23. Miinze, Mint, and Money: an Etymology for Latin Moneta with Appendices on Carthaginian Tanit and the Indo-European Month Word*L
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23. Miinze, mint, and money: An etymology for Latin Moneta With appendices on Carthaginian Tanit and the Indo-European month word*l Figure 1. Moneta2 Abstract Older etymologies for Lat. Moneta, by-name of the Roman goddess Juno and source of the modem money words, are discussed and rejected, beginning with the traditional derivation from the Latin verb monere 'to admonish' and ending with the most recent connection to the noun monlle 'necklace'. The theonym Moneta is then compared to, and identified with, the wide-spread name of a Mediterranean Fortuna goddess that appears as Men! in Hebrew, as Maniitu (mnwtw) in Nabataean, as Maniyyat and Manat in Arabic, and as a by-name Meniitum of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, who is herself identified with Juno as a protectress of cities (IStar Menutum '" luno Moneta). This name, or complex of names, is based on the Semitic root m-n-wlm-n-y, m-n-h 'to count, to apportion'. In Appendix 1 a reconstructable Phoenician +Menft is proposed as a basis of the name of the city goddess Tanit, 7a-M'nft yielding +Tanft by the rules of the Punic language. In Appendix 2 the Germanic month word, based on the name of the moon as the counter of time, is compared to the Semitic m-n-w root and its derivates, among them Akkadian miniitu(m) 'counting of time, especially calculation of time by means of the stars'. 448 Mtinze, mint and money 23.1. Mint, Miinze, money The etymology of E mint (both in the obsolete sense 'a piece of money, a coin, money' and in the current senses such as 'a place where money is coined', 'a set of machines for coining', and 'a vast sum of money') is seemingly straightforward. The OED writes s. v. mint n'l: r570 OE. mynet neu!., repro (with change of gender) WGer. *munita fem., a[doption of! L[atl. moneta: see money. Cf. OFris. menote, munte fem., OS. munita fem. (MDu. munte, Du. munt fem.), OHG. munizza fem., muniz masc. and neut. (MHG. miinze, mod.G. miinze fem.). From LG. the word passed into the Scandinavian langs.: ON., SW., Da. mynt. The etymology of G Miinze is essentially the same, as can be learned from the above. Kluge/Seebold (2002: s.v.) write: Wie ae. mynet n., anard. mynt entlehnt aus I[at]. moneta 'Mtinze, Prtigestatte'. Die Bezeichnung stammt daher, daB die romische Mtinzpragesmtte im Tempel der lUno Moneta war (die Herkunft des Namens ist umstritten). The etymology given for money leads to the same Latin etymon, cf. the OED: S.V.: a[doption of] OF. moneie, mon(n)oie (mod.F. monnaie) = Pr., Sp. moneda, Pg. moeda, It. moneta [regular phonetic descendants of] L[at]. moneta ... 23.2. Moneta: the problem The problems begin in Latin, as may be guessed by the Kluge/Seebold quotation above. The OED continues: Llat]. moneta (? norm ofl monere to warn, remind): arig. the name of a god dess (in classical times regarded as identical with Juno), in whose temple at Rome money was coined, hence, a mint, money. Cf. mint n. 1 The question mark prefixed to the derivation of Moneta, glossed as 'Mutter der Musen' and 'Beiname der Juno' in Walde/Hofmann 1982: S.V., from the verb monere, advocated again and again from the time of Cicero down to our own days, is in my view fully justified. Walde/ Hofmann (1982: s.v.) reject it for grammatical reasons, as did Assmann (1906: 478). They favor two hypotheses without making it clear which Mtinze, mint and money 449 one is to be preferred: (1) "[Moneta ist] Sonderg6ttin einer etruskischen gens Moneta .H, u[nd] zw[ar] eine Bildung vom Namens stamme, der in Monnius, Monnianius usw. vorliegt", (2) "Moneta als 'Musenmutter' ist'H Ubersetzung von MVTJlwaVv7J auf Grund nach traglicher Anlehnung an monere".3fS71 Etymologies for Moneta from antiquity to the present are summa rized and found insufficient in Haudry 2002. Haudry himself proposes an interpretation of Moneta as <la deesse au collier>, and thus of lano Moneta as <Junon au collier> (Haudry 2002: 9-16); he attempts to derive the name from Proto-Lat. *mone- <collier. pendentif>, itself derived, together with *moni- <cou> , from the base *mon- ascertained by Lat. montle <collier> and monedula <choucas>, the latter analysed as a com pound *mone-edula <mangeur de collier, de pendentifs> (but as *mone[te]dula < *moneta + Mula 'Mtinzenfresserin' by Walde/Hof mann 1982: S.V.).4 The concept of a <deesse au collier> is backed up in Haudry's book by many cultural parallels, but the Latin derivation of the name remains highly speculative linguistically. Brachet (2004), who praises Haudry's book as «un parcours intellectuel