Macedonian names and makeDonski pseudo-linguistics: The case of the names Mantas and Manta

Miltiades Elia Bolaris

To παρών άρθρο είχε πρωτοεμφανιστεί στο Αμέρικαν Κρόνικλ, στις 06 Σεπτεμβρίου, 2009
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/117617

Balkan Illusion - phantasia archaica:
"Manta. The noun "mantija", that exists in the present day Macedonian language represents a type of long garment. In 19th century Macedonia one finds the same female name Manta." Quote was taken from: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today´s´ Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)" by Aleksandar Donski, celebrity "historian" and propagandist of pseudo-Makedonism from FYROM.



Manta/Μάντα - Mantas/Μάντας

The name Manta / Μαντα for female and Mantas / Μαντας for male is not very well known. We were not able to find any mention of this name in any literary or historical document and not a single known person in ancient history is known to have it. But when we search the ancient Greek epigraphic record it comes up as a rather well attested name, in certain areas.

The first inscription we located is from Thessalonike:

Regions : Northern Greece (IG X) : Macedonia : Mygdonia

IG X,2 1 846, Makedonia (Mygdonia) — Thessalonike — 1st c. AD

Ἀγάθων ∙ Διοσκουρίδου ∙ ἥρως ∙ Διοσκουρίδης ∙ Δρυλεους

καὶ Μαντα ∙ Ἀγάθωνος ∙ τῶι τέκνωι.

Agathon son of Dioskourides hero. Dioskourides son of Dryalos

and Manta daughter of Agathon to their children.

The mention of Hero, of the well established Thracian hero cult, especially in the part of Macedonia that used to be Thrace, makes us immediately aware of the fact that the persons of the inscription have a Thracian set or religious beliefs on the afterlife. Let us keep this in mind. The rest of the names are Greek, except Manta, whose etymology at the moment escapes us.

The next inscription is also from Thessalonike:

Regions : Northern Greece (IG X) : Macedonia : Mygdonia

IG X,2 1 307, Makedonia (Mygdonia) — Thessalonike — 3rd c. AD — Grabdenkmäler mit Porträts (1998) 81, 90

Αὐρήλιος Διονύσις ὁ κὲ Στυνδηρας καὶ Αὐρηλία Μαντα

ἡ σύμβιος τῷ εἰδίῳ τέκνῳ μνείας χάριν.

Aurelius Dionysis also known as Stynderas and Aurelia Manta

his wife to their own child in memory's grace.

Here the situation is a bit complicated but explainable: The Latin names Aurelios / Aurelia means that we have a husband, Stynderas and his wife,Manta, both obviously of Thracian descent, who are Roman citizens. The husband uses also a Greek name by which he contacts himself in the Greek speaking Thessalonican society: Dionysis. Small details like this speak volumes about what was the dominant culture and language of ancient Macedon, even among the ethnic minorities of the era, like the Thracians and Paeonians.

The next inscription is from Berrhoia, a city in Northern Greece, known from the New Testament as on of the Macedonian cities that St. Paul visited:

EKM 1. Beroia 142, Macedonia : Bottiaia: Beroia

Πόντιος Ῥεκέπτου̣

Ἀπολλόδωρος Μάντας

Φίλιππος Φιλίππου

Pontios son of Rekeptos

Apollodoros son of Mantas

Philippos son of Philippos.

Pontios, Apollodoros and Philippos are Greek names. The patronyms Rekeptas and Mantas are not.

From Edonis, by the Pangaion mountain, in the modern prefecture of Serres, Macedonia, Greece, come the next two tombstones with the ages of the deceased and their names. The first one is Mantas son of Mestes and the person in the second inscription is Mantas son of Dionysios.

Dodone 18 159

Macedonia : Edonis: Philippoi: Rodolivos

ἔτους σιϛʹ, μηνὸς Ἀρτ-

εμεσίου κηʹ. Μαντας Με-

στου ἐτῶν με·

and:

Dodone 18 160

Macedonia : Edonis: Philippoi: Rodolivos

ἔτ]ους ενσʹ, [Δεί]-

ο]υ ζʹ. Μαντα[ς Διο]-

νυσίου ἐτῶν

West of Thessaloniki is the recently excavated Thrako-Macedonian city of Kalindoia/Καλίνδοια:

Meletemata 11 K9, Macedonia : Mygdonia: Kalindoia

Διοσκουρίδης,

Σύρος Μάντας,

Κότυς Καρβερένθου,

Dioskourides

Syros Mantas

Kotys son of Karberenthos

Except for Dioskourides (the son of Zeus) and Syros (the Syrian), the other two are Thracian names. Kotys is a name of several famous Thracians with at least five known Thracian kings bearing the name Kotys. It is also part of the name of the Roman emperor Hadrian/Adrianus/Ανδριανος, who was a Thracian by descent. Karberenthos has a very Thracian ending: "-kenthos", "the child of". Karberenthes simply means "the child of Karberes".

From ancient Paionia, in today's FYROM, comes the next inscription:

Spomenik 71 (1931) 68,151

Macedonia : Paionia: Kavadarci

Ἀ]λέξανδρος Μάντας

ἀ]νέθηκεν ἡαυτο̑ ζ[ῶν]

Alexandros son of Mantas

dedicated while still alive (meaning that he had his funerary monument done and erected before he had died)

Finally in the island of Samothrace in the North Aegean, we find a thanks-giving inscription dedicated to the sanctuary of the Great Gods Kaveiroi by a group of liberated ex-slaves:

IG XII,8 195, Northern Aegean (IG XII,8): Samothrace

Γλαυκίας Γλαυκίου· Διο-

νύσιος, Μαντᾶς, ἀπελεύθε-

ρ]οι· Βῖθυς Γλαυκίου, Κότυς

Glaukias son of Glaukias Dio-

nysios, Mantas, emancipated

freemen. Bithys son of Glaukias, Kotys

The names, as expected for names of emancipated slaves, are mixed: either Greek (Dionysios, Glaukias) or Thracian (Bithys, Kotys).

Searching through the epigraphic record for the name Mantas we notice that in this format it is concentrated in a fairly compact land, that used to be either Thrace or Paeonia, and but later was incorporated into the Macedonia state. Obviously many of the Thracians and Paeonians who remained living there, whether free men, slaves or emancipated freemen (apeleutheroi) still used their Thracian names or patronyms along with Greek and later Roman names too (Roman names only if were granted the Roman citizenship).

Leaving antiquity for a moment, we take a forward journey into the 20th century and read about a legendary modern Greek poet: Costas Varnalis/Κωστας Βαρναλης was born in Burgas (Pyrgos/Πυργος in Greek) of Bulgaria, in 1884. His family's roots were from Varna as his last name implies. He studied in the Greek community schools of Bulgaria, in Pyrgos/Burgas and in Philipoupolis/Plovdiv, before continuing his studies in Athens and in Paris. In Paris he became a Marxist and joined the communist movement, which, along with poems like the one below, cost him his professorship in 1926. He received the Lenin prize of USSR for literature in 1959, after being awarded three years earlier the highest price of the Company of Hellenic Writers. He died in 1974.

We read parts of one of his poems, "The balad of sir-Mentios / Ἡ μπαλάντα τοῦ κυρ-Μέντιου". Kyr- / Κυρ- acts as a short version of Kyrios/Κυριος, meaning a Lord, a Sir. "The ballad of sir-Mentios" is a poem about a donkey named Kyr-Mentios. This donkey is suffering all his life, toiling, beaten to submission, exploited by his boss, praying to the higher powers, being told to hope for a better tomorrow in afterlife, always working and following orders: Kyr-Mentios is the "eternal Symbol", as Varnalis calls him, of the toiling and exploited masses of the working class:

Kyr-Mentios complains:

"Daily work, toiling for others while

everyone is beating me: bosses and slaves..."

and then:

"Up the village, down the village

going up and coming down

during heat and during rain

till no strength is left in me..."

Praying to God:

"Save sir-Mentios, the old fellow,

from the injustice of his boss..."

But the poet urges Kyr-Mentios to revolt:

"If you want justice my dear

through the right of war's might

you will find it. Who desires

freedom takes a sword!"

And Varnalis continues:

"Come on you victim, you big fool,

come on, eternal Symbol you!

Once you wake up, at once the

world will turn upside-down..."



Kyr-Mentios/Κυρ-Μεντιος/Sir-Mentios or Lord Mentios is the generic name that Greeks lovingly use when referring to a particular donkey, any specific donkey, in the same way that Americans use "Fido" as the generic name for a dog. What most modern Greeks do not seem to realize is how ancient the colloquial "Kyr-Mentios" donkey name is and how intricately woven it is into our ancient Greek and indeed our prehistoric Indo-European roots.

When a visitor to Olympia goes into the Museum, he is awestruck by the raw expressive power of one of the lightest-footed sculptures ever created in marble. It is a statue of Victory: Nike of Paionios/Νίκη του Παιονίου, as it is known, was created between 425-421 b.C. It was a votive offering to Olympian Zeus by the grateful Messenians and Naupactians after their victory over the Spartans at Sphacteria in 425 b.C. (It is shown above, in the beginning of this article).

Nike, her drapes sensuously revealing the contours of her divine body are flowing behind her as she seems ready to step out and fly into thin air, away from her pedestal. Her pedestal has the votive inscription and the name of the creator: ΠΑΙΩΝΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ ΜΕΝΔΑΙΟΣ/PAIONIOS EPOIESE MENDAIOS: Paionios created this, the Mendaian.
["ΜΕΣΣΑΝΙΟΙ ΚΑΙ ΝΑΥΠΑΚΤΙΟΙ ΑΝΕΘΕΝ ΔΙΙ ΟΛΥΜΠΙΩ ΔΕΚΑΤΑΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΩΝ ΠΟΛΕΜΙΩΝ (...) ΠΑΙΩΝΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ ΜΕΝΔΑΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ Τ΄ΑΚΡΩΤΗΡΙΑ ΠΟΙΩΝ ΕΠΙ ΤΟΝ ΝΑΟΝ ΕΝΙΚΑ" - This work was dedicated by the Messenians and the Naupactians to Olympian Zeus as tithe for the spoils of war (...) It was made by Paeoniοs from Mende who was distinguished as the contest winner for the making of the akroteria for the temple)]

We know the name of the sculptor, Paeonios/Παιόνιος, and the city where he was from: Mende/Μενδη, a town in Chalcidice/Χαλκιδικη, in the north part of Greece: Macedonia/Μακεδονια.

On an inscription from Torone, a city in the Sithonia peninsula of Chalkidike, we read the plight of a merchant-less merchant who sent a letter to his commercial associate:

SEG 43:488 Macedonia : Chalkidike: Torone

․․․․]τος Τεγέαι χαίρειν· [ξύ]λα οὐκ ἔχω ἐμ Μ̣[ένδηι(?)][ὠνε]ῖσθαι· σὺ δὴ ἀπόστειλον ἡμῖν εὐ̣[θέως] εἰ πλο[ῖον ἔχεις],

tos to Tegaia rejoicing. Wood

I do not have in Mende

to sell. And you therefore must send to us

immediately, if you have a boat,

On another inscription from the middle of the fifth century, this time from Athens, which enumerates a number of allied Greek city states, and among other cities, we also find:

Regions : Attica (IG I-III) : Attica

IG I³ 264, Att. — stoich. — 448/7

Σκαβλαῖοι / Skavlaioi

Μεδαῖοι / Mendaioi

Κύθνιοι / Cythnioi

Καρύστιοι / Carystioi

This, in adittion to such other cities as the cities of the

Μυκόνιοι / Myconioi, Θάσιοι / Thassioi, Ἀθεναῖοι / Athenaioi, Βυζάντιοι / Byzantioi, Χαλκιδε̑ς / Chalkides, Νεοπολῖται / Neapolitai...

Mende, as we mentioned earlier, was a city in Chalkidike. In ancient times, Chalcidice was part of Thrace until Philip II's Macedonians moved in and took over it. But before the Macedonians, other Greeks mostly from Euboia and especially from Chalkis (hence the name Chalcidice) begun around the 8th century BC to settle in the area. They slowly established themselves and founded cities such as Mende, Torone, Scione, and Stageira the birthplace of Aristotle. Some sources mention Aristotle's father, Nicomachos / Νικομαχος although a Stageiran by descent was actually said to have been born in Mende.

The main export of Mende was wine, and not just any wine: white wine. It is difficult for us today to believe it, but in ancient times, there was no such a thing as anything but red wine. White wine was first produced and sold by the citizens of Mende, and wine lovers around the world sipping their Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling or Pinot Gris, have none other than the Mendaioi to thank for it.



The coins of Mende proudly displayed their vines and the God of wine and drunkenness, Dionyssos himself. Traditionally, when Dionyssos was shown in the presence of an animal he was usually siting on a panther. Curiously, and exceptionally on Mende's coins Dionyssos is always portrayed laying on the back of a donkey. And this is Mende's second claim to fame: Her donkeys. Mende was known for her special race of Mendian donkeys, famous around the ancient world, and always displayed on her coins, even when no Dionyssos or vines were to be seen on them. The donkey as it is apparent, was the symbol of Mende. In fact the identification of the city of Mende with her symbol, the donkey was so strong to the other Greeks, that as we saw earlier in Varnalis's poem, every donkey in now modern Greece is called the Lord from Mende, a Kyr-Mentios (Kyr-Mendios)/Sir-Mendios/Κυρ-Μεντιος.

Going back now to Byzantium, find Procopius of Caesaria / Προκόπιος ο Καισαριας. He was a 6th cAD historian who wrote extensively on the reign of Justinian, emperor of Byzantium, the Eastern Roman empire. Procopius (Procopii opera omnia VI. De aedificiis / Περι Κτισματων, VI) mentions a place in Mysoia called Mούνδεπα or Μάνδεπα where Justinian had built a castle. The etymology is a combination of the word that created the toponym Mende in Chalcidice and the ending "-apa".

The original form of the name is *Μένδαπα : Μένδη + -απα. Apa means "river" in Thracian "Apa, aphus ´water, river; a spring´ [Old-Pruss. ape ´river´, apus ´spring´, Old-Ind. p- ´water´]". And also:

"upa ´river´ [Lith. ùp ´river´, Latv. upe ´river, stream´]. And we see this word also as an ending of hydronyms like apa, aphus ´water, river; a spring´ [Old-Pruss. ape ´river´, apus ´spring´, Old-Ind. p- ´water´]" and also: upa ´river´ [Lith. ùp ´river´, Latv. upe ´river, stream´]", according to Ivan Duridanov ("The Language of the Thracians"). He mentions as examples *M sypa/Μόσυπα (´mossy river´), Rhodópe/Rhodopa/Ροδόπη/(Θρακιστί Ροδόπα, which is now a name for a mountain range but it started as a hydronym for a river, a tributary of Ebros) and further north, in Upper Mysia we locate Zaldapa/Ζάλδαπα.

(http://www.xanthi.ilsp.gr/thraki/history/afm.asp?afm=BK6064 and V.Besevliev "Zur Deutung der Kastellnamen in Prokops Werk De aedificiis ´´, Amsterdam, 1970

So, now we know that Mandepa or Mendapa means river of something, of "mende". Yet we still do not know what Mende the name of the city or mende of Mendapa means, to explain both of them. We need to dig even further.

It is well known that the Thracian language is an extinct language surviving only in hydronyms, toponyms and scattered words and names, mostly from Greek inscriptions and Greek literary references. Hardly any Thracian inscriptions have survived, and of the three or four worthy of the name one is of interest to us. It is the inscription in the Thracian language on a golden ring found close to Philippoupolis / Plovdiv, at the village of Duvanli. It dates to the 5th century BC. The inscription is not complete, since only 16 of the original 21 letters are legible. In the middle of the ring there is an image of a Thracian horseman. The inscription reads:

HYZIH..........ΔΕΛΕ ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ

The famous Bulgarian linguist and philologist Vladimir I. Georgiev interpreted the Duvanli inscription as follows:

eys, ie ....dele, mezenai.

"(You) powerful, help … protect, (you) horseman!"

Ivan Duridanov tells us that: "The image of the horseman clarifies the word mezena as meaning ´a horseman´. The Thracian mezena (mezenai in the text) is almost identical to the name (the epithet) of the Messapian deity of (Iuppiter) Menzana, the "horse deity" to which were sacrificed horses. It also corresponds to the Albanian mes, mezi (´a stallion´) and the Romanian menz (´a stallion´). The latter is Dacian in origin from the IE *mend(i)- ´a horse´. The Thracian mezena and the Messapian Menzana – from the IE *mendiana mean ´a horseman´."

