Macedonian names and makeDonski pseudo-linguistics: The case of the name Zaika

Το παρόν άρθρο πρωτοεμφανίστηκε στο Αμερικανικό διαδυκτιακό περιοδικό Αμέρικαν Κρόνικλ, στις 14 Ιανουαρίου του 2010
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/136624
Mιλτιάδης Η. Μπόλαρης


Balkan Illusion - phantasia archaica:

"Zaika. This is one of the most interesting ancient Macedonian female names. It may represent a female form of the present day Macedonian "zajak" (rabbit). In any case, there are numerous examples of names taken from names of animals. The names Zaia (Zaja) and Zaiko (Zajko) are present in todays' Macedonian onomasticon.." Quote taken from: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today's' Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)" by Aleksandar Donski, celebrity historian and propagandist of pseudo-macedonism from FYROM.



Zaika/Ζάϊκα

The southern edge of ancient Paionia, the land of the Paionians, was originally starting from the Aegean coast of Northern Greece (Macedonia proper), went up into the southwestern part of what is now Bulgaria and then continued north to the central lands of what is now the ex-Yugoslav republic of Slavic Makedonija (ПОРАНЕШНАТА ЈУГОСЛОВЕНСКА РЕПУБЛИКА МАКЕДОНИЈА / FYROM). It included the lands on either side of the Axios/Αξιός river (ВАРДАР in Slavic) and the Strymon/Στρυμων river (СTРУМА in Slavic) and their respective watersheds.
Ancient Thrace included most of the lands of what is now Bulgaria, including parts of modern Romania as well as the provinces of Eastern Thrace of Turkey and Western Thrace of Greece. Thracians also lived in parts of Chalcidice and even Pieria, just north of mount Olympus.
Beginning around the 8th or 9th century BC, the Greek-speaking Macedonians started coming down from their original homelands in upper Macedonia(upper meant "mountainous" not "northern"), slowly pressing Thracians and Paionians out of the flat-lands in Pieria, Emathia and Amphaxitis. The Paionians gradually lost the coastline (early 5th cBC) and kept being pressed northward. A little more than a century later, in a series of campaigns between 358BC and 346BC Philip II of Macedon defeated the Paionians and extended his kingdom by either incorporating lands that previously belonged to the Paionians and to various neighboring Thracian tribes, or converting their kingdoms into Macedonian client states, creating a loyal buffer zone to his north, against attacks from the Illyrians and from other barbarians beyond the Danube. Two centuries later, Philip V / Φίλιππος Ε΄ feeling the pressure of the Romans and their Illyrian allies in a strategically defensive rather than offensive move, to stabilize his northern frontiers, shed all semblance of Paionian independence and incorporated their semi-independent kingdom into Macedon.
The Thracians suffered a similar fate, being slowly pushed north and east while many of their cities resigned to accepting incorporation into the Macedonian state, whether under Philip II, Alexander II (the Great) or later under Lysimachos/Λυσίμαχος (360 BC - 281 BC), an epigonos of Alexander who created his own Macedonian kingdom within Thrace proper. Philip, we know from history kept on shuffling populations around, bolstering his frontiers with Greek Macedonians and building new cities where needed, like Heracleia Lynkestis/Ηράκλεια Λυγκιστίς (Μοναστήρι/Bitola/Битола) in Pelagoneia or Veroia/Βέροια (Stara Zagora/Стара Загора) and Philippoupolis/Φιλιππούπολις (Plovdiv/Пловдив) in Thrace, or reorganizing cities like Callindeia/Καλλίνδεια, Amphipolis/Ἄμφίπολις or Crenides/Κρηνίδες (renamed: Philippoi/Φίλιπποι).
The ancient historians have left us a grim picture of this population engineering, of bringing barbarians into the cities to be assimilated and sending Greeks to be established in settlements along the frontiers, which Philip II used in his attempt to unify his dominions and the promotion of the Greek language was his tool to achieve this:

"7 Reversus in regnum, ut pecora pastores nunc in hibernos, nunc in aestivos saltus traiciunt, sic ille populos et urbes, ut illi vel replenda vel derelinquenda quaeque loca videbantur, ad libidinem suam transfert. 8 Miseranda ubique facies et excidio similis erat. 9 Non quidem pavor ille hostilis nec discursus per urbem militum erat, non tumultus armorum, non bonorum atque hominum rapina, 10 sed tacitus maeror et luctus, verentibus, ne ipsae lacrimae pro contumacia haberentur. 11 Crescit dissimulatione ipsa dolor, hoc altius demissus, quo minus profiteri licet. 12 Nunc sepulcra maiorum, nunc veteres penates, nunc tecta, in quibus geniti erant quibusque genuerant, 13 considerabant, miserantes nunc vicem suam, quod in eam diem vixissent, nunc filiorum, quod non post eam diem nati essent.
VI. Alios populos in finibus ipsis hostibus opponit; alios in extremis regni terminis statuit; quosdam bello captos in supplementis urbium dividit. 2 Atque ita ex multis gentibus nationibusque unum regnum populumque constituit."

Historiarum Philippicarum in Epitomen redacti A M Iuniano Iustino, Book VIII

"On his return to his kingdom, as shepherds drive their flocks sometimes into winter, sometimes into summer pastures, so he transplanted people and cities hither and thither, according to his caprice, as places appeared to him proper to be peopled or left desolate. The aspect of things was every where wretched, like that of a country ravaged by an enemy. There was not, indeed, that terror of a foe, or hurrying of troops through the cities, or seizure of property and prisoners, which are seen during a hostile invasion; but there prevailed a sorrow and sadness not expressed in words, the people fearing that even their very tears would be thought signs of discontent. Their grief was augmented by the very concealment of it, sinking the deeper the less they were permitted to utter it. At one time they contemplated the sepulchres of their ancestors at another their old household gods, at another the homes in which they had been born, and in which they had had families; lamenting sometimes their own fate, that they had lived to that day, and sometimes that of their children, that they were not born after it.6 Some people he planted upon the frontiers of his kingdom to oppose his enemies; others he settled at the extremities of it. Some, whom he had taken prisoners in war, he distributed among certain cities to fill up the number of inhabitants; and thus, out of various tribes and nations, he formed one kingdom and people."

Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Marcus Junianus Justinus

This is the best explanation of how Paeonians and Thracians eventually became Hellenic in speech, though many kept their names and religious beliefs as the epigraphical record amply shows. History, unfortunately is not lending a hand to her falsifiers.
The Romans eventually defeated Philip V in the battle of Cynos Cephalai (197 BC) and later Perseus in the battle of Pydna (168 BC), and Macedonia became a Roman province. During the Roman era, all areas previously under the Macedonians went through a period of bilingualism, with Greek eventually replacing Thracian and Paionian as the dominant language in the southern part of the Balkans. Unlike the northern lands of the Balkan Peninsula, Latin never made much inroad in Macedonia or lower Thrace. The coins of Macedonia kept on being issued in Greek, and all the funeral and votive inscriptions were written in Greek, reflecting the dominant Hellenic language of the area. By the dawn of the early Christian era, and certainly by the fourth century AD, the lower Balkans had become completely Hellenic-speaking areas, while the north had become Latinized in speech. The Jireček Line, has been used as the imaginary linguistic boundary separating the Hellenic-speaking and the Latin-speaking areas of the Balkans, before the Slavic invasions.

Russian map showing 7th-8th cAD entry of Slavs into Byzantine areas

The Slavs started raiding the south Balkans towards the mid to end of the 6th cAD, and by the 7th and 8th centuries AD they had breached the Danube frontier of the Byzantine Empire and had established themselves in many settlements in the Balkans. The Slavs had never been in contact with the ancient people of the Balkans, namely the Greeks, the Illyrians, the Thracians, the Dacians or the Paionians. The Albanians, another Balkan people, are related to the ancient Dacians, but during the Greek and Roman antiquity they were not living in what is now modern Albania. They are not related to the Illyrians, despite what their own state national mythology propagates. The Albanians moved south to their present location, sometime in the eleventh cAD, from their original the Carpathian homeland. The Romanians, although Latin in speech are to a great extend descended from the ancient Dacians too, as well as from Greek and Latin-speaking populations of Thrace and the Black Sea. The Thracians were either Latinized or Hellenized and many of their descendants became Slavic in speech after the Bulgarians and the Slavs took over part of their lands from Byzantium. Later on, some also became Turkish in speech and identity, and it is believed that the Slavic speaking Muslims of Thrace, the Pomaks/ Помаци/Πομάκοι are to a great degree of Thracian stock.
Most serious modern researchers seem to agree that the most probable original homeland of the Slavs was the Pripet Marshes, between Belorussia, Poland and Ukraine. The Slavic languages are grouped together with the Baltic languages in a common Balto-Slavic linguistic family. The Balkans as homeland of the proto-Slavs is as serious a theory as suggesting a Chinese descent for the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. It has only been suggested by discredited pseudo-scientific circles in Skopje, in the service of irredentist and ultra-nationalist goals.
Any attempt, to make a linguistic connection between the ancient inhabitants of these lands and the Slavs cannot be taken seriously by anyone except some extremist nationalist groups and their supporters in political parties like the VMRO, a fascist-irredentist group until recently in the list of terrorist groups of the US State Department but now the political party in power in Skopje.
It is easy for someone without the classical language background to get carried over and starting with some superficial phonetic similarities of an ancient name (Zaika) of a completely alien and now extinct language (in this case Thracian, as we shall prove) then connect it to a word of his own modern language (the Sloveno-macedonski dialect of Bulgarian) and finally try to explain one from the other. The Slavonic dialect spoken by the majority population in the former province of Yugoslavia that is now FYROM, cannot be credibly named "Macedonian", for many reasons, chief among which is that it creates confusion between a modern Slavonic dialect and the Greek dialect of the ancient Macedonians. Secondly, the Slavic Macedonians are not the only people that live in Macedonia. In FYROM itself there are Albanians, Vlachs, other Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs etc. In Greece, where the vast majority of the land of historic Macedonia lies, the spoken language is Greek. Therefore, calling the Slavonic dialect spoken in parts of Macedonia THE "Macedonian" language is a complete misnomer, and one with political undertones which many unsuspecting linguistic scientists naively ignire. It is also an attempt to usurp a GENERAL geographic term and make a PARTICULAR ethnic term out of it. Macedonia, the geographic area, is first and foremost inhabited by Greeks, secondly by Slavs, thirdly by Albanians, fourthly by Bilingual Vlachs, then by Roma-Gypsies, Jews, Turks, Serbs, Bulgarians, etc. Not one of these nationalities should have the right to usurp the general geographic determinant name for themselves. After all, it is not the right of some of the Slavs who live in a small part of historic Macedonia to call themselves by the name of the province that belongs to all the other nationalities living in it. The Greeks of Macedonia are very content to call themselves Greeks by nationality and language, and Macedonians by cultural and provincial identity, and so do the Albanians, the Vlachs, the Bulgarians and others.
If we want to be taken seriously, we have to go to the sources and base our research on what is epigraphically available.
We have located three Inscriptions with the name Zaika/Ζάϊκα. Τhe first two are from Sintike/Σιντική, an area on the upper run of the river Strymon/Στρυμών, in Bulgaria, just north of Greece. The third one if close to Prilep/Прилеп, inside FYROM:

IGBulg IV 2311
Macedonia : Sintike: Vranya
Βειθυς Παραμόνου ἑαυ-
τῷ καὶ Ζαικᾳ τῇ γυ-
ναικεὶ καὶ Πυρουσαλᾳ τῇ θυγα-
Beithys son of Paramonos to him-
self and Zaika his wi-
fe and Pyrousala his daught-

We have three names here: Paramonos/Παράμονος is most certainly a Greek name but it is quite possibly also a Greek/Paionian isogloss. It is obviously related to the name Parmenion/Παρμενίων, of the famous general of Philip II and Alexander the Great. It has been suggested (Ian Worthington) that Parmenion himself was of Paionian ethnic descent. Parmenion means "son of Parmenon" (the ending -ion notes descend) and Parmenon is obviously a cut off version of Par(a)menon/Παραμένων (Delta I 642,7 , Egypt and Nubia: Παραμένων με ἀνέθηκε τὠπόλλωνι.), "the one with staying power", which makes it similar in etymology to the Latin name Constantius.

