with devout respect. That ancient Don had an influence which rippled through all of ancient society. Our notions of primitive evolutionary peoples with primitive minds is badly displaced. This can be illustrated in concepts of kingship in ancient times.
 

The Latin word for king was Rex. The Sanskrit word was Raj(an), modern Rah(ah). In Hindi Raj means to reign or rule. Among the Kelts this word appeared as a suffix in the names of the leaders of Gallic tribes: Dumno-rix and Vercingeto-rix. Among the Irish it was variously spelled as Ri, Righ, or Rig, both with and without the guttural ending.
 

The Indians, Romans, and Kelts all remembered the rex form. In Teutonic languages the word for "king" was German Koenig, Old English Cyning, and Gothic Kuni. This form derives from kin = "family" or "blood relations." The Teutonic word king has no phonetic relation to Rex.
 

The question I address here is the origin of the rex-rix-raj-righ title. Since the Latin word reg-is is merely another form of Rex it may be useful to examine similar words. Regius meant "royal," "regal," and "kingly" while regio meant "district," "region," or "boundary," that which was ruled by the Rex. Regno meant "to rule" while rectus meant "straight" or "direct"; rego meant "to guide" or "direct," "to rule" or "manage." These words are all obviously related to one another from that common reg- root. We have such English cognates as "region," "regal," "royal," "regulate," "regular," and "rectify," all derived from Latin.
 

Among the Romans the phrase regeres fines meant literally "trace out the limits by straight lines." It was a function carried out by priests prior to the construction of a temple, sacred area, or town. In days of antiquity all such actions were sacred, dedicated to a Creator God. (Or, as the mythologists would have it, a dedication to the gods who first laid out temples and towns.) The setting of straight-line boundaries was the responsibility of the person who carried important religious power. Originally he carried the title rex. This is recognized in the ancient phrase rex sacrorum. The rex was charged with the task rex sacra. The Druids, the all-important Keltic priests, personified this important social role. No social action was taken without their approval and permission, including the highest actions of state. Keltic chiefs were subservient to them and acknowledged their authority in all matters relating to the future welfare of the society.
 

The concept of "straight conduct" in the reg- root is seen in the Latin regere = "to make or lead straight." Reg- not only applied to the survey of straight lines for temples or towns, it also applied to social conduct. English phrases express this same idea. Our word "right" denotes the concept of "being straight," or "in line." The concept of "straightness" is found in the other Latin reg- forms. Rectus = "straight + line," from which we get our English "rectilinear" and "rectify." Regula, through French, is the origin of our English "rule," and the regulation of society.
 

Different forms of "rule" are listed in the Oxford English Dictionary:
 

1. A principle, regulation or maxim for moral conduct.
2. A principle regulating practice or custom.
3. A standard of discrimination.
4. A fact which holds generally good.
5. Good order and discipline.
6. To control, manage or direct.
7. A graduated strip of metal or wood used for measuring length.
8. Array, marshalled order, or line, now obsolete.
9. A straight line drawn on paper.
 
 

The Latin word regula was also used for a straight stick, bar, ruler, pattern, and so on. This evidence all suggests that the reg- root originally meant that which was straight. It not only meant something that was physically straight, as in straight lines and construction rulers, but also something that was straight socially and morally. We use such expressions as "go straight" for someone who refrains from criminal conduct, but also "act straight" with our contemporaries, to be forthright and honest with them. The Rex was the exemplar of upright, proper and "straight" conduct. He was the moral leader of the community, the one entrusted with responsibility to ensure that all other members of the community also conducted themselves in a "straight" manner. He laid out the "rules" and "regulations" as well as the sacred areas. He was the one to keep everything "right." He made sure that all was done with respect to a higher moral allegiance. Thus he became a priest and the leader of the people. As time passed he began to take on more political responsibilities with less recognition of the moral and religious ones. Thus the title eventually came to mean the ruler or sovereign, the king.
 

Our words "rich" and "right" derive from this same I-E root but came down to us through the Teutonic languages, not the Romance. Although the Teutonic languages do not show the reg- or rec- form for a king or ruler, there are vestiges of this word in Gothic raihts and German recht, which we retain in our English "right" and "righteous." Righteous comes from "right + wise." The pervasive use of right can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary which gives seven pages of definition and other uses for the word. The religious meanings are portrayed in such phrases as "the right hand of God" and "to turn to the right and not to the left." Right, in the sense of straight, contrasts with that which is bent, crooked, or twisted. A person is a crook if he steals.
 

Our word rich comes from a Teutonic root found in Gothic reiks. Originally "rich" meant someone who was powerful and mighty, noble and great. Because material wealth accumulated to those individuals the word now means merely that which is of great material possession or abundant physical wealth. The Roman, Keltic and Indian people retained the word for a noble ruler in that ancient I-E society. The rex was a spiritual and moral leader, the one to do "right." The importance of his social role eventually led to the use of his title for kingly rule, while in the Teutonic and Slavic regions the evolution to kingship forced use of other words for king; the superior social role of the priest had been lost.
 

From this brief survey we see that the Dons and Donas were the leaders of the people by right of birth, descended from an original Don, but that civil rule was subject to religious authority. The Teutons and Slavs may have forgotten, but the Romans and Kelts did not, at least not until later times. The picture we infer here of Keltic and Germanic society seems greatly different from that portrayed to us by classic writers such as Julius Caesar and Posidonius. Particularly abhorrent to them was the rite of human sacrifice, a religious practice which the Romans themselves had not long since left behind. The memory of it lingers in our Bible when Abraham took his son Isaac away to the sacrificial altar, Gen 22. See also Judg 11:29-40, a truly sorrowful story, I Kings 16:34, and Exod 22:29. For those of us living in the modern civilized world this practice is grossly barbaric. But for the people of those days it was a highly devout rite, most important of all propitiation to the gods. They entered into the spirit of deep religious cleansing, as devout as the practice of Christians today when they eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. It certainly was primitive, inherited from the earlier days of man's superstitious past. It also became greatly degraded in some societies. The Aztec Indians of later times degenerated to gross blood-letting in their national celebrations. I do not justify it; I merely try to show that it was a devout rite that did not in any way detract from upright and moral conduct in the society which practiced it. If anything it made them more serious about their social and religious obligations, in contrast to our modern religious allegiance which we take ever so casually.

These examples will illustrate the fact of a highly devout and refined culture in very ancient times which derived from some source the ancients denoted as a "Don" god, or an "Adamic" forefather. He left a profound influence upon the nations, which we acknowledge every day in our common words, but of which we are blissfully unaware.