There are two modern languages that are directly derived from Dacian (the ancient language of the Dacians, the language most closely related to Thracian): Romanian and Albanian. Romanian is considered to be a fully Latinized Dacian and Albanian is essentially a partially Latinized Dacian language, according to most linguists. Both Romanian and Albanian share a base of residual Dacian words. Our Albanian friends who have been hammered by Enver Hoxha's regime propaganda about the "Illyrian descent" of the Albanian people will of course disagree, but the linguistic and historical evidence is there for anyone to check. The Bulgarian linguist Georgiev has indeed done a splendid work explaining this and so has the noted University of Chicago linguist Eric P. Hamp .

We check what Ivan Duridanov tells us and indeed we find that Albanian mës, mëzi, mëz, mâz means "pony" or "colt" in Albanian and mînz or mânz means "stalion" or "colt" in Rumanian.

As it turns out, there was indeed a Menzana Jupiter, a "horse deity" in Messapian, an Illyrian-derived language spoken on the Adriatic shore of Italy, to whom horses were being sacrificed. Manda meant "pony" in Illyrian, and therte was also a city with a horse-related etymology called "Manduria" in Apulia:
http://www.initalytoday.com/apulia/manduria/index.htm
According to the Russian Словари и энциклопедии на Академике (Academic Dictionary and Encyclopaedia - http://dic.academic.ru), the original equastrian-related word was *"mandos", and it was in turn related to the toponym mandela in Latium, close to Rome:
http://www.assgemandela.it/mandela.html
Mandela's original meaning was "small stables". The same meaning appears in the Sanskrit word "mandura" which is describing a "stable for horses" and also in the Greek word for stable : "mandra/μάνδρα", a word still used today for animal enclosure.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, at the area where Spain touches France and both are watered by the Atlantic ocean, the Basques speak the only truly indigenous language of Europe. Their Basque language, although not related to Indo-European, has taken in several words from other languages, including Latin, Celtic and Arabic. From the Celtic language the Basques have taken the word "mando", which became incorporated into their language and to them it means "mule".

"If Alb. mëz really joins Basque mando 'mule', as Bari (Hymje 57) has it, then these go with the -st- suffix above."
Eric P. Hamp, "The Position of Albanian", University of Chigaco (Ancient IE dialects, Proceedings of the Conference on IE linguistics held at the UCLA , April 25-27, 1963)

The "Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names" by A. Falileyev, 2007 informs us that "mandu- has an uncertain meaning that probably means "young animal" (OIr menn, W myn young goat, kid? GPC: 2533;

LEIA: -38; cf. Galo-Lat. mannus "smal pony" (cf. Basque mando "mule") se PNRB: 411-12,

IEW: 729 (root *mend- : suck, suckle; young animal?), cf. W. Meid, Die Terminologie von Pferd."

http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2160/282/9/IntroAndElements.pdf.txt

In Pokorny's monumental Indo-European Lexicon (Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern: Francke, 1959, reprinted in 1989), we see that the original meaning was:

"mend-, mond- (mn•d-?) : English meaning: to suck (breast), to feed; breast"

From this it eventually took the meaning of the small suckling animal and in many instances the small horse, which was arguably the most important animal to the Indo-Europeans, and later on to the Thracians, from whom we started.

The originally Thracian and later Greek city of Mende/Μένδη, had a donkey as her symbol and a name to go along with it : Mende/Μένδη : the donkey place.



The Greek settlers probably had no idea that Mende/Μένδη meant "donkey-place" in the language of its previous inhabitants but they still continued stamping the humble donkey on their city's coins: traditions as always are hard to die.



Now let us look at some other inscriptions and see how the name Manta would appear in the epigraphical record in alternate spellings and phonetic developments. We need to keep in mind that the Greek alphabet was not tailored to the Thracian language and some borderline sounds could go either way. An "ae" sound for example could be written either as either as an "a" or an "e". We have the example above of one toponym called alternatively Mούνδεπα/Moundepa, Μάνδεπα/Mandepa or Μένδαπα/Mendapa.

There are three inscriptions from Thracian Moesia and the name Mantas appears here as Mentes/Μέντης. It is actually very close phonetically to the town's name: Mende/Μένδη ("d" is pronounced as "t" ). The other difference of course is that Mende/Μένδη is feminine while Mentes/Μέντης, being masculine takes an "s" in the end.

IGBulg I² 47(2)

Thrace and Moesia Inferior

Αὐρ(ήλιος) Θιας Ἑστιαίου

Αὐρ(ήλιος) Μέντης Ἀγαθήνορος

Ἰούλιος Ἀντώνιος

Aurelios Thias son of Estiaios

Aurelios Mentes son of Agathenor.

Ioulios Antonios

The names Aurelios and Ioulios are of course Latin, but here we see them Hellenized. In a Greek speaking country such as Macedonia, they are being rendered in a Greek form. Aurelios, in order to stay true to the original Aurelius should have been written, transliterated as Αυρηλιους / Aurelious and Iulios in order to stay true to the Latin Iulius should have been transiterated as Ioulious/Ιουλιους. The same holds true for Antonios/Ἀντώνιος. Moreover they are not even written in the Latin script, but in Greek letters. Details like these, as we mentioned earlier, speak louder than whole volumes of books on Macedonia by learned professors who never sat down to learn its Greek language and study its original sourses. Thias, Estiaios and Agathenor are Greek names.


Now let us step back several centuries to a heroic past, to the epic age of Mycenae. Let us follow the Achaean Greeks, on their return to their native cities, after the sack of Troy, early in the 12th century. Some made it safely some not, some wandered in the sea from place to place, like Odysseus, before their eventual return home. In the first book of Odyssey, Homer speaks of Athena (Αθηνη in the text) disguised as a tin merchant, sailing across the "wine dark sea" to land of the river "Temeses", today's Thames, in Britain (although most scholars locate that in Northern Italy) to barter copper for iron. On his way to what is now England he stops by Ithaca and talks to Menelaos, Odysseus' son. But he is no ordinary merchant, as we already know, he is "Glaucopis [blue-green eyed] Goddess Athene" herself /θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη, in disguise. This is how Homer tells it:

"τοιγὰρ ἐγώ τοι ταῦτα μάλ᾽ ἀτρεκέως ἀγορεύσω.

Μέντης Ἀγχιάλοιο δαΐφρονος εὔχομαι εἶναι

υἱός, ἀτὰρ Ταφίοισι φιληρέτμοισιν ἀνάσσω.

νῦν δ᾽ ὧδε ξὺν νηὶ κατήλυθον ἠδ᾽ ἑτάροισιν

πλέων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον ἐπ᾽ ἀλλοθρόους ἀνθρώπους,

ἐς Τεμέσην μετὰ χαλκόν, ἄγω δ᾽ αἴθωνα σίδηρον."

Ομηρου Οδυσεια, Α, 179-184

"To you I will indeed speak openly.

I can tell you that my name is Mentes,

son of the wise Anchialus, and king

of the oar-loving Taphians. I've come,

as you surmise, with comrades on a ship,

sailing across the wine-dark sea to men

whose style of speech is very different,

on my way to Temese for copper,

and carrying a freight of shining iron.

Homer Odyssey, Book I, 179-184

Here now we have Homer, putting down in rhymes in the 8th century or earlier, epic legends sung for four centuries before him, mentioning Mentes. Βut this Mentes is not from Thrace. He is from the island of Taphos/Τάφος in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Acarnania in western Greece. It is the home of the pirates and merchants Taphians/Τάφιοι. The Taphians are also mentioned by Euripides in Iphenigea at Aulis (Eur. IA 277) who tells us that The Taphians live by the Echinades/Εχιναδες islands :

Αἰνιάνων δὲ δωδεκάστολοι

νᾶες ἦσαν, ὧν ἄναξ

Γουνεὺς ἆρχε: τῶνδε δ᾽ αὖ πέλας

280Ἤλιδος δυνάστορες,

οὓς Ἐπειοὺς ὠνόμαζε πᾶς λεώς:

Εὔρυτος δ᾽ ἄνασσε τῶνδε,

λευκήρετμον δ᾽ Ἄρη

Τάφιον ἦγεν, ὧν Μέγης ἄνασσε,

285Φυλέως λόχευμα,

τὰς Ἐχίνας λιπὼν

νήσους ναυβάταις ἀπροσφόρους.

Moreover there was a squadron of Aenianian sail under King and next the lords of Elis, stationed near'-them, whom all the people named Epeians; and Eurytus was lord of these; likewise he led the Taphian warriors with the white oar-blades, the subjects of Meges, son of Phyleus, who had left the isles of the Echinades, where sailors cannot land.

Taphos has been identified as the island of Meganísi/Μεγανήσι just east of the island of Leucas/Λευκας:

http://www.meganisi.gov.gr/Default.aspx?tabid=226

This is far from Thrace, and the Taphians are definately not Thracians. They are Greeks in speech, otherwise they would not speak of the ancient Brittons (or North Italians if you prefer) as "men whose style of speech is very different". Therefore, we must assume that the name Mentes as a colt-derived name which must have existed in the Greek language too, as a cognate to the Thracian. The Greek word mantra/μάντρα (with numerous toponyms Mantra/Μαντρα, Mandra/Μάνδρα and Mantraki/Μαντράκι, Mandraki/Μανδράκι) meaning the open animal enclosure, an outdoor stable, which we saw earlier above gives us a solid hint, if not a proof of it. Due to its antiquity and the geographic distance from Thrace, we have to consider it therefore as an old issogloss to the Thracian name Mentes. How can we be sure? Because Homer gives us the answer himself. Homer actually mentions a Thracian Mentes too, a king of the Thracian tribe of the Kikones/Κικονες:

ἔνθά κε ῥεῖα φέροι κλυτὰ τεύχεα Πανθοΐδαο
Ἀτρεΐδης, εἰ μή οἱ ἀγάσσατο Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων,
ὅς ῥά οἱ Ἕκτορ᾽ ἐπῶρσε θοῷ ἀτάλαντον Ἄρηϊ
ἀνέρι εἰσάμενος Κικόνων ἡγήτορι Μέντῃ:
καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα:
Oμηρου Ιλιας, ιζ', 70-74

Full easily then would Atreus' son have borne off the glorious armour of the son of Panthous, but that Phoebus Apollo begrudged it him, and in the likeness of a man, even of Mentes, leader of the Cicones, aroused against him Hector, the peer of swift Ares. And he spoke and addressed him in winged words:
Homer, Iliad, Book 17, 70-74

Who were Mentes' Kikones? Homer tells us that they were one of the Thracian tribes:
αὐτὰρ Θρήϊκας ἦγ᾽ Ἀκάμας καὶ Πείροος ἥρως
845ὅσσους Ἑλλήσποντος ἀγάρροος ἐντὸς ἐέργει.
Εὔφημος δ᾽ ἀρχὸς Κικόνων ἦν αἰχμητάων
υἱὸς Τροιζήνοιο διοτρεφέος Κεάδαο.
Oμηρου Ιλιας, β', 845-848

But the Thracians Acamas led and Peirous, the warrior, even all them that the strong stream of the Hellespont enclosed. And Euphemus was captain of the Ciconian spearmen, the son of Ceas' son Troezenus, nurtured of Zeus.
Homer, Iliad, Book II 845-848

The land of the Thracian Kikones was, according to Herodotus ,in coastal Thrace, between Rhodope mountains and the Aegean sea, now part of Thrace in Greece. Let us hear how Herodotus describes how Xerxes with his huge Persian army passed through these lands:

διαβὰς δὲ τοῦ Λίσου ποταμοῦ τὸ ῥέεθρον ἀπεξηρασμένον πόλιας Ἑλληνίδας τάσδε παραμείβετο, Μαρώνειαν Δίκαιαν Ἄβδηρα. ταύτας τε δὴ παρεξήιε καὶ κατὰ ταύτας λίμνας ὀνομαστὰς τάσδε, Μαρωνείης μὲν μεταξὺ καὶ Στρύμης κειμένην Ἰσμαρίδα, κατὰ δὲ Δίκαιαν Βιστονίδα, ἐς τὴν ποταμοὶ δύο ἐσιεῖσι τὸ ὕδωρ, Τραῦός τε καὶ Κόμψαντος.
Ηροδοτου Ιστοριαι, 7.109.1

After he had crossed the dried-up bed of the river Lisus, he passed by the Greek cities of Maronea, Dicaea, and Abdera. He passed by these, and along certain well-known lakes near them: the Ismarid lake that lies between Maronea and Stryme, and near Dicaea the Bistonian lake, into which the rivers Travus and Compsantus discharge.
Herodotus, The Histories7.109.1

Then Herodotus connects these Greek cities to the land of the Kikones / Cicones:

ταύτας μὲν δὴ τὰς πόλιας τὰς παραθαλασσίας τε καὶ Ἑλληνίδας ἐξ εὐωνύμου χειρὸς ἀπέργων παρεξήιε: ἔθνεα δὲ Θρηίκων δι' ὧν τῆς χώρης ὁδὸν ἐποιέετο τοσάδε, Παῖτοι Κίκονες Βίστονες Σαπαῖοι Δερσαῖοι Ἠδωνοὶ Σάτραι. τούτων οἱ μὲν παρὰ θάλασσαν κατοικημένοι ἐν τῇσι νηυσὶ εἵποντο: οἱ δὲ αὐτῶν τὴν μεσόγαιαν οἰκέοντες καταλεχθέντες τε ὑπ' ἐμεῦ, πλὴν Σατρέων, οἱ ἄλλοι πάντες πεζῇ ἀναγκαζόμενοι εἵποντο.
Ηροδοτου Ιστοριαι, 7.110.1

Xerxes marched past these Greek cities of the coast, keeping them on his left. The Thracian tribes through whose lands he journeyed were the Paeti, Cicones (Kikones), Bistones, Sapaei, Dersaei, Edoni, and Satrae. Of these, the ones who dwelt by the sea followed his army on shipboard; the ones living inland, whose names I have recorded, were forced to join with his land army, all of them except the Satrae.
Herodotus, The Histories7.110.1

Strabo the Geographer is even more specific:

μετα δε την αναμεσον λιμνην Χανθεια Μαρωνεια και Ισμαρος, αι των Kικονων πολεις. καλειται δε νυν Ισμαρα πλησιον της Μαρωνειας.
Στραβων, Γεωγραφικα 7α.7 (fragmenta)
After the lake, which is midway between, come Xantheia, Maroneia, and Ismarus, the cities of the Cicones. Ismarus, however, is now called Ismara; it is near Maroneia. Strabo Geography 7a.7 fragments

Maroneia, it should be noted, was built by Greek settlers in the land of the Kikones. It is not surprising that they adopted some of the Thracian symbols, beloved to their neighbors. This is not unusual. The equastrian and vine similarity of Maronia's coins to those of Mende's coins is striking and noteworthy.


It is indeed from this area of Thrace, close to Maroneia, Xantheia and Ismaros that the next two Mentes / Μέντης inscriptions are from:

IGBulg I² 183Thrace and Moesia Inferior:

Μέντης Νεικίου, γυνὴ

αὐτοῦ Αννι Ξένωνος

Mentes son of Nikeias, his

wife Anni daughter of Xenon.

IGBulg I² 227

Thrace and Moesia Inferior

Μέντης Μέντου

καὶ ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ Αν-

Μέντης, ὦ παροδεῖτα, θανὼν ὅδε κεῖμ´ ἐνὶ τύμβωι

γηραλέου βιότου δόξαν ἀειράμενος.

Mentes son of Mentes

and his wife An-

Mentes, oh passerby, being dead, here I am lying in this tomb

carrying with me the reputation of a long lived life.

We stressed earlier the linguistic connection of Mantas and Mentes to mule, donkey and colt-related words, toponyms and names from Spain to Italy, Greece, Thrace and Sanskrit speaking India. Now let us look at a few inscriptions that are not so ordinary but are probably related. The first one is from Ionia, now at the Aegean part of Turkey, where we find the name Mentes/Μέντης and his phonetically similar sounding patronym Mentoukas/Μέντουκας:

JÖAI 1912:53,24, Ionia: Klaros

— — —]-

οφίλου, Μέντης Μέντουκα[ὶ]

ἱεροκῆρυξ Καλλισθένης Εὐτυ-

— — —]-

ophilou, Mentes son of Mentoukas

hierokyrex* Callisthenes son of Euty-

(*holy preacher)

In Athens we find a most interesting inscription that makes mention of a type of a tax common in Ionia, called Lepsimandes Foros.

IG I³ 100, Attica

Ἰονικὸς φόρος]

Ληψιμανδῆς [∶ — — —]

Ionian tax]

Lepsimandes

Why should we say that this is interesting? Let us look at the etymology of the word: We break it in its two parts: ληψι and μανδῆς/lepsi and mandes. Lepsis/Ληψις means a taking, a seizing, an accepting a receiving, according to our Liddell and Scott's Greek dictionary. It comes from the verb lambano/λαμβανω which of course means to take, to seize, to accept, to receive. The second part is: mandes/μανδῆς. This means that the person being taxed through the Ληψιμανδῆς/Lepsimandes tax had to pay not in money but had to give something to the state, to pay in kind. The word tells us what kind: mande/μανδῆ.