Beithys/Βειθυς seems to appear in the epigraphic record along with other Thracian names. It is probably Thracian. It is certainly not Hellenic, neither in form nor etymology. It is also found written as Bithys/Βιθυς (ΙGBulg IV, 2322), and in the very Thracian form: Beithykenthos/Βειθυκενθος (IGBulg III, 1714).
Pyrousala is a Thracian name too. The word Pyr sounds like the Greek word for fire, but pyros/πυρός is also the maise, the barley seed and it is not exclusive to Greek, so its appearance in Thracian should not surprise us. We will encounter this name further down once again, and we will try to explore a plausible etymology. Salas is a well attested Thracian name, as shown in the following inscription:
IGBulg III,1 1441 [Σαλ]α̣ς Βειθυος. εὐχήν.
Zaika is inconclusive for now.

We now go to the second inscription, which is from SW Bulgaria, part of ancient Sintike/Σιντική

IGBulg IV 2303
Macedonia : Sintike: Kovachevo
Πύρρος Ἀγάθωνος ∙ ἑαυ-
τῷ καὶ Ζαικᾳ τῇ γυναι-
κὶ ἑαυτοῦ ζώων ἐποίει.
Pyrros son of Agathon him-
self and Zaika his wi-
fe and while still alive he made it.

Out of the three names on this inscription, Pyrros/Πύρρος and his patronym Agathon/Ἄγάθων are both Greek names, while Zaika is definitely not.
Our third inscription is from FYROM, close to the town of Prilep/
IG X,2 2 164
Macedonia : Pelagonia: Vitolište: Caracina niva Prilep
Ι#⁷․[— — —]ΛΝ Μυρω-
[— — — —] καὶ Ζαικα
[— — —]ο̣ς ἑ[α]υτο [— — —]LN
Myro-
[— — — —]and Zaika
[— — —]os himself

Myron/Μύρων is a Hellenic name, (see Myron/Μύρων the Athenian sculptor, known by "The discobolus", the discus thrower, mid-fifth century BC). Zaika/Ζάϊκα, once again, is not Greek.

How can we be so confident in saying that Zaika is either a Thracian or a Paionian name? First of all, it is encountered in lands historically inhabited by both Paionians, Thracians and Greeks, but it is not a Greek name. Since it also appears all too often in areas too far east (in modern Bulgaria) to be Illyrian, then the logical deduction is that is has to be either Thracian or Paionian. Geography, therefore, is our first clue, but the epigraphical record is what defines it, and clarifies the issue for us, so let us proceed further down. We expand our research and we find a name that sounds very similar to Zaika / Ζαικα appearing on an inscription: Zaikis / Ζαικις. It is from historic Macedonia, though the place of its original exact location is not known.
SEG 52:651
Macedonia : Unkn. Provenance
Ζαικις Ἀνδρονίκου Βαστικείλᾳ τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ τοῖς τέκνοις
Ἀνδρονείκῳ καὶ Ἀλλωπόρει καὶ Μητόκῳ καὶ ἑατῇ, ζῶσα.
Zaikis, daughter of Andronikos to Bastikeila, her husband and to her children
Andronikos and Alloporis and Metokos and to herself, while living.

The names Alloporis/Αλλωπορις and Bastikeila/Βαστικείλᾳ are clearly Thracian. The ending "-poris" means "the son of" and is a typical ending for a Thracian name. Epte-poris/Επτή̣-πορις Dindi-poris/Δινδι-πορις, Dili-poris/Διλι-πορις, Raskou-poris/Ρασκού-πορις, Ketri-poris/Κετρι-πορις, etc.
The name Andronikos/Ανδρόνικος (female: Andronike/Ανδρονίκη) is clearly a Greek name from andras/άνδρας, man and nike/νίκη, victory: "Victorious over men"..
Metokos/Μητοκoς sounds like a Greek name but it is not, unless it is a dialectical paraphrase of Metoikos/Μέτοικος (μετά/meta, after + οίκος/oikos, home), meaning the immigrant resident. As Metokos it only appears in a few inscriptions in Thrace, always coupled with other Thracian names: Metokos son of Taroulos/Μητοκος Ταρουλου (IGBulg I² 400), or Metokos son of Mestos/Μήτοκος Μέστ[ο]υ (IG XII,Suppl 471).
Finally, we come to Zaikis: The name Zaikis/Ζαικις is too similar-sounding to Zaika not to be related, both probably being different forms (male-female) of the same name.

Extending our search to names of the area that start with Zai- / Ζαι- , that there are indeed several names to be found on inscriptions, all from historic Peonia, part of which is now in Bulgaria.
IGBulg V 5918
Macedonia : Sintike: Parthikopolis (Sandanski): Laskarevo
Δείδος Πυρούλᾳ τῷ πατρ[ί],
Ζαιβαλῳ, Πυρούλᾳ τῷ ὑῷ {υἱῷ},
Πυρούλᾳ τῷ μεικρῷ ζῶν ἐπύ-
Deidos son of Pyroulas to his father
Zaibalos, to his son
Pyroulas to the little one epy-

None of the names is Greek here, though the Paionians or Thracians who wrote these are on their way to become Hellenized, since we see them using Greek but with spelling variances, betraying variances in dialectical pronunciation (ei/ει instead of i/ι, y/υ instead or yi/υι). The name Pyroulas, is a typical Thracian name, attested as "Pyrumerulas (variants: Pyrmerulas, Pyrymerylas, Pirmerulas), which occurs as an epithet of the Thracian deity of Heros", according to the Bulgarian Linguist Ivan Duridanov. Duridanov believes it to be related to the Greek word pyros/πυρός the maize, and he is suggesting a meaning of something like: The Powerful one of the maize seed. I would say we would not be off the mark if we were to expand it to mean something like: The Great Farmer, or Farmer Protector, which the Thracian mounted Hero was.
Deidos sounds Greek but it is probably a Thracian name too. The ending "-dos" is not unusual in Thracian onomastics. The Thracian God Zberthurdos was the closest equivalent to being the Thracian "Zeus".
Zaibalos is most probably related to Zaika and Zaikis, possibly its male version.