captivant, coherent, seduisant», makes it quite clear that he finds the linguistics of Haudry's attempt inacceptable: Difficulte formelle: Ie e de moneta s'expJique mal; il est vrai qu'on ne sait pas quel etail Ie theme exact du nom du <collier> qui a precede monile: *moni-, *mone-? En outre, moneta s'integre mal aux schemas morpho-phonologiques connus en latin: un coup d'ceil dans Ie Gradenwitz [1904] pennet de verifier qu'i! n'existe pas d'adjectifs possessifs en *-etus en latin (Brachet 2004: 18 If.). Brachet continues in a footnote: «Quant aux participes en -etus, i1s ex istent, mais Ie e est alors radical (suetus, quietus); il ne s'agit en aucun cas de verbes en -ere suffixes, comme monere au albere.» Peter Schrijver, in a letter of 17 May 2005, confirms the conclusion that no satisfactory etymology is available for Moneta, despite recent efforts (of which I had not been aware): Die entscheidende Schwache einer idg. Etymologie ist die in jenem Fall prob lematische Wortbildung. Eine Moglichkeit, die Sie nicht erwahnen, die jedoeh in letzter Zeit unter Indogennanisten haufiger zu finden ist, ist, dass moneta eine Adjektivbildung ist, die abgeleitet ist von einem Instrumental eines konso nantischen Stammes. Also: Instr. *mon-eh, 'mit ??' + adj. -tola- (vgl. rubeta 'rbtliche KrCite', aus h/rucP-ehl 'mit Rote' + adj. tolta). Solange aber kein plausibles Grundwort zu finden ist (*mon- 'Hand'?, *JIghmon- 'Mensch'?). ftihrt auch dieser Weg ins Nichts.1572 450 Mtinze, mint and money 23.3. A Phoenician 'money' root: m-n-y, m-n-h 23.3.1. Phoenician m-n-h --') Greek ,.,.vii, Latin mina My interest in money as an etymological topic derives from my theory that the West Indo-European languages were heavily influenced in late prehistoric and early historic times by Northwest Semitic cultures and languages, especially by the Phoenician culture and language. For Greece this influence is described in Burkert 1992. The Romans experi enced centuries of contact with the culturally superior Phoenicians on the Italian coasts and islands; that they recognized this superiority - at least in what they themselves called cultura and what we call agriculture - can be inferred from the fact that the Senate decreed a translation of the Carthaginian compendium on agriculture in 28 books known under the name of Mago into Latin when the work was sequestered from the libraries upon the conquest of Carthage in 146 B.C. (cf. Will Richter's "Nachwort" in Columella 1983: 576). For Semitic influence upon Bri tannia cf. Vennemann 2004c and the references to more than a century of earlier work given there. For Germania cf. Vennemann 2000b, 2004a. My interest in the origin of the names of coins in particular is evident in Vennemann 2006b, forthc. a. In my view the most notable semantic aspect of a goddess named Moneta is her association with the Monetae aedes and the officina Monetae, whence shortened Moneta 'MunzsUitte, mint'. The German word Manze, which means both 'mint' and 'coin', has provided a bridge.s It was the name of a specific coin that made me think of the money word, the Greek fLva 'Mine (Gewicht und Miinze = 100 Drach men)' (Frisk 1991: s.v.), < +fLVEU, cf. Ion. nom. plur. fLVEUt, acc. plur. fLVEUS (Chantraine 1984: s.v. fLva), Latin mina 'ein griech. Gewicht, Miinze', "aus griech. fLva 'Mine'" (Walde/Hofmann 1982: s.v.). Greek fLlJa in its turn is a word, "das aus dem Semit[ischen] (hebr. mane [i .e. manreh), babyl.-assyr. manu) stammt wie auch a[lt)-i[indisch] ... mand 'ein bestimmtes Goldgewicht' (Walde/Hofmann 1982: s.v. mina). The Hebrew word is manreh n[omen] m[asculinum] 'maneh, mina, a weight': "The weight of the mina was 1160 of talent; i.e., acc[ording] to older (Bab[ylonian)) standard, 982.2 grammes (= 60 shekels at c. 16.37g.) = c. 2 Ibs."6 It is derived from the Hebrew verb manah 'to count, number, reckon, assign', also 'to count money'. In Phoenician, the corresponding root is m-n-y- 'to count out, offer (money)' (Krahmalkov 2000: s.v. M-N-Y II).Ts73 Mtinze, mint and money 451 23.3.2. Phoenician m-n-h -7 Latin Moneta? Reading up on the etymology of Moneta, I learned that I was not the first to intuit a connection with Semitic manah. The first was apparently Lenormant (1850: 77-78). He wrote: Dans les langues semitiques, maneh, la mine, en grec f.Lvii, qui designe un poids monetaire, derive de la racine manah, dont Ie sens est celui de partition, d'attribution, de numeration. Numus, chez les Latins, vOf.Lwf.La chez les Grecs, synonymes de moneta, proviennent de la racine VEf.LW, qui veut dire aussi partager, diviser, attribuer, et qui presente dans un autre ordre les memes elements que ceux de la racine manah. II est bien difflcile qu'on ne rattache pas Ie mot de moneta a la meme origine.