When Alexander the Great went through Pamphylia/Παμφυλια, the historian Arrian/Αῤῥιανός tells us, he dealt with the tax issue of the city of Perge/Περγη, in the following way. Let us hear Arrian tells us what were the taxes that the citizens of Aspendos/Ἀσπενδος (a city of in Asia Minor, not too far Ionia) were used to pay to the Persian Great King, and what Alexander the Great accepted from them:

ἐκ Πέργης δὲ ὡς προῄει, ἐντυγχάνουσιν αὐτῷ κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν πρέσβεις Ἀσπενδίων αὐτοκράτορες, τὴν μὲν πόλιν ἐνδιδόντες, φρουρὰν δὲ μὴ εἰσάγειν δεόμενοι. καὶ περὶ μὲν τῆς φρουρᾶς πράξαντες ἀπῆλθον, ὅσα ἠξίουν. πεντήκοντα δὲ τάλαντα κελεύει τῇ στρατιᾷ δοῦναι αὐτοῖς ἐς μισθὸν καὶ τοὺς ἵππους, οὓς δασμὸν βασιλεῖ ἔτρεφον. οἱ δὲ ὑπέρ τε τοῦ ἀργυρίου καὶ τοὺς ἵππους παραδώσειν ξυνθέμενοι ἀπῆλθον. Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ ἐπὶ Σίδης ἤει.

Αῤῥιανός, Αλεξάνδρου Αναβάσις, Βιβλίον Πρώτον 26

As he was advancing from Perga, he was met on the road by envoys from the Aspendians with full powers, who offered to surrender their city, but begged him not lead a garrison into it. Having gained their request in regard to the garrison, they went back; but he ordered them to give him fifty talents as pay for his army, as well as the horses which they were rearing as tribute to Darius. Having agreed with him about the money, and having likewise promised to hand over the horses, they departed. Alexander then marched to Side.

Arrian, Anabasis Book 1.26

I believe that this gives us a very clear idea of what the Ληψιμανδῆς/Lepsimandes tax was about. It was a tax paid by the subject city in colts, in horses.

It is obvious that Mantas, Mentes, Mendes are all mule, donkey, colt and horse connected names. It is not surprising at all, therefore, that a philippon (φιλιππον=horse-loving) and hippomachon (ἱππόμαχον=horse riding in battle) nation which bred the kallistous hippous (καλλίστους ἵππους=the best horses), an equestrian nation such as the Thracians would have names that are equestrian in nature, names like Manta/Μαντα and Mantas/Μαντας.

Incidentally, since Rome was built a little after Homer was finishing the last poetic touches on his Iliad and Odyssey, I seriously doubt that he had much of a chance to visit Rome, learn Latin and then use it for his several mentions of the name Mentes. Why is this important? Because those (like professor Donski Skopje) who believe that the Thracian name Manta is derived from the south Slavic "noun "mantija", that exists in the present day" [Slavo-]Macedonian language [and] represents a type of long garment", as he claims, need to be informed that the south-Slavic "mantija" is directly derived from the Greek word mantila/μαντήλα. Mantila is the scarf used by women as head covering. In the neutral form it is called mantili/μαντήλι or mandeli/μανδήλι and it is a handkerchief, a woman's head-scarf or a bandana. In its more archaic form it takes an "n" at the end: mandelion/μανδήλιον, meaning the handcloth. The most famous mandelion is the Agion Mandelion/Ἅγιον Μανδήλιον = the Holy Handcloth, and in the Eastern Orthodox tradition it means to describe an Acheiropoietos/Αχειροποίητος (not created by human hand) icon, the handcloth that was placed on Christ's face and copied his features after he was taken off the cross.

http://iconecristiane.it/wp-content/blogs.dir/i/517/file/pucci-agnese/mandylion06.jpg

The Agion Mandelion was held as a relic in a church in Edessa of Syria (named after the Macedonian Edessa, but is now called Urfa, and is situated in what is now Turkey). It was eventually taken to Constantinople. It was eventually stolen by the Latins of the fourth crusade during their sack of Constantinople in 1204. It was probably similar to the well known Shroud of Turin. The Greek word mandelion is itself in turn a loanword from the Latin mantilium, a "hand cloth" and the also Latin mantele, meaning a hand towel (manus = hand in Latin).

The noun "mantija", that exists in Slavomacedonian, far from making any linguistic connection of the south-Slavs of Skopje with the ancient Greek Macedonian past, seems to have finally met its true Graeco-Latin origin, which, at any rate, has absolutely nothing in common with the equestrian name "Manta", itself of Thracian, not even Greek-Macedonian origin.


PS: Many thanks to Soteria Tsimoura, a graduate student in Germany, for her tireless assistance in this and many other articles.

Macedonian names and makeDonski pseudo-linguistics: The case of the word Tshelnik - Tshelniku

Άρθρο που πρωτοεμφανίστηκε στο Αμέρικαν Κρόνικλ, στις 18 Ιουνίου του 2009
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/106568
Miltiades Bolaris

Balkan Illusion - phantasia archaica:
"...it is very interesting to note that many of the authentic ancient Macedonian words, according to their etymology and pronunciation, have a striking resemblance to the appropriate words used in the modern Macedonian language (and other so called "Slav"[sic] languages). For instance, the word "tshelniku" which translated in English means foremost is a very interesting case. The British historian Hammond mentioned its etymology and said that the word "tshelniku" in the ancient Macedonian language had a meaning of "leader of a group". Hammond says that this word was translated into Greek only in the 14th century as "phylarchos"."
From: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today's' Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)" by Aleksandar Donski, celebrity folk "historian" from FYROM.


Tshelnik/Tzelnikos/Tζελνίκος/Tshelniku/Tσέλιγκας

Karagiozis is the main cartoon character in the Greek shadow-theater. The name is Turkish, meaning the "black eyed one". Greeks took their shadow theater from the Turks who got it from the Persians and the Persians in turn got if from farther east, since it probably originated from China.

Karagiozis is an ingenuous urban Greek living in squalid conditions under the Turkish occupation, and he is always getting in trouble with the Ottoman authorities. Every time he is getting in trouble, he is getting beaten to a pulp by the notorious Veligekas, a policeman whose name betrays an Albanian Muslim, in the service of the Turkish Pasha. But then, as Deus ex machina in ancient drama, barba-Giorgis (uncle George) always shows up, and saves Karagiozis from Velingekas and the Pasha.

Barba-Giorgis the Tselingas on a Greek Stamp

Barba-Giorgis is Karagiozis' uncle. He is a tall Vlach (a mountaineer bilingual, a Greco-Latin); he speaks in heavy dialect, he is rough, of mountainous stock, honest and straight, hard working (he always brings cheese and other dairy products to feed his nephew's impoverished urban family), and of superhuman strength. He is the funniest character in this shadow theater, and he is always ready to beat up every phony charlatan and hypocrite, including professors, politicians, lawyers, or representatives of state bureaucracy and Ottoman power. Barba-Giorgis is casually called by the others the "Vlachos" (the Vlach), or the "Tselingas".
The definition of a Tselingas is that of a man who is the leader of a large sheep and goat herding enterprise, a master shepherd.

Georgios Bambiniotes in the "Lexico tes Neas Hellenikes Glossas" (Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language, Kentro Lexikologias, second edition, Athens, 2002) defines Tselingas/Τσελιγκας as "the shepherd with many sheep, goats etc, the owner of a large herd, close to whom are employed many other smaller shepherds". Just below this lexical entry we find the word Tselingato/Τσελιγκάτο which Bambiniotes defines as "a developed animal herding enterprise which had, in times past, as its base a rich and powerful family with its own pastures and which included even various other dependent micro-shepherds,...etc".
The origin and etymology of the word Tselingas, according to this Lexicon is Slavic: tshelnik "genarch of a family".
Tselingas, therefore, according to one of the most authoritative Modern Greek language dictionaries is originally a Slavic word, derived as a loanword into Modern Greek from the Slavic "tshelnik", for genarch, leader of a family, a pater familias.

Let us now follow what professor Donski has to tell us about Tselnik(u). We know of course that professor Donski's mission is to try to convince us that somehow there is an ethnic and linguistic continuation between the ancient Macedonians, whom he imagines to be "proto-Slavic", and the modern Slavo-makedonijans. Following the dictum of the regime in Skopje, he identifies the 1.3 million strong Bulgarian/Slavic speaking population living in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) as being the "ethnic" Macedonians. South of FYROM's border, 2.7 million Greek Macedonians beg to differ on the usage of this name, and indeed (adding insult to their injury) the attempted usurpation for exclusive usage of the name "Macedonian" by the Slavs of FYROM. After all, The Greeks of Macedonia have the language and name issues on their side: Every inscription found in Macedonia is in Greek, save for a few in Latin from the Roman era. All the names of the ancient Macedonians were Greek and intelligible to modern Greeks. Here comes professor Aleksandar Donski/Александар Донски and pulls a rabbit out of his hat: an ancient Macedonian word, he insists, which the Greeks themselves accept as being a loanword from Slavic.
Professor Donski speaking:

"For instance, the word "tshelniku" which translated in English means foremost is a very interesting case. The British historian Hammond mentioned its etymology and said that the word "tshelniku" in the ancient Macedonian language had a meaning of "leader of a group". Hammond says that this word was translated into Greek only in the 14th century as "phylarchos"."
[our note: phylarchos/φύλαρχος means "leader of the tribe" in Greek].

Having read Nicholas Hammond's book "The Macedonian State - The origins, Institutions and History", I beg to strongly differ with the statement and assessment above, but I prefer to come back to it later. Let us for now continue with Aleksandar Donski:

"The word "tshelnik" with completely identical etymology and pronunciation has been registered in the so called "old Slavic language" in Macedonia as early as 11th century! Proof of this is the entry of Byzantine chronicle writer Kekavmen where he described the events surrounding the anti-Byzantine uprising of Petar Deljan in 11th century. He said that in the language of the rebels "the strategist is called tshelnik"!) It is known that Kekavmen was fluent in the "language of the Slavs" in Macedonia therefore he could translate the Greek word "strategist" as "tshelnik" (the strategist was a high military rank in Byzantine). It is even more interesting that the word "tshelnik" with identical etymology and pronunciation is being used in today's Macedonian language and in other "Slav" languages, as well!"

I happen to have read Kekavmenos' Strategikon/Στρατηγηκόν, in the Greek original (Kεκαυμένος/Kekavmenos, Στρατηγικόν/Strategikon, (Kanakis Publishers, Athens, 1996, third edition, second in the series: Keimena Byzantines Historiographias-2, therefore all the references in this paper are from this edition), and I do have some serious issues with what professor Donski is saying here. Let us remember for now the issues of location (we are told this is in Macedonia, which is not true), the people involved (Petar Deljan and his "anti-Byzantine" rebels whom A.Donski skillfully fails to describe: I think we know why) and finally the language (it is inferred by A.Donski that is is [Slavic]"Macedonian"). We will come back to these three issues once we read the original text. But there is only one thing I would like to mention, before we proceed further, and it is that somehow professor Donski is deriving that the Byzantine army general Κεκαυμένος/Kekavmenos was "fluent in the language of the Slavs", insinuating probably that he was also a fellow Makedonski. Katakalon Kekavmenos/Κατακαλών Κεκαυμένος as his full name was, was of Armenian and also of Greek and Georgian descent. His mother was the daughter of Demetrios Polemarchios/Δημήτριος Πολεμάρχιος. His father, named Krikor Kichatzi, was the son of an Armenian noble, originally a Toparches=area commander of his own fiefdom, a feudal lord, in Armenia. He was originally, as Kekavmenos tells us, "an enemy of Romania" (the Byzantine empire) but later came to be in the service of Byzantium as a Byzantine Patrician and General of Larisa (by Larisa they meant Thessaly) and Thessalonike (by which they meant the whole of what is accepted as historic Macedonia). Kekavmenos' great grandfather was Smbat Kichatzi, an Armenian Patrician. There is nowhere a mention of Kekavmenos speaking Slavic or any other language besides Greek, the language in which his Strategikon is written though we can possibly also assumed that he may have spoken Armenian too, but he never mentions it.
We offer the podium again to Aleksandar Donski to continue:

"This can not be a coincidence, especially considering the fact that there could be hundreds of thousands[sic] etymological meanings that a single word can represent, and in this instance there is an identical etymological meaning for a word that has also an identical pronunciation.
The remark that the middle age Macedonians simply borrowed[sic] this word from the language of ancient Macedonians and used it in 11th century is not valid. Assuming that it is so, becomes impossible to explain the fact that this word is present in the contemporary Croatian literary language. Have they inherited this word from the ancient Macedonians as well? It is the same with the contemporary Serbian and Bulgarian literary languages where this word is also present with the same pronunciation and etymology."

In other words, we are told that this word, tshelnik or tshelniku, appears in modern Croatian, Serbian and Bulgarian, (he fails to mention Polish and other Slavic languages, for good reason, we will start wondering how they got it...) and the question for him is how do these south Slavic nations came to acquire this word, if they did not borrowed it from the SlavoMakedonci who in turn "did not borrow it" from the ancient Macedonians?
If it sounds too confusing, it's because it is:

We are assured that the ones he calls "the Middle Ages Macedonians" did not "simply borrow" the word "tshelnik" from the ancient Macedonians, yet, somehow the modern Makedonci today have it and in their dialect tshelnik now means "foremost". Moreover they managed to pass it on to the Croats and Serbs, who in fact retained the original meaning.
I suggest that we should analyze this for a moment, because it is getting a bit too confusing. Let us consider the example of Renascence Italians. Can we say that the Renascence Italians "simply borrowed" a word from Latin? True, Italian is not considered the same language as Latin after a certain point, but in essence it is a direct descendant of ancient Latin, therefore someone could arguably call it "modern Latin" (the same is true for French, Spanish etc). After all, we call Medieval Latin "Latin", yet it is not the same as the Latin spoken by Cicero. Someone can easily argue that all Romance languages are in some convincing sense dialects of modern Latin, and still be correct: The same holds true for Greek. Modern Greek is considered the direct descendant of medieval Greek, which was derived from Coene, and that from Attic, Homeric etc. There is an unbroken chain, in both Greek and Latin, despite the names we give to the language. Greek is still Greek whethere you call it Greek, Hellenika, Romaiika, Achaika, etc. The notion, therefore, of Italian as a language "simply borrowing" words like "popolo" and senate from Latin, and of modern Greek "simply borrowing" words such as "demos" from ancient Greek is absurd. My point is simple: by making this linguistic Freudian slip, professor Donski is revealing his subliminal discomfort about the pseudo-makedonist Big Lie: the imagined yet non-existent connection that he is trying to establish between the language of the Greek-speaking ancient Macedonians and the Slavic language now spoken in the Former Yugoslav Republic of "Macedonia". Let us follow his words again:

"The remark that the middle age Macedonians simply borrowed this word from the language of ancient Macedonians and used it in 11th century is not valid. Assuming that it is so, becomes impossible to explain the fact that this word is present in the contemporary Croatian literary language. Have they inherited this word from the ancient Macedonians as well? It is the same with the contemporary Serbian and Bulgarian literary languages where this word is also present with the same pronunciation and etymology."

The way out of this dilemma is very simple. We need to look at all the possibilities. If or the world "tshelnik" is indeed Slavic as the Greeks readily admit, then Logically there are only three options:
A.The historically absurd and scientifically unprovable possibility that the Ancient Macedonians spoke indeed a proto-Slavic language, in which case tshelnik would be a normal word, which they passed on or shared with the other Slavs.
B. The historically absurd and astronomically statistically very remote possibility that the Ancient Macedonians had acquired through some captured Slav slave a Slavic word, fully a thousand years before the Slabs ever appeared in history. Even in this, statistically virtually impossible case, all we will prove will be that the Macedonians had at least one loan word from a distant Slavic culture, which, weighted against the thousands upon thousands of Greek language inscriptions found daily in Macedonia will prove nothing to reverse our understanding of their essentially Greek language and culture. In the same way, the fact that they had a word like parasanga, clearly a Persian word, does not prove that the Macedonians or the other Greeks were Persians. Likewise, the fact that the modern Slavomakedonski language has several thousands of Greek loanwords does not make it Greek, it is still a Slavic language.
C. The language of the ancient Macedonians was not and could never have been proto-Slavic, or even remotely related to it, and the Macedonians never had such a Slavic word as "Tshelnik", which means that Croatians, Bulgarians and Serbs brought this word into the Balkans sometime after the 6th to 8th cAD without any intervention from the Slavomakedonci.
All we need to do now is prove that one of the three is correct and the dilema is solved.