Another Inscription from now Bulgarian Thrace speaks of a Zaipas/Ζαιπας. It seems plausible that this name is linguistically also related to the name Zaika/Ζαικα.
IGBulg IV 2112
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
Thrace and the Lower Danube (IG X)
IGBulg IV 2112
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
Ροιμος
Ταρσου Ζαι-
πᾳ συμβί-
ῳ τῇ καλ-
Roimos
son of Tarsos to Zai-
pa his life part-
ner the most beau-

Yet another inscription has been found in the same area, this one with the name Zairdainos/Ζαιρδαίνος:
IGBulg III,2 1743
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
Ζαιρδαι[νῳ — — — — — —]
Αυλουζεν̣[— — — — — —]
to Zairdan[os — — — — — —]
son of Aulouzeṇ[— — — — — —]

Zairdanos again starts with "Zai-" and the ending "-rdanos" is very Thracian, reminiscent of and quite probably related to the Thracian ethnonym: Dardanos. Dardania was roughly the land enclosing what is now Kosovo and the northern part of FYROM, and Skopje, far from being a Macedonian city, ever, was the capital of Dardania, yet now it is the capital of the so called Republica "Makedonija".

Yet another Thracian name that starts with Zai- / Ζαι- is found again in Bulgarian Moesia:
IGBulg I² 130
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
[υ]τ̣ῷ καὶ τῇ γ̣[υναι]-
κὶ Ζαινειλᾳ Η[․c.4․]
[τ]ὸ̣ μνημεῖ̣[ον ἔστησε].
...self and to his wi-
fe Zainela H.......
the monument he erected

An interesting name appears in another Greek inscription from Sintike, by the Bulgarian city of Sandanski, ancient Parthikopolis:
Northern Greece (IG X)
IGBulg IV 2291
Macedonia : Sintike: Parthikopolis (Sandanski): Laskarevo
τῷ ἀδελφῷ
Δ̣ε̣ιτουζαι-
που ἡ γυνὴ
Ἀμύντου
to brother
Deitouzaipas'
wife

Δ̣ε̣ιτουζας / Deitouzaipas seems to be a combination of two well-attested Thracian names that we just encountered above: Deidos/Δειδος and Zaipas/Ζαιπας.

Another indication that Zaika/Ζαικα is most probably a Thracian name is in on some inscriptions from Thrace, Northern Greece and Paionia from the Roman times, long before the descent of the Bulgarians and the Slavs (during the middle ages) into these areas:

SEG 53:663
Macedonia : Sintike: Neine (G. Gradeshnitsa-Ilindentsi)
Σεβήρᾳ τῇ συμβίῳ καὶ Ἰουλίῳ Μαξίμῳ τῷ
υἱῷ καὶ Ζαικαιδενθῃ τῇ ἀδελφῇ κατωχη-
κόσι κατεσκεύασεν μνήμης ἕνεκα.
…to Severa his wife, and to Ioulios Maximos his
son and to Zaikaidenthe, his sister, to be buried,
he erected in their memory

Northern Greece (IG X)
Mt. Olympe 479,28
Macedonia : Pieria: Nea Ephesos
Ζαιπύρου Μέξτεως
(of) Zaipyros son of Mextes

Ζαικαιδενθη/Zaikaidenthe means child of Zaika, in Thracian. The endings -denthes /-δενθης and -denthe /-δενθη are typical of many names in the Thracian language. It means: "child of", equivalent to English "-son": John-Johnson, James-Jameson, etc.
Examples: Καρδένθης/Kardenthes, Σκαιδένθης/Skaidenthes, Βαργιδένθης/Bargidenthes, Αυλουδένθης/Auloudenthes, Επτακένθης/Eptakenthos - a frequent Thracian name ´Epta´s (a goddess) child´, Διασκενθης/Diascenthus - ´god´s child´. Dia is related to Greek Διός/Dios (genitive of Zeus), and to the Latin Deus, among others. We also find: Δενθηβαρις / Denthevaris, with δένθη/denthe appearing here in the beginning of the word.

Zaika/Ζαικα, Zaikaidenthe/Ζαικαιδενθη, Zaikis/Ζαίκις, Zairdainos/Ζαιρδαίνος, Zainela/Ζαινείλα and Ζαίπα/Zaipa are all Thracian names, for most of which we do not know the exact meaning. The only thing we can do is speculate basing ourselves on existing linguistic data.

The first clue comes from Bulgarian Thracologist professor Ivan Duridanov´s list of Thracian names, where we find the following names: Zipyros, Zeipyros, Ziepyrus, Zypyr, Zipyron, Zeipyron, all of which mean: God´s boy, God´s son.
Zan/Ζάν (genitive: Zanos/Ζανός, plural: Zanes/Ζάνες) is but another name for Zeus/Ζεύς. Zea/Ζέα (a name that survives in one of Peireus´three ports even today: Limani Zeas/Λιμάνι Ζέας), Hesechios tells us was another name for the underworld Goddess hekate/Εκάτη, Godess also of three-roads junctions. Zeus in genitive is Dios/Διός, a cognate of Deus in Latin and Theos/Θεός in Greek, all of which mean "God". Zeus and Deus and Dios might seem very different at first sight, but the letter Ζ/Ζ is interchangeable with D/Δ in some Greek dialects: Dia/Διά, in the Aeolian dialect was pronounced and written as Ζa/Ζά. Dia nyktos/διά νυκτός, through the night, in Aeolian would be: za nyktos/ζα νυκτός. Zeter/Ζητήρ is Zeus in Cyprus (Ζεύς εν Κύπρω, according to Hesechios, again), which seems like a possible paraphrase of Zeus-Pater, a cognate of the Latin Jupiter. The interchangeability between Z and D exists not only in Greek but in Thracian too:
Deopus - ´son of god´, Deospor, Deospuris - ´son of god´, Desakenthos - ´god´s child´, Diaskenthos, Diascenthus, Diascinthus - ´god´s child´, Diazelmis - ´god´s descendant´, Diazenis, Diuzenes ´born of Zeus, divine´, Dizapes - ´god´s son´, Dizapor - ´god´s son, boy´, Dizazelmis - ´god´s child, descendant, are cognates of the Thracian names we encountered earlier: Zipyros, Zeipyros, Ziepyrus, Zypyr, Zipyron, Zeipyron.
Proposing that Zaika is a Thracian name, with a name that means the divine one, or the blessed by the gods, in the spirit of equivalent Greek names Theone/Θεόνη or Theone/Θεώνη and Διώνη/Διόνη or Dione/Διόνη, for example, is more plausible to me than trying to equate this name with no regard to historical geography to the Slavonic rabbit, or hare.
Professor Donski from Skopje, FYROM, tells us that "Zaika…is one of the most interesting ancient Macedonian female names. It may represent a female form of the present day Macedonian "zajak" (rabbit)".
Let us see what the Bulgarians, who never claimed to be descendants of the ancient Macedonians, call their hare/rabbit: заек/zaek, which is the same as the Slavomacedonians of the Prespa region, call it too: a very Bulgarian-sounding заек/zaek, instead of the proper, Skopje-sanctioned: заjак/zajak. The Serbs and Croats give it a slightly different twist: зец/zec and: zec. The Czechs call it: zajíc, the Slovenians: zajec, which is identical to the Ukrainian hare: заєць/zajec. The Upper Sorbians, a Slavic minority in Germany, whose name betrays ancient fraternal connections to the Serbians of the Balkans call their rabbit: zajac, which is identical in pronunciation to the Russian: заяц/zajac, Belarusian: заяц/zajac, and Slovak: zajac and almost identical to the Polish: zając.
Now, I will have a very hard time trying to convince myself that the Slovenomakedonski заjак/zajak or заек/zaek for that matter, is ancient Macedonian and that Zaika is a hare-related name. All the Slavs have similar sounding and linguistically very tightly related rabbits/hares. In fact, the Slavonic long-eared lovable creatures are linguistically very close to the Baltic ones, the Latvian: zaķis and the Lithuanian: zuikis. This, of course, is to be expected, since the Baltic and the Slavic languages used to be part of the same linguistic Balto-Slavic group, before they split, sometime in the first millennium BC, long before (probably a thousand years or so) some of their descendants descended to the warm and fertile lands of Thrace, Paionia and Macedonia. Incidentally, the hare in Ancient Greek: λαγός/lagós and λαγώς/lagós or λαγωός/lago'os and in Modern Greek: λαγός/lagós.

Πτολεμαίου Βασιλέως / (belonging to) King Ptolemaios

This brings us to Ptolemy Lagos, the Macedonian general who later became Pharaoh of Egypt: Ptolemy, the childhood friend and comrade of Alexander the Great, whose full name was Ptolemaios Lagos/Πτολεμαίος Λάγου. He is the one who started the dynasty of the Ptolemies/Πτολεμαίοι, who were also called Lagidai/Λαγίδαι, from Lagos/Λάγος or Λαγός, the name of Ptolemaios´ father. Ptolemaios himself gladly abandoned his own rabbit/hare-sounding patronym once he himself became a king, the Pharaoh of Hellenistic Egypt. He adopted the prosonym which the Rhodians in gratitude offered him: Soter/Σωτήρ, the Savior! The hare connection of Ptolemaios Lagos is possible and almost obvious, but another, more plausible explanation exists, especially given the fact that Lagos must have been a Macedonian chief himself (little if anything is known of him, and Ptoleμaios spread the royal rumor that Philip II was in fact his own father from Arsinoe/Αρσινόη, his mother).
The alternative theory would be that the name Lagos/Λαγος is possibly a dialectical short rendering of Lagetes/Λαγέτης or Lagetas/Λαγέτας. Lagetas is derived from Λάας-Λαός, meaning "the people" and specifically, in ancient Greek, "the people in arms", the army, and from ago/άγω, to lead. Lagetas/Λαγέτας appears also much earlier, in pre-Homeric Lawagetas/ΛαFαγέτας. The earliest attestation of Lawagetas/ΛαFαγέτας is in the Linear B tablets of Pylos and Knossos: ra-wa-ke-ta, transliterated by Michael Kendris, the decipherer of the Linear B tablets as: Lawagetas/ΛαFαγέτας, "military commander". In modern Greek Laos/Λαός means "people", and Lagetas or Lagetes and Lawagetas can be rendered as Laoegetes/Λαοηγέτης, or Laou egetes/Λαού ηγέτης, both meaning "leader of the people". The transformation of the -es and/or -as ending into an -os ending can be confusing but not at all unusual in Greek. The same evolution can be seen in the Greek word for "hunter":
Achaean-Linear B Greek: ku-na-ke-ta =, transliterated as Kynagetas/κυναγετας from kyn/κυν = dog + egetas/ηγετας=leader [ku-na-ke-ta-i (PY Na 248, TH) [kuna:geta:hi] 'hunters'32. 28. a-stems, loc. plur., Ref.: Autosegmental Phonology and Word-Internal -h- in Mycenaean Greek,  S Colvin - 2006], meaning literally: "leader of the dogs", hunter. Kynagetas/κυναγετας developed into Kynegos/κυνηγος from:
Kynagetas/Κυναγετας --- Kynegos/Κυνηγος
Likewise: Lawagetas/ΛαFαγετας --- Lagetes/Λαγέτης - Lagos/Λαγος
If this is correct, then the rabbit connection needs to be erased completely from the patronym of Ptolemaios. We need to be suspicious of easy, phonetic-based explanations. Lagos sounds exactly like a hare in both ancient and modern Greek, but probably not so in all the Hellenic dialects. Macedonian Greek was notorious in omitting vowels for example, and this can be very confusing for us today. Many Greeks still think that Perdikas/Περδίκας the Macedonian general took his name from perdix/πέρδιξ, the partridge bird. On a closer inspection, his name is actually from the preposition peri/περί, around, concerned with, and dika/δίκα δίκη, justice: Peridikas/Περιδίκας. In this sense it is linguistically and grammatically closer to that most famous of Athenian names: Perikles/Περικλής, whose name is also derived from peri/περί and is combined with kleos/κλέος, "glory".