At the same time, and completely unaware that he slipped on his own banana peel, professor Donski rides along, galloping away from logic and history, and cluelessly attempts to deduct and identify linguistic rules and "characteristics", as he calls them, of the ancient Macedonian language (as only his fertile imagination can beget). We join him in the parade, window shopping at Skopje's pseudo-linguistic bazaar:

"It is highly likely that through analysis of the word "tshelniku" some other characteristics of the ancient Macedonian language could be identified, considering the fact that in the contemporary Macedonian language this word is deducted from the noun "tshelo" - forehead.
As mentioned previously, the non-Greek words were recorded by the ancient Greeks on as-heard basis without analyzing the form of the word. Due to the fact the word "tshelniku" had been recorded inclusive of the vowel "u" at the end, it is anticipated that "tshelniku" was recorded by the ancient Greeks in its vocative form. The vocative form of the noun "tshelnik" in the contemporary Macedonian language is precisely "tshelniku". Is it maybe that the Greeks used to hear the word "tshelniku" every time a Macedonian addressed the leader, therefore recorded this word without realising that they were recording its vocative form?"

"..this word is deducted from the noun "tshelo" – forehead." Sadly, this is just about the only sentence that makes sense and is factually correct out of the nonsense we have been subjected to by the dedicated (to his nationalistic cause, though not to science) professor above. I will explain, and a good place to start will be Kekavmenos' Strategikon/Στρατηγικόν.

Strategikon/Στρατηγικόν/"On Strategy" was not history. It was a treatise, a type of military manual, with advice on military, administrative and even personal issues. We are reading from the chapter 31, titled:
"Oι κίνδυνοι από τήν απεριμνησία τού στρατηγού"/The dangers from the carelessness of a general:

"Δημητριάς πόλις εστί τής Ελλάδος παρά θάλασσαν, από τε τής θαλάσσης καί τών κύκλωθεν βαλτών εξησφαλισμένη. Ής εγκρατής γέγονεν ο Δελιάνος. τοπάρχης δέ ήν ούτος Βουλγάρων. Εγκρατής δέ αυτής γεγονός ούτος απέστειλεν εν αυτή στρατιώτην αρχαίον καί έμπειρον εις τά πολέμια (ο γάρ στρατηγός τή τών Βουλγάρων διαλέκτω τζελνίκος[tzelnikos] λέγεται) Λυτοβόην τόν Διαβολίτην, δούς αυτώ καί λαόν εις φυλακήν τού κάστρου."
Demetrias is a city in Greece next to the sea, and it is secured both by the sea and by the swamps surrounding it. Delianos captured it; he was a toparch (= an area leader) of the Bulgarians. Once the city became his he sent in it an old soldier and experienced in the war issues (the general in the dialect of the Bulgarians is called a tzelnikos) Lytoboes the Diabolites, having given him army to guard the castle.

Kekavmenos is speaking of a city in central Greece-Thessaly/Θεσσαλία, called Demetrias (modern Volos/Βόλος). It is not in northern Greece-Macedonia, and for sure nowhere close to Yugoslav FYROMakedonija. Incidentally, the area now called Former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija in the 11th century was part of the "Boulgarikon" (where Bulgarians live) Thema, one of the administrative provinces of the Byzantine empire, whose name is revealing of what the Byzantine Greeks thought of the ethnicity of the inhabitants of FYROM at that time. Kekavmenos tells us that Deljan/Дељан (in the Greek text: Delianos/Δελιάνος) is a toparches Boulgaron/τοπάρχης Βουλγάρων = a toparch, an area leader, of the Bulgarians. What Kekavmenos tells us about Deljan, is corroborated by the writing on the photograph at the beginning of this article. This photograph is from the manuscript of the "Synopsis of Histories"(Σύνοψις Ἱστοριῶν) known also as Codex Græcus Matritensis Ioannis Skyllitzes, written in Cicily during the late 11th century AD by Ioannes Skylitzes/Ἰωάννης Σκυλίτζης and is now in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, in Madrid. The inscription in Greek, above, is clear: "βασιλέα τε αυτόν"Βουλγαρίας αναγόρευσις, Πέτρος Βουλγαρίας ὀ Δελιάνο/and king of the Bulgarians they acclaimed him, Petros Boulgarias Delianο".


{Βουλγαρίας Αμηρράς ο Πέτρος / Πέτρος Βουλγαρίας ο Δελεάνος}

The language Kekavmenos mentions is τή τών Βουλγάρων διαλέκτω/te ton Boulgaron dialekto = in the dialect of the Bulgarians: the Bulgarian dialect.
Finally, the foreign word he mentions to describe the Bulgarian general Lytoboes is τζελνίκος/tzelnikos = the general, τή τών Βουλγάρων διαλέκτω/te ton Boulgaron dialekto = in the dialect of the Bulgarians.

Should we remember what professor Donski had told us? Here it is again:

"The word "tshelnik" with completely identical etymology and pronunciation has been registered in the so called "old Slavic language" [Kekavmenos says: Bulgarian] in Macedonia [Kekavmenos mentions events in a city in Thessaly, captured by the Bulgarian Deljan/Delianos] as early as 11th century! Proof of this is the entry of Byzantine chronicle writer Kekavmen where he described the events surrounding the anti-Byzantine uprising of Petar Deljan in 11th century. He said that in the language of the rebels [Kekavmenos is specifically mentioning the "dialect of the Bulgarians"] "the strategist is called tshelnik"!" [Kekavmenos actually says τζελνίκος/tzelnikos, not tschelnik or tshelniku, but it is undoubtedly the same word].

If Kekavmenos mentions τζελνίκος/tzelnikos and not tshelniku, then what about all the nonsense we heard earlier about:

"...Due to the fact the word "tshelniku" had been recorded inclusive of the vowel "u" at the end, it is anticipated that "tshelniku" was recorded by the ancient Greeks in its vocative form. The vocative form of the noun "tshelnik" in the contemporary Macedonian language is precisely "tshelniku". Is it maybe that the Greeks used to hear the word "tshelniku" every time a Macedonian addressed the leader, therefore recorded this word without realizing that they were recording its vocative form?"

...what is he talking about?

We have established up to now that this word was spelled by Κekavmenos as: τζελνίκος/tzelnikos, which in the 11th century was considered by the Byzantine Greeks to be a Bulgarian word that means "the general".
We have also established that the derivative of this word was used until recently in Modern Greek as a loan word from the Slavic and it was attested as tselingas/τσέλιγκας meaning the leader of a tselingato/τσελιγκάτο, a large size sheep and goat herding and shepherding enterprise.

There is an easy test to prove that tshelnik/τζελνίκος/tzelnikos/tselingas/τσέλιγκας is not originally a Greek word, by opening our ancient Greek Lexicon, the Liddel and Scott: Not only are tseligkas/τσέλιγκας or tzelnikos/τζελνίκος nowhere to be found in it, but in fact there is not one single ancient Greek word that starts with a "ts" or "tz" sound in a dictionary of more than 2100 pages of Greek words!

In modern Greek the "ts" sound exists, but even in modern Greek, only nine and a half out of more than two thousand pages of the George Babiniotes dictionary of the modern Greek language start with the ts- sound. As a rule of thumb, we can say that any word in modern Greek that starts in other languages with a sound like: ts, tz, tsch, tsh, ç, ţ, ch, tch, č, Ц, Ч, etc, is written in Greek with ts-/τσ- or tz-/τζ-, and is always a foreign loan word, borrowed from Italian, French, Slavic, Turkish, English and other modern languages. I am sure there must be some few exceptions but the rule stands for the vast majority of them.

Greek and Slavic phonetics do not always agree. Greek typically has an alternation of consonants and vowels, while Slavic languages, like Germanic ones, have less usage for vowels and more complicated consonant groupings. The first time I ever tried to pronounce a word from the Russian language, a language I love and I am still trying to practice, my tongue twisted to an impossible corner: Zdrasvuitse!...and that was just the "Hello!".

It becomes apparent that Tshelnik is most definitely not a Greek word and it does not sound as one nor does it have its own etymology from Greek. Once Greeks took it as a loanword, they tried to Hellenize it by altering its Slavic phonetics to the more agreeable τζελνίκος/tzelnikos and later to tselingas/τσέλιγκας but its Slavic origin is unmistakable.

Why then, is N.G.L.Hammond, an eminent Cambridge University Historian of ancient Macedonia, who has lived himself in Greece, telling us that the ancient Macedonians were using the word "tselniku" in their language?

We repeat what we read in professor Donski:

"...it is very interesting to note that many of the authentic ancient Macedonian words, according to their etymology and pronunciation, have a striking resemblance to the appropriate words used in the modern Macedonian language (and other so called "Slav"[sic] languages).
For instance, the word "tshelniku" which translated in English means foremost is a very interesting case. The British historian Hammond mentioned its etymology and said that the word "tshelniku" in the ancient Macedonian language had a meaning of "leader of a group". Hammond says that this word was translated into Greek only in the 14th century as "phylarchos"."

If Hammond said this, he either did not know what he was talking about, which we know cannot be true, or ancient Macedonian had at least one Slavic word, as we said earlier. But is that possible? The Slavs came into the Balkans fifteen hundred years after the Greek speaking Macedonians, so what is happening here? Unfortunately, there is a third option. Maybe Nicholas Hammond never actually said this, and maybe, I am simply suggesting...maybe our propagandist from Skopje is shamelessly lying through his teeth here, falsifying for the unsuspecting reader the meaning of N.G.L.Hammond's original text! I am saying, just maybe...so let us cross our fingers, hoping that we are wrong! We must investigate this...we need to find out!

We read what professor Hammond wrote in his well researched book that Aleksandar Donski references in order to "prove" that the ancient Macedonians were using the obviously Slavic word tshelnik/čelnik/Челник. We are reading from:

"The Macedonian State. The Origins, Institutions and History", by Nicholas G. L. Hammond, Clarendon Paperbacks, Oxford.

Chapter I: The Land and the People.

1. The Macedonians as transhumant pastoralists.

"Macedonia is the largest and most fertile area of modern Greece"...

This is how N. Hammond starts his book. It is obvious that he does not consider the land of the Former Yugoslav Republic of "Makedonija", known in ancient times as Paeonia (and further to the north, by FYROM's capital, Skopje as Dardania), as part of the historic Macedonia. The area of Pelagonia/Πελαγονία by the modern city of Monastir/Bitola/Битола with its adjacent ancient Heracleia Lyncestis/Ηράκλεια Λυγκιστίς is the exception. At the end of page one of his first chapter, N.G.L.Hammond tells us that:

"Conditions in Turkish times were probably very similar to those which obtained before the Macedonian State expanded in the reigns of Philip and Alexander (359-0323). Since flood control was unknown...", and " ...the floods had their value not only in enriching the pastures, but also in floating rafts of timber-logs to the sea. The raising of sheep was all-important. For milk was provided by the ewes for the making of yogurt, cheese and curds; meet came in the for of the young rams for feasting at Easter; and wool was used by the women to make homespun clothing, blankets, and rugs."

Did he say Easter? Did we miss something? Is Hammond here suggesting that the ancient Macedonians whom we thought to be believers in Apollo, Zeus, Dionyssos and Heracles, among others, celebrated Easter? Were the Macedonians Christians several centuries before the appearance of Christ? Obviously not...Hammond knew his Macedonia, having lived, extensively traveled and walked all over in it for years, before, during and after WWII. What Nicholas Hammond is doing here is making comparisons between what he calls "conditions in Turkish times" and the similarity of life in Macedonia "before the Macedonian State expanded in the reigns of Philip and Alexander". In his narrative, Nicholas Hammond switches back and forth between ancient times and recently modern times in order to stress the similarities, so that we can understand through modern comparisons how Macedonia was in ancient times and how it developed.

"Great herds of sheep (Samarina, for instance, had 80,000 head of sheep in 1850 and 40,000 in the 1930s) were maintained only by practicing transhumance, that is by transferring the flocks to and fro, from the low-lying winter pastures to the alpine pastures of the six summer months. Until recently, when special trucks came into use, the men led the sheep on the long march..."

By now it has become very obvious to the reader what is that N.G.L.Hammond is trying to achieve, through this back and forth switching from ancient to modern and pre-modern times. We allow him to lead us through, and to continue his narrative. We go now to sub-chapter 2. "Settlement of the plains":

"We consider next the nature of the society over which Perdiccas I obtained the rule. Among transhumant pastoralists the sense of family and the sense of community are both exceptionally strong. Man, woman, and child share the work, live together in very simple conditions, and migrate together twice annually. They depend daily on one another. They depend daily on one another. The man is head of the family, as shepherd, hunter, and warrior; the woman is under his authority, but she is more respected and more independent than in Greek peasant society. The head of the family and other senior members arrange marriages for the daughters, who are married off in order of seniority, and only after they do the sons begin to marry in order of seniority. The sense of community is inherent in the pastoral group (called a parea, meaning "company", by the Greek speaking pastoral Sarakatsani)."

Parea is a modern Greek word. Though it is derived from para/παρά for near, it is not attested in ancient Greek. This should give us a hint, and the second hint is the Sarakatsani! Sarakatsani/Σαρακατσάνοι are of course not an ancient Greek tribe,

Photo from the private photo archives of the Athanasios G. Polyzos (Αθανασιος Γ. Πολυζος) family. He is standing, center, with black cape and white shirt). "Τekes" ranch, Vermion Mountain, upper Macedonia, Summer 1970.

they are modern Greek transhumant pastoralists, who, like the gauchos or Argentina or the cowboys of the American west are now in the verge of extinction as a group, most of them having moved into urban centers. While most of them live by the Pindus range, they are also to be found in all the south Balkan countries, Albania, FYROM and Bulgaria, besides central and Northern Greece. But let us follow Nicholas Hammond as he unfolds his narrative, using modern examples to show how the ancient Macedonians may have developed from a pastoral mountainous group, a mountainous tribe into an organized state entity, different from the typical Greek city-state. We are still in the same paragraph, continuing where we left off, N.G.L.Hammond is still talking about the modern Greek Sarakatsanoi and their life cycle:

"The group owns sheep, pastures, timber, and land in common. The group coheres for generation after generation, and in many cases its members marry only among themselves. They constitute a single tribe. They migrate annually to the same pastures, winter and summer, and they know no other way of life. They are united in defending their sheep against all dangers. They feel themselves to be totally distinct from the settled agricultural population. Yet they have to be flexible in dealing with it, because they have to hire winter pastures and obtain goodwill.
The system of authority in family, group, and tribe is patriarchal. The men take power when they qualify as shepherds hunters, and warriors, and they elect from amongst themselves a head man called a tshelniku, a term translated by Cantacuzenus in 1334 as phylarchos, "ruler of a tribe". For a tribe and a pastoral group were often the same thing. The tshelniku, or "the chief shepherd", as he is also called, has very wide powers. He deals with monetary matters, sells marketable produce, and controls the cutting of timber on the communally owned land. We see in this system the seed of the constitutional; monarchy with its very wide powers, which was to be the mark of the Macedonian State."

We are in the middle of page 6 of his book, and N.G.L.Hammond continues for another page of explaining us how the Sarakatsani and the Vlachs develop and become slowly urbanized etc, until towards the end of page 7, he tells us:

"Returning to ancient times, we may see the Macedones and Magnetes of Hesiod's poem...etc"
In other words, what Nicholas Hammond was doing all this time, was, as we stated earlier, simply giving his reader examples from modern and pre-modern life as he saw it and experienced it and as was described to him, of how life was for the Macedonian highlands and the pastoralist populations during the Ottoman years and the years before WWI and up to WWII. He narrated this to show the similarities between the life of the Sarakatsanoi and the Vlachs of mountainous Macedonia and the ancient Macedonians. When professor Hammond is speaking of men who "elect from amongst themselves a head man called a tshelniku, a term translated by Cantacuzenus in 1334 as phylarchos, "ruler of a tribe". For a tribe and a pastoral group were often the same thing. The tshelniku, or "the chief shepherd", as he is also called, has very wide powers.", he is NOT talking about the ancient Macedonians! He is very obviously speaking of the modern Sarakatsanoi!

Let us now go back to what professor Aleksandar Donski was telling us:
"The British historian Hammond mentioned its etymology and said that the word "tshelniku" in the ancient Macedonian language had a meaning of "leader of a group"..."

Pseudes/ψευδής is a Greek word, an adjective, which means "false", "fake", ""lying, "fraudulent". It is directly derived from the noun pseudos/ψεύδος which means "a lie". Professor Aleksandar Donski has just given a new meaning to the term "pseudo-macedonian" by raising it to the second power!

This is plainly embarrassing! On the other hand, the choices we all make are personal: if you do not want to be embarrassed when you are caught lying, then avoid lying or at the very least avoid publishing your lies; especially when you pretend to be teaching the youth of your country about their alleged ethnic roots and what and who they truly are...and then you openly deceive them with false stories and fake history! As Lincoln said, you can only deceive most of the people some of the time...the truth eventually comes out!

Since it has been established that there is absolutely not even the remotest possibility for an ancient Macedonian connection to the Slavic word "tselnik", and we know that it only exists as a (now fading) loan word into Modern Greek, we need to come back to the true, Slavic roots of the word Tshelnik/Челник.

Chelo/čelo/чело/čeló means forehead, in several of the Slavic languages. A curious derivative in the Russian language is the Russian word for petition: Человбитная/chelobitnaia. When, by the 16th century, the ruler of Russia had started to be called a Czar, any petition to his authority necessarily began with "So and so (name) beats with the forehead" (the ground in front of the Czar). A close derivative is čelni/челни which in in Serbocroatian can mean "front, head, foremost, front, headmost". Lastly, another derivative of Chelo/čelo/чело/čeló, the forehead, is the word Tshelnik/Челник/Čelnik. In the Polish language, celnik came to indicate the "customs officer" or the "tax collector". In Serbia it also meant the toparch, as in the case shown in:
Codex 21,
George's charter to St. Paul Monastery
Order of the Serbian despot George (Djuradj) Brankovic
ca. 1430
St Paul's Monastery
Slavonic document,(1)
Paper(?), 26.2 x 43.8 cm
In English translation(the original can be seen here:
http://www.rodoslovlje.com/medieval_serbia/eng/manuscripts-gcharter.htm ):

"The despot of the Serbs, George Brankovic, permits the 'noble great eparch (Čelnik) of my realm, Radic to make a gift to the monks of St Paul's Monastery. The gift consists in the transfer of the village of Gornya Peshtsanitsa in the district of Branitchevo, which had been part of the despot's patrimonial estate and was transferred to Radic by Brankovic himself. The despot now permits the village to be given to the monks of St Paul with all its territory and rights. As long as the despot and his children live, the gift shall be inalienable, and no-one shall have the right to revoke it...."
Bibliography: Stojanovic 1890, p. 5. Novakovic 1912, pp. 531-2. For a correct reading of the seal, see Sindik 1978, p. 196
Radic, who is mentioned in the codex above has passed into history as "the Great Čelnik", in this case translated as the "general-in-chief", first of the Serbian Despot Stefan Lazarevic and following Lazarevic's death, he became the Great Čelnik of Lazarevic's son in law and successor, Despot George Brankovic.(ref: Eastern Christianity, By Michael Angold, Cambridge University Press, page 162).

Tshelnik/Челник/Čelnik in most South Slavic Languages (mostly in Croatia and Serbia) came to mean the "one who leads the others ahead", the "one who leads the (armed) men to the front": the "leader of the group".


An Epilogue:
Since professor Nicholas Hammond has been brought into this issue by professor Donski, and his writings have been used to prop up the ideas of the pseudo-makedonist propagandists, I think it is fair and appropriate to let N.G.L.Hammond speak for himself on what his thoughts were on the ethnic nature of the ancient Macedonians:

"What language did these Macedones speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means highlanders, and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', meaning 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos. The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded […] has a bearing on the question of Greek speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen's three sons - Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus-who were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recorded this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek speaking people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'. There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive."

N.G.L Hammond, "The Macedonian State, Origins, Institutions, and History", Oxford University Press, 1989, reprinted 2001, pages 12-13.

Macedonian names and makeDONSKI pseudo-linguistics: The case of the name Pella

Miltiades Elia Bolaris
This article appeared first in the American Chronicle on June 16, 2010

Body Balkan Illusion - phantasia archaica:
"...it is very interesting to note that many of the authentic ancient Macedonian words, according to their etymology and pronunciation, have a striking resemblance to the appropriate words used in the modern Macedonian language (and other so called "Slav"[sic] languages)."…"Pella is another ancient Macedonian word. The etymology of this word is "a stone". The corresponding word in contemporary Macedonian language is "spila", which is similar in pronunciation with the ancient Macedonian word "pella". Quote taken from: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today's' Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)" by Aleksandar Donski, celebrity propagandist-historian from FYROM.


Pella / Πελλα

In the Mythology of the Hindus, Surya, "god of the Supreme Light", has many names: he is also known as Bhanu – the light, Ravi – the fire band, Pusha – the best purifier, Divakar – the creator of the day, and also as Vivasvat, Visvakarma, Vivasvan and Bhaskar, meaning the creator of Light, so by his names alone we know that he is definitely a light-bearing and fire-bearing deity. Surya is also one of eight forms of Shiva, the supreme deity of the Hindu religion, and as such Surya also goes by the name Astamurti. He is a supreme God, carrying fire, a solar God. Surya at some time pursued, abducted and had children by the beautiful Goddess Saranyu, also known as Saraniya. Saranyu is a Goddess of dawn and clouds and from her rape by Surya she gave birth to two boys, the Asvins, the twins, also named Ashwini Kumaras, the twin youths. The twins are associated with healing and lunar light (which is a moving, running source of light, we need to note here) and whom scholars who study the Indian Mythology identify as the "Indian Dioscuri".
In the small but fertile plain of Lacedaemon in southern Peloponnese, king of the city of Lacedaemon was Tyndareus and his queen was Leda. Leda was a beautiful girl, the daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius. She had a suitor in high places: Zeus, supreme God among the Olympians, wielder of the fire-carrying thunderbolt, wanted to have her. Powerful among the powerful, Zeus was still scared witless of the jealousy of his wife Hera, the queen lady of Olympus. Brains being subservient to sexual desire, he put his mind to work to achieve his goal. He could disguise himself. Two strikes with one stone: becoming a spotless bright white Swan. Hera would not see him. And what a better way to start a conversation with the girl he was after:
"Hello Leda! What do you say you take a stroll by the royal gardens with a talking swan?". We can see why she couldn't possibly resist.



Nine months later Leda gave birth to two girls and two boys. Why two and two? Being the good queen girl that she was she had not resisted her king husband sleeping with her that very same night that Zeus as swan had paid a visit to her.
So, here was Leda, queen of Lacedaemon, giving birth to four extra large, extra jumbo sized eggs, to the gasping amazement of all in the palace: Helen/Ελενη, Clytemnestra/Κλυτεμνήστρα and the two Dioskouroi / Διόσκουροι = Dios + kouros = Zeus's boys: the twin brothers, Castor and Polydeukes.
Castor's name which means beaver in both Greek and Latin, still survives in the name of the town Castoria/Καστοριά, in Macedonia, in modern northern Greece. The neighboring Slavs call it Kostur/Костур. Τhe Dioskouroi Castor and Polydeukes ride bright white horses, and, like their horse-faced Hindu cousins the Ashvins, in the equivalent story of the Sanskrit text of the Vedes, they are also identified with a nightly sky constellation. Since one of the Dioskouroi was mortal and the other immortal, they asked their father Zeus upon their death to keep them together. Zeus made them stars, to shine light down to earth as the Δίδυμοι /Didymoi, the Gemini constellation. The equivalent Hindu Vedic story has only Saranyu, the Ashvins brothers´ mother as the one who combines the attributes and stories of mother and daughter, in the Greek myth we see Helen and Leda split into two separate personas, so that the Dioskouroi are Leda's sons but Helen's brothers.
Beautiful Helen is later abducted by the prince of Troy Alexandros – Paris, as her mother Leda and the beautiful and feminine Vedic Saranyu, goddess of dawn light and clouds had also been abducted. This of course gives us a clear hint of a millennia-old, common Indo-European abduction myth that has survived in the mythologies of the Hindus and the Greeks. Light is important in both myths. But while Saranyu is a fairly important goddess in the Sanskrit Vedes, Helen in Greek religion is but a "faded" deity. Helene's and Saranyu's names are linguistically also related and both are derived from the Indo-European root *sel- which originally indicates movement but also developed to indicate light, moving light. Here, thus, we have the hint that Helen had a more prominent divine position in her past. Helen/Ελένη/Helene is also is related to *sehaul that gives us Sol-Sun in Latin but also Ήλιος/Helios - Sun and Σελήνη/Selene - moon in Greek. It is also linguistically related to the Greek Selas / Σέλας – bright light as in Βόρειον Σέλας /Boreion Selas - the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). All of them are "moving" and "sources of light" at the same time. Helen also had a sister, named Phoebe Φοιβη, the Bright-illuminating one, full of Φως / Phos / Light. Helen, the name, is most certainly also related to the mythical progenitor of the Greeks Hellen / Έλλην as well as Hellas / Ελλάς, the name Greeks use for their country. Ήλιος / Ελένη / Έλλην / Ελλάς / Σέλας / Σελήνη, and in the Latin script: Helios / Helene / Hellen / Hellas / Selas / Selene, are all related noematically, thematically and linguistically and as we have proven, through their connction to the Sanskrit Vedic myths, they are VERY OLD names indeed.
As a twist to all this, and to tie things together even more closely, let us remember who made love to Helen's mother, Leda: it was the Zeus-as-swan, but swan in Greek is κύκνος /kyknos and kyknos means the "bright white one" and it is derived from the Indo-European root word *keuk- which means: to burn, and to create bright white light (another example from Greek being: καύσις/causis, to burn from which the word "caustic" is derived).

Helen, as we previously mentioned was a "demoted" divinity of light in Greek religion. In Sparta though and in Lacedaemon in general, she held a position comparable to the other Olympians, if nor larger. Her divine personality was also merged with a historic personality, a real heroine-queen of the pre-Dorian Achaeans that had survived in the sacred memory of the Spartans from the original, Mycenaean inhabitants of Lacedaemon. We now know her as Helen of Troy or, more properly, Helen of Sparta.
To the distress of many frustrated modern Greek and other archaeologists, though, Sparta has never produced any Mycenaean archaeological finds, and a Mycenaean Megaron, an Achaean palace was never to be found! Not for any luck of effort either: Archaeological digs had been going on for almost one hundred and fifty years, immediately after Greece became independent from the Ottomans, post 1830. Something was wrong with the identification, therefore.
As soon as we drive north of Sparta though and we come to a place that the locals used to call Spelies / Σπηλιές, the rock caves, the caverns. It was here that the archaeologist Th. Karachalios/ Θ. Καραχάλιος in 1926 excavated two small Mycenaean vaulted "tholos" tombs, and here also that in 1970 the director of the Ephorate G..Steinchauer discovered a large vaulted cut into the rock, a tomb created not by building stone in the usual corbel system of the Mycynaeans but simply though enlargement of the pre-existing cavern to the shape of a tholos-type tomb:


http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2279276


http://www.panoramio.com/photo/19639154

Begining in 1980 and working without stop until 1995, the new director of the Archaeological Ephorate Dr. Th. Spyropoulos/ Θ. Σπυρόπουλος discovered still more large tholos-type tombs, the earliest being circa 1500 BC, prehistoric remains of a fortified acropolis and, most astonishingly, remains of a Mycenaean palace, along with tablets of linear B Greek writing, which is always indicative of Royal store-rooms close by; proof enough that this was indeed the political, military, and economic center of ancient Laconia.

http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/3/eh352.jsp?obj_id=2651

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2386101

This site has now been identified by Dr. Spyropoulos as the site of ancient Lacedaemon the actual city of king Menelaos and queen Helen. The Achaean king Menelaos and his queen Helen (of Troy) never lived in what was the (much later built) city of the Dorians, Sparta. Their city was Lacedaemon / Λακεδαίμων.
Lacedaemon lent its name in historic times to the whole province around Sparta, and hence the Spartans were also known as Lacedaemonians/Λακεδαιμονιοι, and they had Λ (=L) for Λακεδαιμων/Lacedaemon inscribed on their bronze shields, not Σ (=S) for Σπάρτα/Sparta.
Most writers, even some prominent archaeologists, unfortunately, totally miss the point of the origin of the names Laconia and Lacedaemon, and they ascribe them to the "lakkos" of the Laconian landscape. If Thessaly or the plain of Serrai were called Laconia, I would agree, both being enclosed all over by mountains, but Laconia is only a partial lakkos, being enclosed on two sides only, the southern part being open to the sea. The fact that the ancients in the Roman times missed it too and came up with a false etymology is not an excuse for us, now, after the discovery of the Achaean tholos tombs, the ones cut into the pre-existing caverns. Another point missed is that Laconia the province, took its name from Laconia and Lacedaimon the city, NOT the other way around!
In "the catalogue of the ships / νεών κατάλογος / neon katalogos, Homer describes Lacedaemon very precisely. We simply need to read Homer´s text literally, not necessarily poetically:

"Οι δ΄ είχον κοίλην Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσα,".
"And they had hollow Lacedaemon the cavernous place"
Ομήρου Ιλιάς, Ραψωδία β / Homer, Iliad, II

After the discovery of the cavernous caves under the acropolis of the Mycenaean acropolis, there should be no doubt on how we must read Homer´s precise (as always!) description. The locals until very recently had even called the place σπηλιές/spelies: caverns. Λάκκος/laccos in Greek means a hollow, a pit, a tank, a cistern. Δαίμων/daemon means a deity, a god, a tutelary guardian deity of the city. This, I think, hits the nail on its head. This, to me, seems much closer to deciphering the meaning of Laconia and Lacedaemon than anything else: Λακωνία / Laconia, being "the place of the Λάκκοι / lakkoi", the caverns, and Lacedaemon, being "the city of the subterranean deity – the city of the god of the caverns":
Λάκκος + Δαίμων ~ Λακεδαίμων.

Laconia, or Lacedaimon, therefore, seems to be the right place for identifying the capital city of Hellen and Menelaus, the city of the Achaean Greeks of the second millennium BC. It was destroyed by the Dorians, who built their own capital city, Sparta, further south. Laconia, the Mycenaean city was eventually repopulated and it subsequently remained inhabited throughout archaic, classic, Hellenistic and Roman antiquity and through the Byzantine era. It only fell into oblivion a short time after the fall of Constantinople, fully 3000 years after its large cavernous Mycenaean royal tombs were dug out of its cavernous rock. In historic times Lacedaemon had remained a small municipality, a "kome/κώμη", wholly dependent on Sparta proper. But along with the name Lacedaemon, another name lingered on: Pellana / Πελλάνα, which was most probably the original name, Lacedaimon, and Laconia being the epithets, adjectives to Pellana, such as: Laconia Pellana, i.e. the cavernous Pellana and Lacedaemon of Pellana.


http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/5344152.jpg

Pellana was built on a high hill with a spring gushing water out of it. The creek formed is called Κάστωρ/Castor , the name of one of the two Dioscuri and it runs into the Eyrotas / Ευρώτας river. The water spring is called Pellanis Krene / Πελλάνις Kρηνη, Pellanian Spring. The video below will help us get a sense of the topography, having been shot from the top of the hill, looking down the cliff:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21067078931&v=app_2392950137
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21067078931&ref=ts

The geographer Pausanias who walked from Sparta to Pellana wrote in his Laconica:

"Προϊόντι δε ως επί την Πελλάναν Xαράκωμά εστιν ονομαζόμενον και μετά τουτο Πελλάνα, πόλις το αρχαίον"
"Someone walking towards Pellana, first meets the so called Charakoma and right after that Pellana, which used to be a city state in ancient times"
Παυσανίου, Eλλάδος Περιήγησις, Λακωνικά 21.2 / Pausanias, Laconica 21.2

Pellana, the name, therefore, is much older than 1200 BC, the year generally accepted as the beginning of the end for the Achaean Greeks due to the Dorian invasion into the southern Greek mainland and islands. The myth of Helen brings us even further back, to the common existence of the Indo-Europeans, probably around 4000 or 5000 BC, before the Hellenic-speaking Greeks and the Sanskrit-speaking Hindus broke off linguistically, and for sure much earlier than 2050 to 2000 BC, the year the Greeks seem to appear into what is now Greece. This, in turn, is about 2700 years BEFORE the invasion of the south Slavs into the Balkan peninsula…just to keep things in perspective!