Tito's geostrategic dream: Greater Yugoslavija from the Adriatic to the Black Sea

The modern Македонски Словени/ Makedonski Sloveni, the self-proclaimed "ethnic Macedonians" have absolutely no linguistic or historical relation to the ancient Greek Macedonians, or the Thracians and Paionians of Macedonia proper. They inhabit a sizeable part of the land that used to be ancient Paionia, and only tiny parts of ancient Macedonia and ancient Thrace. Misnaming what is now the Former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija as "Macedonia" might have made sense at some point, from the perspective of the advancement of Tito´s Yugoslav expansionist dreams. These dreams included the creation of a Titoist fiefdom from the Adriatic to the Aegean sea and to the shores of the Black Sea. The hope, of course, was to incorporate not only northern Greece but the whole of Bulgaria too, and extend this Balkan Mega-Sclavenia to the Black sea. This did not see the light of day, due to the Stalin-Tito break, or possibly, Tito´s demands may have caused it. These considerations, dating back to the 1940´s and 1950´s have no basis on either geography or history and never had any. Jugoslavija, instead of usurping the rest of the Balkan Peninsula, Greek Macedonia and Bulgaria included, ended up breaking up itself, exploding in flames and genocide during the 1990´s.
This process is still painfully with us until now, simmering in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and FYROmacedonia. It is in all these areas that short-sighted Euro-American interests imposed temporary solutions that sought to create mini-Yugoslavias or Mini-Albanias or mini-Afghanistans in the middle of the proverbial Balkan powder keg. None of them has any long term future, not under their respective leaderships anyway and not the way they have been formed and imposed upon the locals, fermenting oceans of ethnic hatred in the process. These ethnic morphemes are all accidents waiting to happen. It is only a matter of when and how, not a question of if.
Edo einai Balkania, den einai paixe gelase/ Εδώ είναι Βαλκάνια, δεν είναι παίξε γέλασε, is how music composer and song-writer Dionysis Savopoulos /Διονύσης Σαββόπουλος prophetically put it in the song Ballos, back in the early 1970´s: This is the Balkans…this is not a play-and-laugh field! For the international community to be tolerating, nay, encourage Skopjan irredentism and extreme ultra-nationalism that borderlines fascism and fringe political lunacy, like the policies of the governing VMRO party of prime minister Nikola Gruevski/Никола Груевски, and all this in a country that for all practical purposes is nothing but a microcosm of Yugoslavia is utterly incomprehensible to the locals. One of the reasons, besides flawed and idiotically near-sighted geopolitics (of the type that led the US into quagmires in Iraq, or Vietnam and now Afghanistan) that Globomagicians-in-training from Washington, London and Brussels are gleefully playing with matches in the midst of the Balkan powder keg is simple: it is not their own backyard! Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs want none of that and they view the likes of Nikola Gruevski and his VMRO political goons as dangerous left-overs from ages past.
To bring this home, and to see how Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs view the neo-Ottoman-Great Turkish, Kosovarian-Great Albanian and Skopjan-Antico-Slavomakedonci dreams of Grandeur and land annexation, is to ponder at an analogy: how would the US government and the American people react to any talk of Mexican irredentism, vis-à-vis California, Texas and New Mexico, to name a few states, that some hotheaded Politicos in Mexico city would demand to carve away from the USA and annex to Mexico?

It does not sound good, now, does it? This is, unfortunately the raison d'être behind professor Donski´s laughable theories. They are a medley of nonsense in support of a false and utterly imaginary ethnogennesis, trying to prove that somehow, the Slavs of FYROM are the direct descendents of the Greek-speaking ancient Macedonians, and therefore, Greeks, who have a historically and archaeologically proven presence of four thousand years in Macedonia, should be considered invaders that need to be thrown into the Aegean sea. When you play with history, history has a way to get its revenge. The archaeological and epigraphic record always comes to our rescue and proves professor Donski (and all his fellow propagandists in Skopje) wrong. All they are left with is folk etymology, invented pseudo-history and bogus science.
The limits of folk etymology are very narrow and they rarely hit the mark. Pulling a proverbial rabbit out of a Jugoslavic hat, is not as easy as it seems at first, as it is amply illustrated by our point in case: a counterfeit identity is not going to make a Sloveno-Makedonka out of an ancient Thracian girl. Zaika/Ζάϊκα, our Thracian girl is as closely related to Zajak/Заjaк the rabbit as the girl with the fluffy bunny ears, shown at the beginning of this article, is.
Pretending is not the same as being: PRETENDING to be a Macedonian does not make you an "ethnic" Macedonian. Skopje´s propaganda machine has been tirelessly at work, since 1944, trying to bolster an unsustainable national cohesion (and to avoid Yugoslavia´s fate of dissolution) through an officially-sanctioned pseudo-Macedonian forged ethnic identity. Reality has a way of getting back to those who disregard it. A person that escapes his own reality ends up with a split personality (clinically diagnosed as Dissociative Identity Disorder-DID). Tragic as it is for a person, it can be devastating when applied to a whole population by a repressive state apparatus that "knows best", as it happened with Tito´s former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija. The permanent identity crisis that has plagued this mini state from its inception has spilled over, creating problems of ethnic tension, hatred and irredentist passions for everyone else in this volatile Balkan neighborhood. This obvious clash with reality has created a national obsession with identity-searching within the majority of the population in FYROM: a Torbeshi (Bulgarian-speaking Muslim Slav) thinks he is a Turk, a Vlach Greek thinks he is a Slav and a Slav thinks he is a Macedonian Greek (though violently refuses to accept that the Hellenism of the Macedonians). More often than not, the pseudo-Makedonist state propaganda´s version of ethnic reality transcends into the realm of the bizarre and the surreal crosses over and establishes itself well within the borders of the outright ludicrous, ending up with such national-identity-bolstering gems like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=RLCj7Luu5Ko

Our Thracian Zaika/Ζάϊκα notwithstanding, pulling propaganda rabbits out of a hat seems to be part of the daily Show in Skopje´s "Greater Macedonija - Fantasija Balkanika" Circus.