Far from the Laconian Pellana, on the other side of the Peloponnese, to the North, overlooking the Corinthian gulf there was in ancient times the city of Deme. This was the city´s name during the classical times, but in more ancient times, the name was different.
«ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ τὰ μὲν ἀρχαιότερα Πάλεια· ἐχόντων δὲ ἔτι Ἰώνων ὄνομά οἱ μετέθεντο τὸ ἐφ´ ἡμῶν, σαφῶς δὲ οὐκ οἶδα εἴτε ἀπὸ γυναικὸς ἐπιχωρίας Δύμης εἴτε ἀπὸ Δύμαντος τοῦ Αἰγιμίου.»
http://www.nea.gr/tour/Images/Istoria/teixosdymaion.jpg
"Its more ancient name was Paleia, but the Ionians changed this to its modern name while they still occupied the city; I am uncertain whether they named it after Dyme, a native woman, or after Dymas, the son of Aegimius."
Παυσανίου, Eλλάδος Περιήγησις Αχαϊκά, 7.17.6 / Pausanias, Description of Greece, Achaica 7.17.6
Here, in other words, we have one Hellenic tribe taking over the city of another, still earlier Hellenic tribe and changing the name, as it happened in Sparta-Lacedaemon-Pellana
Walking further east, towards Corinth, Pausanias stumbled on υετ another city with a similar name.
It had been built on the heights high above the Corinthian gulf and its name was Pellene / Πελλήνη, of Achaea. The goat-shaped giant Pallas, whom Athena had killed in the Gigantomachy, was supposed to have been this city's fabled mythological founder:
"τῆς δὲ Αἰγειρατῶν ἔχονται Πελληνεῖς: πρὸς Σικυῶνος δὲ οὗτοι καὶ μοίρας τῆς Ἀργολίδος Ἀχαιῶν οἰκοῦσιν ἔσχατοι. τὸ δὲ ὄνομα ἐγένετο τῇ πόλει λόγῳ μὲν τῷ Πελληνέων ἀπὸ Πάλλαντος, τῶν Τιτάνων δὲ καὶ Πάλλαντα εἶναι λέγουσι, δόξῃ δὲ τῇ Ἀργείων ἀπὸ ἀνδρὸς Ἀργείου Πέλληνος."
" The territory of Aegeira is bounded by that of Pellene, which is the last city of Achaia in the direction of Sicyon and the Argolid. The city got its name, according to the account of the Pellenians, from Pallas, who was, they say, one of the Titans, but the Argives think it was from Pellen, an Argive."
Παυσανίου, Eλλάδος Περιήγησις Αχαϊκά, 7.26.12 / Pausanias, Description of Greece, Achaica 7. 26. 12

Pallene / Πελλήνη, being a city built on a high promontory, had two ports down by the sea, Gonoessa / Γονόεσσα and Hyperesia / Υπηρεσία and, according to Homer, it took part in the Trojan war contributing 100 ships, which means it was not an insignificant city in its heydays, during the Mycenaean era, 2050 to 1150 BC:
"..οἵ θ' Ὑπερησίην τε καὶ αἰπεινὴν Γονόεσσαν Πελλήνην τ' εἶχον ἠδ' Αἴγιον ἀμφενέμοντο Αἰγιαλόν τ' ἀνὰ πάντα καὶ ἀμφ' Ἑλίκην εὐρεῖαν,τῶν ἑκατὸν νηῶν ἦρχε κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων Ἀτρεΐδης•...
those who held Hyperesia, high Gonoessa, and Pellene; Aegium and all the coast-land round about Helice; these sent a hundred ships under the command of King Agamemnon, son of Atreus.
Ομήρου Ιλιάς Β΄ 573-577 / Homer, Iliad II 573-577

Two of its youths Asterios / Αστέριος and Amphion / Αμφίων joined Jason and participated in the Argonaut expedition. Alarich's Germanic barbarians destroyed the Achaean Pellene in 396 AD. The modern village by the old city has the original name: Pellene. A temple of Athena and an ancient theater attest the old city's strength and economy, while temples to Dolios Hermes, Apollon, Artemis, Eileithyia, Theoxeneia and Lampter Dionyssos were also known to exist.
I think it is very important to read how Pausanias describes the morphology of the city´s position:

"Πελληνεῦσι δὲ ἡ πόλις ἐστὶν ἐπὶ λόφου κατὰ ἄκραν τὴν κορυφὴν ἐς ὀξὺ ἀνεστηκότος. τοῦτο μὲν δὴ ἀπότομον καὶ δι' αὐτό ἐστιν ἀοίκητον: τῷ δὲ χθαμαλωτέρῳ πεπόλισταί σφισιν οὐ συνεχὴς ἡ πόλις, ἐς δὲ μοίρας νενεμημένη δύο ὑπὸ τῆς ἄκρας μεταξὺ ἀνεχούσης."
"The city of Pellene is on a hill which rises to a sharp peak at its summit. This part then is precipitous, and therefore uninhabited, but on the lower slopes they have built their city, which is not continuous, but divided into two parts by the peak that rises up between."
Παυσανίου, Eλλάδος Περιήγησις Αχαϊκά, 7.27.1 / Pausanias, Description of Greece, Achaica 7. 27. 1

We need to remember this description as we continue. Stephanos Byzantios / Στέφανος ὁ Βυζάντιος,a grammatician and lexicographer of the 6th cAD in his Εθνικά/Ethica whote (among other things) about Pellene:
Πελλήνη, πόλις Αχαίας λέγεται και ...σημειωτέον δε ότι Παλλήνη καί Πελλήνη ενί μόνον γράμματος διαφέρουσι.
Pellene, city of Achaia it is called and…it is also noteworthy that Pallene and Pellene in only one letter are different.
Stephanos Byzantios , Ethica / Στέφανος ὁ Βυζάντιος, Εθνικά

Stephanos Byzantios, in other words noticed, 1500 years ago, the linguistic affinity of the different cities that sounded so similar. He also tells us about Pele a city in Thessaly, in North-Central Greece:

Πέλη, πόλις Θεσσαλική διττή, μία μέν υπό Ευρυπύλω, ετέρα δέ υπό Αχιλλεί...
Pele, Thessalian city of a dual nature, one under Eyrypylos and the other under Achilleus…
Stephanos Byzantios , Ethica / Στέφανος ὁ Βυζάντιος, Εθνικά

The name of Achilles´ father, incidentally, was Πελίας/Pelias, a name derived from the name of Πέλη/Pele, the city in which he was king. Pele, Pelias and Achiles´ city was in Hellas, the small province that lent its name later on to the whole of the country that in English is called Greece: Ελλάς / Hellas, and its people Έλληνες/Hellenes, the Greeks. You cannot get more Greek than that, in other words, than Achilles, Hellas, Pelias and Pelle.
We stay in Ethn ica and immediately under the lemma Pele, we find yet another city, also in Thessaly, with an obviously similarly-connected name:

Πέλλινα, πόλις Θεσσαλίας εν τη Θθιώτιδι, κέκληται από Πελίνου του Οιχαλιέως. έστι δε καί Πελινναίον όρος Χίου…
Pellina, city of Thessaly in Phthiotis, it is called so from Pelinos son of Oechaleus. There is also Pelinnaion mountain (on the island of ) Chios…
Stephanos Byzantios , Ethica / Στέφανος ὁ Βυζάντιος, Εθνικά

A city, and not just one city, several ones, all with similar names, spread throughout Greece, and a mountain of the same or similar name. We keep note of this and we continue again our search in Greece.

We back track, once again in the Peloponnese and we read in Hesechios/Ησύχιος the 5th cAD grammatician and lexicographer from Alexandria that there was yet one more Pellene/Πελλήνη this one in central Peloponnese:

Πελλήνη. πόλις εν Άργει (Β574)
Pellene; city in Argos
Ησυχίου Λεξικόν /Hesychios Lexicon

Now crossing from the Peloponnese into central Hellas and Attica, we go past the city of Athens, over the Mount Pentelicon / Πεντελικόν, and we arrive at the Attic municipality of Pallene / Παλλήνη. While today's Pallene is a bustling western suburb of Athens, overlooking the eastern plain of Attica, the modern Athens airport and the port of Rafina, in the ancient times it was one of the most ancient demes of Attica and it belonged to the Antiochis phyle / Αντιοχίς φυλή.
Her mythical founder was Pallas, brother of Aegeus (after whom the Aegean Sea, according to Greek Mythology, takes her name). He fought against his nephew Theseus, king of Athens. This myth corroborates other myths and stories that speak of the Pallenians' refusal to become incorporated into the early confederate state of Attica under the leadership of Athens. Pallene had its own famous temple dedicated to Pallenian Athena / Παλληνίς Αθηνά, which Herodotus mentions:

"καὶ οὗτοί τε πανστρατιῇ ἤισαν ἐπὶ τοὺς κατιόντας καὶ οἱ ἀμφὶ Πεισίστρατον, ὡς ὁρμηθέντες ἐκ Μαραθῶνος ἤισαν ἐπὶ τὸ ἄστυ, ἐς τὠυτὸ συνιόντες ἀπικνέονται ἐπὶ Παλληνίδος Ἀθηναίης ἱρόν, καὶ ἀντία ἔθεντο τὰ ὅπλα."
"Meantime the army of Peisistratos, which had broken up from Marathon, meeting their adversaries near the temple of the Pallenian Athena, pitched their camp opposite them. "
Hροδότου Ιστορίαι Α.62.3 / Herodotus Ηistories 1.62.3

The pine-tree-covered hill of Levides in the middle of today's municipality is probably where the ancient Pallene had its prehistoric beginning.
Following the bird's flight north, we see the place where Macedonia spreads Chalcidike's / Χαλκιδικης three-pronged palm open and juts it into the Aegean Sea. It is now called Cassandra / Κασσανδρα, because of the city Cassandreia / Κασσανδρεια that Cassandros son of Antipatros / Κασσανδρος Αντιπατρου, one of Alexander's epigones had built on this peninsula and named it after him. It had been built on the site of yet another Greek city, Potidaea.
While that city is nothing more than a small fishermen's village now, another town that he built by the site of the ancient Greek city of Therme, (which he named after his wife Thessalonike / Θεσσαλονικη, the half sister of Alexander the Great) still stands. It is in fact the greatest port of the Balkans and the second city of Greece, after Athens.
In ancient times, this peninsula was called Pallene / Παλλήνη and a city by the same name was built on it. This city, Pallene, eventually gave its name to the whole peninsula which was previously called Phlegra / Φλέγρα, quite possibly its original Thracian name. It was named, we are told, after the mythical daughter of Sithon / Σιθων, whose Thracian name in turn became the name of the second (middle) headland of the Chalcidike peninsula: Sithonia / Σιθωνια. Pallene was married to Cleitos / Κλειτος, following a battle where two suitors Cleitos and Dryas / Δρυας fought a duel to the death fighting from chariots, like true Homeric heroes. These myths bring us unmistakably back to the Homeric era of the Achaeans, the Mycenaean Greeks.
Tracing the route of the mighty Persian navy and army of King Xerxes, in 480 BC, as it snaked its way through Asia, crossing the Hellespont, following through the coast of Thrace and as it entered Macedonia, Herodotus informs us that the army kept swelling by forced conscriptions as it passed one Greek city after another. This Pallene / Παλλήνη was one of them:

1.ἡ μέν νυν χώρη αὕτη Σιθωνίη καλέεται, ὁ δὲ ναυτικὸς στρατὸς ὁ Ξέρξεω συντάμνων ἀπ' Αμπέλου ἄκρης ἐπὶ Καναστραίην ἄκρην, τὸ δὴ πάρης τη̂ς Παλλήνης ἀνέχει μάλιστα, ἐνθευ̂τεν νέας τε καὶ στρατιὴν παρελάμβανε ἐκ Ποτιδαίης καὶ Αφύτιος καὶ Νέης πόλιος καὶ Αἰγη̂ς καὶ Θεράμβω καὶ Σκιώνης καὶ Μένδης καὶ Σάνης: αὑ̂ται γὰρ εἰσὶ αἱ τὴν νυ̂ν Παλλήνην πρότερον δὲ Φλέγρην καλεομένην νεμόμεναι.
1.This country is called Sithonia. The fleet held a straight course from the headland of Ampelus to the Canastraean headland, where Pallene runs farthest out to sea, and received ships and men from the towns of what is now Pallene but was formerly called Phlegra, namely, Potidaea, Aphytis, Neapolis, Aege, Therambus, Scione, Mende, aPallene but was formerly called Phlegra, namely, Potidaea, Aphytis, Neapolis, Aege, Therambus, Scione, Mende, and Sane.
2. παραπλέων δὲ καὶ ταύτην τὴν χώρην ἔπλεε ἐς τὸ προειρημένον, παραλαμβάνων, στρατιὴν καὶ ἐκ τω̂ν προσεχέων πολίων τῃ̂ Παλλήνῃ, ὁμουρεουσέων δὲ τῳ̂ Θερμαίῳ κόλπῳ, τῃ̂σι οὐνόματα ἐστὶ τάδε, Λίπαξος Κώμβρεια ,Αἱ̂σα, Γίγωνος, Κάμψα, Σμίλα, Αἴνεια: ἡ δε τουτέων χώρη Κροσσαίη ἔτι καὶ ἐς τόδε καλέεται."
2. "Sailing along this coast they made for the appointed place, taking troops from the towns adjacent to Pallene and near the Thermaic gulf, of which the names are Lipaxus, Combrea, Aesa, Gigonus, Campsa, Smila, Aenea; the territory of these cities is called Crossaea to this day."
3. "ἀπὸ δὲ Αἰνείης, ἐς τὴν ἐτελεύτων καταλέγων τὰς πόλις, ἀπὸ ταύτης ἤδη ἐς αὐτόν τε τὸν Θερμαι̂ον κόλπον ἐγίνετο τῳ̂ ναυτικῳ̂ στρατῳ̂ ὁ πλόος καὶ γη̂ν τὴν Μυγδονίην, πλέων δὲ ἀπίκετο ἔς τε τὴν προειρημένην Θέρμην καὶ Σίνδον τε πόλιν καὶ Χαλέστρην ἐπι τὸν Αξιον ποταμόν, ὃς οὐρίζει χώρην τὴν Μυγδονίην τε καὶ Βοττιαιίδα, τη̂ς ἔχουσι τὸ παρὰ θάλασσαν στεινὸν χωρίον πόλιες Ιχναι τε καὶ Πέλλα."
3. "From Aenea, the last-named in my list of the towns, the course of the fleet lay from the Thermaic gulf itself and the Mygdonian territory until its voyage ended at Therma, the place appointed, and the towns of Sindus and Chalestra, where it came to the river Axius; this is the boundary, between the Mygdonian and the Bottiaean territory, in which are located the towns of Ichnae and Pella on the narrow strip of coast."
Ηροδοτου Ιστοριαι Βιβλιον 7.123
Herodotus Book 7.123 - English by A. D. Godley.

And here is where we find Πέλλα/Pella.
Pella, the capital of Macedonia? Well…nor exactly…not at this early period anyway!
It becomes obvious by reading the text above, that Pella was a port city. It was actually built on the narrow strip of coast, as Herodotus tells us; the sea, 2500 years ago was not exactly where it is now. It made a large loop that included within it what became later a lake, the lake of Gianitsa, a lake that was dried up and turned over to agriculture in the 1930s, after historic Macedonia was liberated from the Ottoman Turks and joined Greece following the Balkan wars.
Looking at the ancient map, some may as well claim that Pella was named so, because its inner sea looked so much like a huge bucket of milk, a pella/πέλλα. The pronunciation and the spelling are identical, after all.

Πέλλα/pella (in Ionian: πέλλη/pelle) does in fact mean a milk pail, a bowl or bucket, according to Oxford´s Liddell and Scott Greek-English dictionary. Hesechios is in agreement:

πέλλαι. αγγεία τινά, εις ά αμέλγεται το γάλα...
pellai (in plural). buckets into which (during milking) the milk is gathered…
Ησύχιος, Λεξικόν /Hesechius Lexicon

The modern English word "pail" is most definitely connected linguistically with the ancient Greek pella, not only in form (pella ~ pail), but also in definition and it betrays their common, ancient, Indo-European affinity; Ancient Greek pella/πέλλα and Middle English payle (probably from the Latin "palea"): too similar to be a mere coincidence.
Many people have assumed (thought without any substantiation whatsoever) that the original city was probably built next to some huge rock formation by the sea, and it was named so since πέλλα/pella also means stone in Greek.
On an amusing note, our favorite punching bag of a Skopian pseudo-"historian", Aleksandar Donski, is also a supporter of this theory. He actually tells us that:
"Pella" is another ancient Macedonian word. The etymology of this word is "a stone"…the only think the dear professor conveniently forgot to tell us is in what language "pella" means stone!
This is not a problem though, because back in the 5th cAD Hesychios had already solved Aleksandar Donski´s memory problem for us in his Lexicon / Λεξικόν:
πέλλα. λίθος : pella. stone
It is in the Greek language, in fact, that "pella" means "stone", after all, not in Turkish, Albanian, Bulgarian or Donski´s own Slavomakedonski.
"The corresponding word in contemporary Macedonian language is "spila", which is similar in pronunciation with the ancient Macedonian word "pella".", continues professor Donski from FYROM. But "spila" as a rock is not a Slavonic word. The Serbs and the Bulgarians, the two languages that Slavomacedonian is most closely related to, do not have it. Neither does Russian, Polish Slovak, Czeck or any other Slavonic tongue.
Here is the Slavonic word for stone, in the Slavic dialect commonly spoken in FYROM:
Камен / kamen : stone
There is also: Карпа/ karpa / rock, and we even find also words like: Рок / Rock, a suspiciously English-sounding loan-word, into Slavomakedonski, if you asked me, despite its Cyrillic spelling (Рок) but "spila"? There is a word in Russian, spelled and pronounced spila, but it means a split-off piece of wood or stone, and it is a cognate of the English word for "split", not related to"pella" as "stone" per se.
The only Slavonic spila I was able to locate was Vela Spila in the Dalmatian island of Korčula in Croatia. Korčula was a Greek colony named Κέρκυρα/Kerkyra in ancient times. It had the same name as the Greek island which Greeks call Κέρκυρα/Kerkyra but others call Corfu. Korčula/ Κέρκυρα /Kerkyra was not the only Greek colony on the Dalmatian coast. The Croatian city of Hvar on the Dalmatian island Hvar is the ancient Greek Pharos/Φάρος, meaning the city of lighthouse, for example. It is obvious that the Slavonic speaking Croatians arriving around the 7th cAD in these Byzantine lands had to paraphrase the Greek toponyms they found to make them conform to their own pronunciation, as it naturally happens in such cases. Κέρκυρα /Kerkyra became Korčula, Pharos/Φάρος became Hvar and Σπηλιά/Spilia a Greek word for "cave" being a famous place name, was absorbed into Croatian and it remained as Vela Spila, meaning the Big Cave. Spilia lost its "i" (pronounced as "j"- or "y" in Byzantine and modern Greek when it is before another vowel) and Spilia/Spilja became Spila. This is easily proven once we visit yet another famous Croatian cave: Drakonjina špilja, on the island of Brač, the island which Greeks called Βραττία/Brattia, also in Croatia. The original Greek name of that cave was Δρακοντινιά σπηλιά/Drakontinia spilia, meaning the Dragons´ cave, that passed on in Croatian as Drakonjina špilja. The Croatians kept the Greek toponym but they did something else: they invented a new, Slavonic name for it: Zmajeva pečina which means exactly what the Greek name means too: Dragons' cave.