FURTHER READING – REFERENCES:
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/main
Philip II of Macedonia, by Ian Worthington, Yale university Press, 2008
Historiarum Philippicarum in Epitomen redacti A M. Iuniano Iustino, Book VIII
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Marcus Junianus Justinus
translation by John Selby Watson. London 1853
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/justin/english/trans8.html
Езикът на траките/The Language of the Thracians, by Ivan Duridanov, Nauka i izkustvo, Sofia, 1976 http://groznijat.tripod.com/thrac/index.htmlpaionia
Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell & Scott, Oxford, 1951 (1843)
Hσύχιος/Hesychios, Λεξικόν, Aρχαία Ελληνική Γραμματεία, "Οι Ελληνες»», Οδυσσέας Χατζόπουλος, Athens 2004
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBcJp1dywHA
Linear B – An introduction. J.T.Hooker, Bristol Classical Press, London, 2001
The Decipherment of Linear B, John Chadwick, Cambridge University Press, 1958

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 name Sitas

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). " Sita. A name that is identical to the present day Macedonian adjective "sita" (eating to satisfaction). The male name Sitko is present in todays' Macedonian onomasticon." Quote taken from: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today's' Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)" by Aleksandar Donski, celebrity historian from FYROM.

Sitas/Σίτας - Sita/Σίτα

In the archaeological museum of Gloucester in England someone can stare at a curious funerary stele. It is a rough but beautiful carving of a Roman horseman in relief. His head is protected by a Roman helmet and he is holding an oval shield on his left hand. He is holding a spear on his right hand, attacking a local barbarian who has already fallen to the ground and is desperately making a last ditch effort to defend himself with his sword.

The Latin inscription at the bottom of the stele reads as follows:

RVFVS SITA EQVES CHO VI
TRACVM ANN XL STIP XXII
HEREDES EXS TEST F CVRAVE
H S E

Rufus Sita, Horseman of the Sixth Cohort
of Thracians; 40 years (old); paid (for) 22 (years);
His heirs, according to his will, had this made.
Here is the site (of his grave)

The stele gives us a wealth of information about the deceased soldier. His name was Rufus Sita. Rufus, his first name being Latin, was already a Roman citizen. His original name was Sita, but after joining the army and adopting the Latin name Rusus as his first name, the Thracian name Sita became his second, family name. He was a horseman of the VI / sixth Cohort of Thracians: Cohors Sextae Thracum equitata – The Sixth Cohort of Thracians – part mounted . He served 22 of his 40 years in the Roman army. He died in Britannia, far from his native Thrace, serving the Imperial Roman army as a cavalry man.

His heirs, dutiful to the Thracian religious legacy of the “Thracian horseman” (a recurrent theme of almost all Thracian funerary stelae) had Sita's image carved showing him as a knight. This image fused Sita’s imperial army military function as a Roman cavalry man with his native Thracian religious legacy as a Thracian horseman, fighting evil for the good of mankind. The only substitution is the desperately fighting British barbarian trampled underneath his horse, instead of the agriculturally destructive Boar that would have been the more proper Thracian imagery. Sitas the Roman is shown defeating the barbarian as Sitas the Thracian would be defeating the wild boar. He is defending the Pax Romana instead of the tree of life. In Thracian religious imagery the tree of life, with its chthonian snake hanging from the branches, is the symbol of the agricultural land and its produce and the wealth derived from it. The chthonian snake is the tree of life’s protector dragon.

The mythology of Sita’s beloved Thrace is thus merged and integrated with this soldier’s legacy as a Roman frontier defender. The docile chthonian snake entangled in the branches of the Thracian agricultural tree of life is fused with the people of the Roman Empire whose duty it is for Sitas to defend. The land of his native Thrace, after all, was an integral part of this same Roman Empire. The British barbarian who is viewed as the destructive force that endangers with his raids the well-being of the dutiful Roman citizenry and the wild boar whose raids on the fields of his native Thrace brought destruction to the fields and the agricultural wealth of the Thracian farmer were thus being defeated by Sitas. Sitas was in this imagery commissioned by his heirs openly identified with the Thracian Hero-Pyrmeroulas. Pyrmaroulas’s name is derived from pyros/πυρός, a Greek-Thracian isogloss meaning the wheat and barley seed.

Sitas was there to defend both. This was his realm. This was what he lived, fought and died for. He was a true Thracian horseman, a Hero/ Ήρως both in real life and in post-mortem legend.

The name Sitas is fairly common in Thracian onomastics. Aleksandar Donski claims that this is somehow a Slavomacedonian, a “Makedonski” name, but Sitas has no relation to the Modern Slavic inhabitants of FYROM, nor was it a name common to the Greek speaking Macedonians. It is definitely a Thracian name. In John Wilkes' book on The Illyrians, we read that: “The Illyrian component is markedly stronger in Dardania, including Das(s)ius, Scerviaedus and Andia, but Thracian names are also found, Sita and Nanea...”
Ancient Dardania is the same land that the Byzantine Greeks later called Kossyfopedion/Κοσσυφοπέδιον which the Slavs shortened to Kosovo and Metohia / Косово и Метохија, Μετόχια indicating lands belonging to Greek Orthodox monasteries. The Dardanian city of Scupi is modern Skopje, a city that, while Dardanian and Kossyphopedian by history and geography now strives to be recognized as “capital of a (misplaced and misnamed) Macedonia, a Slavonic Makedonija”.

John Wilkes informs us that Sitas is a Thracian name that appears in the epigraphic record of Illyria and more specifically of Dardania. The proximity of Dardania to Macedonia and the phonetics of the name are enough to confuse someone into thinking that this Greek-sounding name could possible be an ancient Macedonian name, but it is not.
Dio Cassius (Δίων ὁ Κάσσιος) a Greek historian (born 155AD at Nicaea of Bithynia in Asia Minor, died about 240AD) wrote an extensive history of the Roman nation. In the 51st book of his history, where Dio Cassius is speaking of the army of Marcus Crassus we read about a blind Thracian king named Sitas/Σιτας, king of the Thracian tribe of the Dentheletae:

“ἐπεὶ δὲ τόν τε Αἷμον ὑπερέβησαν καὶ τὴν Θρᾴκην τὴν Δενθελητῶν ἔνσπονδον αὐτοῖς οὖσαν κατέδραμον,
ἐνταῦθα ὁ Κράσσος τὸ μέν τι τῷ Σιτᾷ τῷ τῶν Δενθελητῶν βασιλεῖ τυφλῷ ὄντι ἀμύνων, τὸ δὲ δὴ πλεῖστον περὶ τῇ
Μακεδονίᾳ φοβηθεὶς ἀντεπῆλθέ σφισι, καὶ αὐτοὺς ἐκ τῆς προσόδου μόνης καταπλήξας ἐξέωσεν ἀμαχεὶ ἐκ τῆς χώρας.”