It is also interesting that while both caves kept the their Greek name, in one of them, the Vela spila, "spila" is a slight paraphrase of the Greek σπηλιά/spilia, while in the other one, Drakonjina špilja is called spilja (the difference is in the "j"), which corresponds almost exactly with the Greek pronunciation of σπηλιά/spilia, cave,
The common Slavonic word for a cave is:
Pečina / Пећина/Petsina in Serbocroatian,
Пещера/petshera, in Bulgarian, in Russian and in Ukranian and it is:
Пештера/petchtera in FYROM´s Slavomacedonian. Very close to the other Slavic words for a cave but no connection with the Greek spilia/σπηλιά i.e. a cavernous rock, whatsoever, except only as a Greek loanword. But we do not expect Aleksandar Donski and his fellow Skopian propagandists to admit (horror of horrors!) any cultural influence from the hated Grci…After all, the pseudomakedonists consider it a slander to even admit their Slavic ethnic and linguistic roots. Being Slavic is too little for them…they want to be Aleksandar Veliki´s grandchildren. The last I checked, Cassandros, the man who married Alexander´s sister, made sure that no grandchildren of Alexandros III survive to the 21st century, killing both Heracles and Alexandros IV, both of Alexander the Great´s known children.
Leaving them aside, we return to Pella, the city, which some think that it took its name from some pre-existing rocky outcrop by the sea. This etymology unfortunately has no documented or scientific connection to factual reality.
Stones do not disappear just like that over two or three millennia, unless humans intervene to cut them down. No sign of such activity exists anywhere in the area. The archaeologists would have noted it. There is a hill in Pella, by the modern village of Nea Pella, and we know that the Royal palace was built on a small island called Φαkός / Phakos, between the sea and the marsh, but it is obvious to anyone that has visited the site that no huge or imposing rock formation exists anywhere in the surrounding territory imposing enough to inspire the founders of the city to named it "Stone"~Pella~Πέλλα. The video below is quite revealing and its air views offer us a good sense of the topography of Pella:



"Αρχαία Πέλλα - Ancient Pella birth land of Alexander the Great"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjqqmyuJRto

In matter of fact, not much stone is there to be found in the surrounding plains. This is true now as it was true in the ancient times, when Archelaos re-built Pella (in late 5th - early 4th c.BC). Pella is situated on an alluvial plain that was formed by the silt and sediments of two rivers, Axios and Loudias. The plain is very fertile and of course without stones. This is a land created by these modest rivers (they are not Danube or Nile), so the stones that are scattered in the plains of Macedonia are of very modest size, definitely not imposing ones, and most definitely not rocky formation. To anyone that has seen the excavated walls of ancient Pella, it is apparent that the mighty walls protecting Pella, were actually built of brick, 50X50cm baked brick. Stone was only sparingly used and then only for the foundation. This is what the archeologist's spade has shown us. Therefore, the "stone" connection, if true, which I think it is, must definitely be hiding elsewhere.
Most importantly, and if we want to be serious about this, we must ask ourselves: what about the many other Pella - related toponyms scattered all over Greece? How do we account for the numerous other cities throughout the Hellenic world that have very similar names, names whose explanation post factum by the name of the mythical founder can hardly start explaining their meaning.
We met Pellana/ Πελλανα and Pellene/ Πελλήνη in the Peloponnese and Pelle/ Πέλη and Pellina/ Πέλλινα, in Thessaly, Pallene in Attica and Macedonia, among others, as well as Pellinnaion/ Πελινναίον a mountain in Chios.
Then there is also a Venetian castle on a 216 meter high rock cliff (let us remember the cliff) overlooking the city of Ναύπλιον/ Nauplion called Palamedion/Παλαμηδιον. Palamedion is a Venetian castle built over successive ancient embattlements. Palamedion means that this is a place that belongs to or has taken the name of Palamedes. The name Palamedes in turn is a combination of Palla + the ending -medes (as in Diomedes/Διομηδης) that gives us Palamedes/ Παλαμηδης, the name of the fabled builder of Palamedion. Medos/Μήδος, means wisdom, administration, care for.



Palamedes means the councilman, the ruler and administrator of "Pala". We will find out what palla means, as move along. What seems apparent though is that in this case at least, the myth is properly hitting the nail: The ancient embattlements have indeed taken the name of a person, or rather an official: Palamedes.
In the Ionian Sea there is the similarly sounding Pale/Πάλη in the westernmost peninsula of the Ionian island of Cephalonia/Κεφαληνία, whose name has survived to modern times as Palike~Paliki / Παλίκη as the locals call it. Some modern researchers, after reading Strabo and Homer afresh, more clearly and literally, started finding the inconsistencies in accepting the identification of modern day Ithaca as Homer;s Ithaca, the island of Odysseus – Ulysses.
To begin with, Homer never mentions Cephalonia as an island, but he tells us that Odysseus ruled over the Cephalenians:
Αυτάρ 'Οδυσσεύς ήγε Κεφαλλήνας μεγαθύμους,
οί ρ' 'Ιθάκην είχον καί Νήριτον εινοσίφυλλον
καί Κροκύλει' ενέμοντο καί Αιγίλιπα τρηχείαν,
οί τε Ζάκυνθον έχον ηδ' οί Σάμον αμφενέμοντο,
οί τ' ήπειρον έχον ηδ' αντιπέραι' ενέμοντο:
τών μέν 'Οδυσσεύς ήρχε Διί μήτιν ατάλαντος…
Ulysses led the brave Cephallenians,
who held Ithaca, Neritum with its forests,
Crocylea, rugged Aegilips,
Samos and Zacynthus,
with the mainland also that was over against the islands.
These were led by Ulysses, peer of Zeus in counsel…
Ομήρου Ιλιάς Β 627-632 – Homer, Iliad B:627-632
Everyone that is ruled by Odysseus is a Cephalenian, but no island was then called Cephalonia. As Strabo tells it:
Κεφαλλῆνας δὲ νῦν μὲν τοὺς ἐκ τῆς νήσου τῆς Κεφαλληνίας λέγουσιν, Ὅμηρος δὲ πάντας τοὺς ὑπὸ τῷ Ὀδυσσεῖ,
But though at the present time only the people of the island Cephallenia are called Cephallenians, Homer so calls all who were subject to Odysseus
Στράβωνος Γεωγραφικά 10.2.10 /Strabo, Geography 10.2.10

There is in fact a town called Σάμη/Same on modern Cephalοnia and we can identify Cephalonia as the Homeric Σάμη/ Same. Zakynthos has kept her name over millennia, and we know it is the same as Homeric Ζάκυνθος/Zacynthos. What then of Δουλίχιον/ Doulichion and Ιθάκη/ Ithaca, the other two main islands of the Cephalenians?
«ὅσσοι γὰρ νήσοισιν ἐπικρατέουσιν ἄριστοι,
Δουλιχίῳ τε Σάμῃ τε καὶ ὑλήεντι Ζακύνθῳ,
ἠδ᾿ ὅσσοι κραναὴν Ἰθάκην κάτα κοιρανέουσιν,»
All the princes who rule the islands,
Dulichium, Same, and wooded Zacynthus,
and those here in rocky Ithaca,
Οδύσσεια Α-.245/Odyssey A.245
The identification of Homer;s Ithaca has been a puzzle since classic antiquity, and Strabo mentions several of the predominant theories of his time on the issue, and for a good reason…the island we now call Ithaca does not match what we hear from Homer, or at the very least, it leaves a lot of room to wild interpretation. Was it closest or farthest from the land (ambiguous) in relation to the other islands? Was it towards the south (impossible) or most northern of the other islands (most probably)? Then there is another puzzle. We hear of an isthmus and a tiny long island between Ithaca and Seme/Cephalonia which simply does not exist between today´s Ithaca and Cephalonia. Both are islands well defined, and at distance than no Greek would ever call an isthmus/ἰσθμὸν, i.e. a narrow water way separating two land masses. Let us read what Starbo the Roman-era Greeek Geographer describes this isthmus:

"30 [15] κεῖται δ᾽ ἡ Κεφαλληνία κατὰ Ἀκαρνανίαν, διέχουσα τοῦ Λευκάτα περὶ πεντήκοντα （οἱ δὲ τετταράκοντά φασι） σταδίους, τοῦ δὲ Χελωνάτα περὶ ὀγδοήκοντα. αὐτὴ δ᾽ ἐστὶν ὡς τριακοσίων τὴν περίμετρον, μακρὰ δ᾽ ἀνήκουσα πρὸς εὖρον, ὀρεινή: μέγιστον δ᾽ ὄρος ἐν αὐτῇ ἐν ᾧ τὸ Διὸς Αἰνησίου ἱερόν: καθ᾽ ὃ δὲ στενωτάτη ἐστὶν ἡ νῆσος, ταπεινὸν ἰσθμὸν ποιεῖ ὥσθ᾽ ὑπερκλύζεσθαι πολλάκις ἐκ θαλάττης εἰς θάλατταν: πλησίον δ᾽ εἰσὶ τῶν στενῶν ἐν κόλπῳ Κράνιοί τε καὶ Παλεῖς. [16]
μεταξὺ δὲ τῆς Ἰθάκης καὶ τῆς Κεφαλληνίας ἡ Ἀστερία νησίον （Ἀστερὶς δ᾽ ὑπὸ τοῦ ποιητοῦ λέγεται） ἣν ὁ μὲν Σκήψιος μὴ μένειν τοιαύτην οἵαν φησὶν ὁ ποιητής" λιμένες δ᾽ ἔνι ναύλοχοι αὐτῇ
ἀμφίδυμοι.
Cephallenia lies opposite Acarnania, at a distance of about fifty stadia from Leucatas (some say forty), and about one hundred and eighty from Chelonatas. It has a perimeter of about three hundred70 stadia, is long, extending towards Eurus, 71 and is mountainous. The largest mountain upon it is Aenus, whereon is the temple of Zeus Aenesius; and where the island is narrowest it forms an isthmus so low-lying that it is often submerged from sea to sea. Both Paleis and Crannii are on the gulf near the narrows. [16]
Between Ithaca and Cephallenia is the small island Asteria (the poet calls it Asteris), which the Scepsian72 says no longer remains such as the poet describes it,"but in it are harbors safe for anchorage with entrances on either side;
"73Apollodorus, however, says that it still remains so to this day, and mentions a town Alalcomenae upon it, situated on the isthmus itself.
Στράβωνος Γεωγραφικά 10 /Strabo, Geography 10
It is obvious for anyone looking at the map today that the geography simply does not match the textual descriptions. His numbers, of the distances between the islands are all astonishingly correct, measured by modern instruments, so we know that he is a reliable geographer, but then, something in his description is missing: where is Strabo´s isthmus?
Modern researchers, as- solicited the help of geologists, soil engineers and seismologists and they have conclusively established that an isthmus existed indeed between the peninsula Paliki and the rest of Cephalonia/Same, making it a separate island in antiquity. If someone looks at the geological map of the isthmus, the existence of a long/ narrow islet, can be construed on the map too.


(The Geological Society, "Geoscientist" 18.9 September 2008)

And of course the existence of a navigable channel, an isthmus with "harbors safe for anchorage with entrances on either side" now makes perfect sense! This channel was filled by seismic activity (it lies exactly where the European and African plates meet and collide, causing earthquakes of tremendous force) making Peliki now part of Cephalonia, a peninsula, not an island.


http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/webdav/site/GSL/shared/images/geoscientist/Geoscientist%2018.9/Underhill/Fig03Resized.JPG

Peliki, (with an ancient city named Πάλη/Pale on it) being in fact a separate island, the question naturally arises: Which island was it? Not Same and not Zacynthos, for sure, so it must be either Doulichion or Ithaca. Knowing that Peliki is the only place in these island where a Mycenaean Anactoron, a palace, has been located it is easy to identify Peliki as Ithaca. Incidentally, despite years of archaeological searches, no Mycenaean buildings have been unearthed in Ithaca, making it probable that this island is Doulicheion, that was renamed at some point when Ithaca´s original inhabitants resettled on it. Ithaca makes perfect sense as being Homer's Doulichion. We only need to look at a map of today's Ithaca and the name Doulichion/Δουλίχιον makes perfect sense: What we call today Ithaki is indeed "double-tongued" shaped.



The ancient Πάλη/ Pale is where Homer's Ιθάκη /Ithaca and Odysseus's palace was located. By 131/132 AD, Πάλη/Pale was the westernmost of Cephalonia's four major cities part of its Τετράπολις/ tetrapolis (the "four cities" union). On that year it proclaimed itself to be "free and autonomous" city, and it so declared on a dedication to Hadrian found on an inscription stela in Athens's Olympeion temple:

Αὐτοκράτορα Καίσαρα Τραια-
νὸν Ἁδριανὸν Σεβαστὸν
Ὀλύμπιον folium
ἡ πόλις Παλέων τῆς Κεφαλη-
νίας · ἐλευθέρα · καὶ · αὐτόνο-
μος διὰ ἐπιμελητοῦ Ἀρνου-
φίλου · τοῦ · Ἀγαθοκλέους υἱοῦ.
To Emperor Caesar Traia-
Nos Andrianos Sebastos
Olympian (folium)
the city of the Paleans of Cephale-
nia free and autono-
mous, through its curator Arno-
philos son of Agathocles.
Regions : Attica (IG I-III) : Attica
IG II² 3301

Across from Pale, Palike and the Ionian Islands is Southern Italy and Sicily, Μεγάλη Ελλάς / Megale Hellas or Magna Graecia of the ancients. There, on the island of Sicily we find the Greek city of Παλική / Palike, as mentioned in Stephanos Byzantios in his Εθνικά/Ethnica¨
Παλική, πόλις Σικελίας...
Palike, city of Sicily…


http://www.regione.sicilia.it/beniculturali/dirbenicult/database/page_musei/pagina_musei_eng.asp?ID=86&IdSito=37

Crossing back the Ionian sea, bypassing once again of Ithaca and Cephalonia we reach the Central Hellas mainland and Aetolia. It is there that we find the Aitolian city of Πυλήνη/Pylene:
καὶ Ὤλενον δὲ καὶ Πυλήνην ὀνομάζει πόλεις ὁ ποιητὴς Αἰτωλικάς,
and the poet also mentions Olenos and Pylene as Aetolian cities
Στράβων, Γεωγραφικά 10.2 / Strabo, Geography 10.2
Leaving Homer´s and Odysseus´ Achaean Pale on the Paliki peninsula, the Palike of Sicily and the Pylene of Aetolia, we return once again back to Pella, the capital of Macedonia. Although we cannot find a rock formation in Pella, we cannot also completely dismiss or ignore the pella~rock connection. After all, as we mentioned earlier with the mountain on the island of Chios, Pella – connected toponyms are not to be found only on cities but also on mountains. We have the Chaonian city of Πήλιον/Pelion next to the Greater Prespa lake, now in Albania, but we also have the Thessalian mountain by the same name, Πήλιον/Pelion, in Magnesia, the mountain of the mythical Centaurs. The rock-mountain-cliff-city connection is therefore unmistakable. We need to investigate it further.
We know the pella as stone connection: Proto-Indo-European *p[h]els-l*p[h]ols-l*p[h]ls- 'stone': Greek Proto-Indo-European *p[h]els-l*p[h]ols-l*p[h]ls- 'stone': Greek πέλλα (< * πέλσα) 'stone'; Sanskrit pasana-h, pasya (< *pars-) 'stone'; Pashto parsa 'stone'; Old High German felis 'stone'; Old Irish ail 'rock'. Pokorny 1959:807 *peli-s-, *pel-s- 'rock';
In Greek we start with the words pella /πέλλα (*pelsa /*πέλσα) = stone and then we also have paipale / παιπάλη meaning dust (ground rock, in Latin: pollen, Spanish polvo, etc), from which paipale / παιπάλη comes the modern Greek word paspalizo / πασπαλίζω meaning to spread a dust-like substance, such as flour or sugar etc. Paipalon / παίπαλον means pebble and the English pebble is in fact related to it. Paipala /παίπαλα indicated "a place full of rocks and pebbles". Dyspaipalos /δυσπαίπαλος was a place or a road too inconvenient to walk on due to its many rocks. Polypaipalon /πολυπαίπαλον was something of many rocks. Then there is also the noematically related Pelos /πηλός (Doric: Palos /παλός) which means clay (made of finely ground "stone particles), and finally paipaluris / παιπαλουρίς meaning rocky and mountainous.
We find this same stone connection existing in other Indo-european languages too. The Latins call stone lapis, but they also have pila from which the word pilar, meaning column is derived. Pilar is of course explained as "a pile of one stone on top of another stone" and then we find also pilates or pellates: a type or species or a genus of stone. The round sphere with which children played in the streets of Rome was called pila and in Athens palla. Today we call it balla, or ball and though it may be of leather sphere with air inside it, it still reminds us of a round rock. So, pella is established as definitely being a stone "something"...but what?
Let us go to our Indo-European fountain of words, and search for a roots there, among the scattered linguistic paipala of our origins:
We find the root *pelh1, which means to fill, *pe'l(h1u)ewis which means container and that can easily explain the pella of the milk bucket and the English pail and the πέλωρ/pelor and πελώριος/pelorios meaning the huge one. I do not think that we are quite there, though.
We find *pel(i)s- (Watkins 1985:49 *pelis- and Walde 1927-1932.11:66-67 *pel(e)s-; (also *pels-) 'rock, cliff) which means cliff, stone, rock. Pella therefore, when seen as a toponym, is not simply just "rock" or "stone" but it also incorporates the original Indo-European meaning of "cliff" woven into it. Pella as cliff also appears in Celtic Irish "all" (from: *plso), in Old Norse Germanic "fjall" (from: *pelso), in Afgani Pashto "parsa" (from: *pelsiha) and in Old Iranian "ail" (from *pelis). In Greek again, paipaloeis /παιπαλόεις - paipaloessa /παιπαλόεσσα means an abrupt and high cliff of a sharply dropped rock face, of a sharp precipice, usually speaking of Islands. We already saw mountains in Greece named with Pella-sounding names: Pelion in Magnesia and Pellinaion in the Aegean island of Chios. Let us remember that all the pella-related toponyms we have encountered are sitting on a high place, Palamedion overlooking Nauplion, Lacedaemon Pellana on the hill with the fountain spring below it, Pallene of Achaia with its two port towns down below overlooking the Corinthian gulf, and the Attic Pallene looking down from mount Pentelicon towards the fields of eastern Attica and the new Airport of Eleutherios Venizelos. Pele of Ithaca, is also high up the hills and Pella in Macedonia while on the prairie next to the shore, still has its little island-hill, Φακός/Phakos, where the palace was built.
We search further and we find out that there is a much more narrowly defined Indo-European derivative of *pel(i)s- : *pelhx- which meant : "fort, fortified place". Obviously, you had to build a town where it was most inaccessible to your enemies in times of attack, preferably on a high ground, on a cliff, on a hill of some sorts. The Lithuanian - Baltic word pilis meaning fort or castle is on the same page. The Sanskrit pura for "town" and also, most interestingly, for "capital" is also linguistically derived from *pelhx.
Cliffs is exactly where we find all of the Homeric era palaces from Odysseus´ Pelle to Menelaus´ Pellana. Incidentally, the word "palace" comes from the original fortified hill in Rome the Palatine hill, called Palatium: one more instance of a Pella, and this one in the heart of Rome! In fact, I am very suspicious of goddess Athena´s most famous adjective: Palas Athena. Could it be a reminiscence of the Achaean past of Athens, where the Mycenaean Megaron, the royal palace was on top of the Acropolis, close to where the later built Parthenon stands now, and the Goddess that gave her name to Athens the city may have simply been called Athena protector of the royal citadel, Athena of the pella, Παλλάς Αθήνη / Pallas Athena? Here I am only speculating, but informed and formative doubt is what gets a discussion going. Others, more knowledgeable, need to look into this.
It makes perfect sense that pella, being a stone, a rock or a cliff, in an age of insecurity, like the bronze age, quickly acquired the more specific meaning of a fortified settlement up on a high ground. This only can account for the multiple Pellas scattered around the Greek landscape, from Macedonia to the Peloponnese and the western islands too.
Taking the idea of the fortified royal Mycenaean settlement one historical political and linguistic step further, the Greeks in their cultural and social development eventually devised a new word to describe their new sociopolitical unit, the city state that came out of the archaic era of Greece. They called it: Polis/Πολις, a later word clearly derived from "pella", the word describing the Achaean royal citadel on the cliff.
From the Archeology of Homeric Greece we have learned that the palace, the Achaean Fανάκτορον / Wanaktoron, home of the Fάναξ / Wanax was in the cyclopean wall-protected citadel which was in turn always on a difficult to assail high ground. The palace is always on the highest point of the settlement, overlooking the city, and well protected. Anyone that has visited the citadel of Mycenae on the magnificent cliff overseeing the plains of Argolis with an eagle's nest view has experienced this.



So has anyone that has visited Tyrins, Palamedion, or the Acropolis of Athens for that matter.
It would be easy to assume that the Homeric epic-inspired Macedonians once again did not surprise us by choosing a most Homeric name for their new capital: Pella / Πέλλα. This fits with everything we know of the rough and conservative and royalist-minded Macedonians. The reality, fortunately, is much more complicated than that. We already mentioned Pella/Πέλλα the city next to Ichnai/Ίχναι both being seashore cities close to Axios river through which Xerxes´ army passed on their way to southern Greece. The Greek archaeologist Maria Lilimpaki-Akamati, on a book about Pella published by the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Archaeological receipts fund, reminds us, speaking of Pella:
"Pella´s earliest years…in 400 BC or thereabouts the royal capital was moved from Aegae to the shorte of the Thermaikos gulf, above or near an older, existing settlement."
Πέλλα και η περιοχή της /Pella and its environs, Athens 2004
It has been strongly suggested ("An inventory of archaic and classical poleis", Mogens Herman Hansen, Thomas Heine Nielsen) that Ichnai/Ίχναι was originally a Paionian city, which early on received an influx of Greek colonists and later absorbed and completely Hellenized by the Macedonians. This makes perfect sense historically and geographically for the time before the 5th cBC. After all, yet another unquestionably Paionian city of the same name existed by the lake of Achinos, in what is now the province of Serres/Σέρρες in Macedonia, Greece. That city was eventually destroyed during an attack of the Bulgarians in the middle Byzantine era, and the city was re-established up on the hills, away from the lake. Its old Paionian name survives today in the name of Nea Zichna/Νέα Ζίχνη close to Serres. The Paionian Ichna/Ίχνα is a cognate of the Greek word ichnos/ ίχνος, meaning the step-ground, a stepping place; a very appropriate name for a city on the solid ground between the sea (or the lake as in Serres´ Ichna) and the marsh. The capital of the Paionians on the Amphaxitis, Άμυδών/Amydon, a city that was at some point destroyed, most probably by the Macedonians, was not far away from either Pella or Ichna.:
Αὐτὰρ Πυραίχμης ἄγε Παίονας ἀγκυλοτόξους
τηλόθεν ἐξ Ἀμυδῶνος ἀπ' Ἀξιοῦ εὐρὺ ῥέοντος,
Ἀξιοῦ οὗ κάλλιστον ὕδωρ ἐπικίδναται αἶαν.
Pyraikhmes led the Paeonian archers
from distant Amydon, by the broad waters of the river
Axios, the fairest that flow upon the earth.
Ομήρου Ιλιάς B, 848-850 / Homer, Iliad 2, 848-850
Knowing that the Paionians lived in this area and that the Macedonians did not conquer the Αμφαξίτις/Amphaxitis from them until about the beginnings of the 5th cBC, it is very safe to assume that Pella was established originally as a Paionian city and that its name is indeed a Paionian-Greek isogloss. This would not be the only one, after all. Gordion, the capital of Phrygia, known from Alexander´s cutting of the Gordian knot has a counterpart in Gordynia, of Macedonia.
Γορδυνία, πόλις Μακεδονίας...
Gordynia city of Macedonia...
as Stephanos of Byzantium informs us. Gordynia was originally a Paionian city. In Thrace we have Γορδίου τείχος /Gordiou teichos (Gordios´ wall) which almost certainly was originally a Phrygian establishment, later Hellenized.
Further south there is the Greek city of Γυρτών/Gyrton in Thessaly,
Γυρτών, πόλις Θεσσαλίας...
Gyrton, city of Thessally...
also mentioned in Stephanos Byzantios´s Εθνικά/Ethnika.
Far away from the Phrygians and the Paionians, in the center of the Peloponnese, there is Γορτυνία/Gortynia of Arcadia.
Last but not least, and probably the most famous, after Gordion is Γόρτυς/Gortys, or Γορτυν/Gortyn a city in Crete, the largest city on that south Aegean Island during the Roman times. Stephanos Byzantios very revealingly tells us that Γόρτυς/Gortys, or Γορτυν/Gortyn of Crete has also another, explainable name:

οι δέ Γόρτυναν ώς άμυναν
and others (call her) Gortyna meaning: defense.

Considering the close linguistic affinity attested in funerary and numismatic epigraphy as well as surviving toponyms between the Paionians/Παίονες, the Brygians/Βρύγες ~ Phrygians/Φρύγες and the Greeks, we can be certain that all three of whom at some point, were one ethnic and linguistic group. Between 3200, when they first separated from other Indo-European tribes and are first attested in the middle and lower Balkans, and about 2100 to 2000 or so BC they forced their way into Macedonia, Paionia and lower Greece, and this is when they separate linguistically developing dialectical differences that made them incomprehensible to each other, but the basic language structure, the grammar and the vocabulary are still almost identical. The relation of the Phrygian to Greek is now indisputable and modern Phrygiologist linguists consider Greek and Phrygian sister languages (Claude Brixhe, Panagiotou, Vladimir Orel). As for the Paionians:
"The ancient Paionians may have been of Hellenic stock, but relatively little is known about them, partly because "no Paionian Philip ever dominated Greece, and no Paionian Alexander ever conquered the known world" (Irwin L. Merker, "The Ancient Kingdom of Paionia," Balkan Studies 6 (1965) 35).)
http://macedonia-evidence.org/documentation.html



The fact that Pella is a common word for both Paionians and Greeks makes perfect sense. After all, while there was Παιoνία/Paionia in what is now central Macedonia of Northern Greece and central FYROM, there is also Παιανία/Paiania in Attica, in the very heart of central Greece, in the province of Athens. As a final stone to this, we need to look into the name of Φακός/Phakos, the tiny hill-island on top of which the Royal palace of the Macedonians was built.
"When Aemilius Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus at the battle of Pydna, reached Pella, he encamped outside the city before entering it. There he expressed his admiration for the ideal site occupied by the city, which was encircled by a stout fortification wall. To the South of it, in the direction of the sea, was a small elevation in the land, known as the Phakos so called from its lentoid shape (phaki in greek), which was fortified by a wall. The city communicated with the Phakos by means of a bridge. According to Livy (XLIV 6, 1-2), the royal treasury was located on the Phakos."
Φακός/Phakos means indeed lentil in ancient Greek (modern Greek φακή/phaki or in plural φακές/phakes). But is this a credible etymology? Why would anyone name an island lentil, even if it is "lentil-shaped"? Lentils, the last I checked are round shaped. Why not name the round (if it was round indeed, the archaeologists can easily verify this through further excavations) island something like Στρογγύλη /Stoggyle, the round one, as in the case of Thera-Santorini, or Ασπίς/Aspis, for the round shape of the Macedonian shield, or something, anything more appropriate, this was the seatof their king, the center of their capital…why call it lentil, of all things? I cannot even understand how people cannot look beyond their nose for the obvious solution: Phakos is definitely a vey Greek sounding word, and in fact we have the exactly same word in modern Greek: φακός/phakos. It describes the item someone uses in the dark to make darkness appear as light: the electric flashlight. It is originally derived from phaos-phos, meaning light. The words photography, photosynthesis etc are all derived from phos. But Φακός/Phakos also means a lens, as in the curved glass that allows the light to go though and concentrate it in a spot. So, the light is important and possibly the spot is also important in the meaning of what we are looking for. In Ancient Greek the verb φαίνω /phaino and φαίνομαι /phainomai means "to appear". Το say something or someone is "manifest" or "appearing" you add "επι/epi" and you create the verb επιφαίνομαι/epiphainomai. The Ptolemaian kings were called: Θεοί Επιφανείς / Theoi Epiphaneis : Manifest Gods i.e. "the Gods that can be seen".

Speaking of the Ptolemies, the island of Alexandria with the lighthouse was called the Φάρος/Pharos, the illuminating one, because of the lighthouse that was built on it, and ever since the word for lighthouse in Greek is φάρος/pharos.To make things even more interesting, there is a tiny round island in the Axios Delta which has a lighthouse and it is indeed called /Φάρος/Pharos by the locals, allthough its official name is Αφροδίτη/Aphrodite.
Φακός / Phakos, the island of Pella from where the original settlement probably grew into a city, is most probably a Paionian cognate word to the Greek pharos, which meant "the place that can be seen". If someone is walking in the thick marshes, the high ground is appearing visible to them from a distance. If it was Greek, it would be φανής/phanes, or φαινόμενος/phainomenos (passive).



To me this etymology makes a lot more sense that anything to do with lentils and it only becomes possible once we accept the simple historical fact that Pella was originally a Paionian establishment, before it was taken over by the Greeks. The historical dates we need to keep in mind are that Pella as the capital of Macedonia was re-established by Archelaos about 400BC and the Macedonians took over lower Amphaxitis around 500 BC.



Before the 5th cBC there were not Hellenic speaking Macedonians in the Lower Amphaxitis, only their linguistic cousins, Homer´s Παίονες ἀγκυλότοξοι / Paiones of the curved bows ἀπ' Ἀξιοῦ εὐρὺ ῥέοντος / by the broad waters of the river Axios led by their mythical king Πυραίχμης/Pyraikhmes the one who had Πυρ/Pyr, fire in his αιχμή/aikhme, spearpoint!

PS.
Soon after its foundation as an Argaead city, as capital of Macedonia, Pella grew to quickly become a major, world class city:
«καὶ Πέλλαν, ἥπερ μεγίστη τῶν ἐν Μακεδονίαι πόλεων»
"and Pella, which is the largest of the cities in Macedonia"
Ξενοφωντος Ελληνικα 5.2.13 / Xenophon Hellenica 5.2.13

Xenophon tells us about it, not too long after Pella´s re-establishment.
In other words, Demosthenes´ infamous oratorical statement (18.68) that Philip was a mere "barbarian" who grew up "in a small and insignificant village", contained in one sentence not just one but two major (and blatantly dishonest) rhetorical and political exaggeration.


Υ.Γ.
Τελείως τυχαία, ψάχνοντας γιά ομοιότητες της λιμνοθλάλασσας της Αρχαίας Πέλλας με την λιμνοθάλασσα του Μεσσολογγίου, έπεσα πάνω στην περιγραφή των λιμνιακών κατοικιών του Μεσολογγίου:
"Στην μια άκρη της λωρίδας, λοιπόν, οι παρυφές της πόλης και στην άλλη, μέσα στην Λιμνοθάλασσα, η Τουρλίδα, με τα παράξενα αυτά σπίτια, που ονομάζονται πελάδες ή πιλάδες. Τα μικρά αυτά σπιτάκια είναι πασαλόπηκτα. Στην αρχή, στην πρώτη τους μορφή, ήταν μονόχωρα και φτιαγμένα από παλούκια, καλάμια, ψαθί, βούρλα και φύκια. Αργότερα, έγιναν ξύλινα.
Τις πελάδες χρησιμοποιούσαν οι ψαράδες σ' όλη την έκταση της Λιμνοθάλασσας, για να αποθηκεύουν τα εργαλεία και τα σύνεργά τους και να μένουν εκεί μόνοι τους τον Χειμώνα, πριν γίνουν μηχανοκίνητες οι βάρκες τους - οι γαίτες."
http://messolonghinews.blogspot.com/2008/01/blog-post_23.html
και επίσης:
http://messolonghinews.blogspot.com/2008/01/blog-post_27.html
Ίσως να είναι απλή συνωνυμία, καί μάλλον προέρχεται από το αρχαίο "πιλέω" δηλαδή "πασαλώνω", αλλά σίγουρα όλα κάπου δένουν.