“and once they crossed over Haemus and overran the part of Thrace which belonged to the Dentheletae, and was in treaty with the Romans, here Crassus, in part to defend Sitas, the king of the Dentheleti, who was blind, but mostly out of fear for (an attack against) Macedonia, went out to meet them and throwing them into a panic just by his approach, he pushed them out of the country without even a battle.”
Δίων ο Κάσσιος Ρωμαικη Ιστορια, Βιβλιον 51-23-4 / Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 51-23-4

Another Thracian name, similar sounding to Sitas but obviously related to it is Sitalkes. We know of several Thracians by this name, the most famous being Sitalkes son of Teres and father of Seuthes, all of them being great kings of the Odryssian Thracians. Sitalkes reigned between 431 - 424 BC. He is mentioned by the historian Thucycides. Sitalces was the son of Teres and King of the Thracians. Teres, the father of Sitalces, was the first to establish the great kingdom of the Odrysians on a scale quite unknown to the rest of Thrace, a large portion of the Thracians being independent.
Thucydides 2.29 - Athenian alliance with Sitalces (431 BC).

The Athenian comedy writer Aristophanes, in his comedy the Acharnians/Aχαρνεις mentions a Sitakes too:

(Κῆρυξ) προσίτω Θέωρος ὁ παρὰ Σιτάλκους.
(Herald)
Bring in Theoros, who has returned from the Court of Sitalces.
(Θέωρος) ὁδί.
(Theoros) (rising; he wears a Thracian costume.)
I am here.
(Δικαιόπολις) ἕτερος ἀλαζὼν οὗτος ἐσκηρύττεται.
(Dikaiopolis) Another humbug!
(Θέωρος) χρόνον μὲν οὐκ ἂν ἦμεν ἐν Θρᾴκῃ πολύν --
(Theoros) We should not have remained long in Thrace...
Αριστοφάνους Αχαρνείς / Aristophanes, Acharnians, 425 BC

Lastly, there is a Sitalkes (Σιτάλκης) taking part in Alexander's Asian expedition as (very tellingly) the leader of the Thracian light armed troops, Alexander's Thrakes akontistai/Θράκες ακοντισταί, the javelin men. He was a prince and most probably the son of the Thracian King Kersobleptes. This Sitalkes had been given a Government post in Macedonian occupied Media under Parmenion whom he assassinated under orders of Alexander. He was likewise also later himself executed on orders of Alexander, for brutal misgovernment, upon Alexander's return from India.

Since we are already close to India, let us leave the Thracian Kings Sitas and Sitalkes and the Τhracian prince Sitalkes who was in the service Alexander, and their native Thrace for a while and let us travel to the Orient even further to the far East, to lands Alexander the Great and his Macedonians never visited.
We hear that in distant Thailand, there is a Buddhist Goddess whose name in the Thai language is Nang Sida and in the Lao language is Nang Sanda. The same Goddess in nearby Malaysia is called Siti Dewi (Dewi means Goddess. The Latin word Deus-God, the Greek Dios/Διός, genitive form of Zeus and the Greek word Theos/Θεός-God as well as the words Divine and Deity in English are all derived from the same Indo-European root). Thai and Lao and Malay are not Indo-European languages of course. But nearby Northern India, where Buddhism started from speaks in Indo-European tongues, is. The ancient language of India was Sanskrit, one of the main pillars, along with Greek, Latin and Germanic, of modern Indo-European linguistic research.
Since Buddhism had its beginning in Hinduism, so we go searching for the Goddess Sita in India, and indeed we soon find her: Sita / सीता is the incarnation (avatara) of the Goddess Lakshmi who in turn is the Goddess of wealth, prosperity and generosity. We need to remember this point. Sita is also the wife of Rama, the legendary king of Ayodhya, an ancient Indian city still in existence, whose wealth and prosperity on the northern plains of ancient India was fabled and lusciously described in Ramayana, one of the main Hindu epics. Rama was in fact considered the seventh incarnation (avatar) of the supreme God Vishnu. Laxshmi decided to descend to earth as Sita, and to toil and endure the hard life so as to become an example to mankind by showing men and especially women that through hard work and virtue wealth and prosperity can be reached. This is why Sita is considered the purest prototype of the proper Hindu woman.

Sita as legend has it was found as a baby in the fields in a furrow in a ploughed field, so everyone assumed her to be the natural daughter of Bhudevi, the Mother Earth Goddess. In fact the original meaning the Goddess Sita's name in Sanskrit is “furrow”: the channel in the field produced by the slow pulling of the plough. It now becomes apparent that Sita is definitely an agricultural deity a deity of wealth that comes from ploughing the fields and the manual toil of agricultural activities. Sita / सीता is “someone of the furrow”, the deity “of a cultivated field”.
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The word “situs” in Latin indicates something or a land in neglect, land that is in need of cultivation. The word Σίτος / Sitos in both modern and ancient Greek means wheat, corn and grain in general. In modern Greek it is also called Στάρι / Stari or Σιτάρι / Sitari. Σιταγωγέω / Sitagogeo in ancient Greek meant the transporting of the grain from the fields And Σιταγωγός / Sitagogos was the specially modified grain transport ship. The word Σιτεύω / Siteuo in both modern and ancient Greek means to fatten the animals by supplying them with plenty of barley seeds and Σιτοβολώνας / Sitobolonas is the field that produces plenty of wheat. Thessaly, in Greek is called the Σιτοβολώνας / Sitobolonas of Greece, for its importance in wheat production that feeds the country. In Dorian Greek (the “northwest” variance of which was spoken in Epirus, Aetolia and Macedonia) Σιτάθην / Sitathen was equal to the Attic and Ionian Εσιτήθην / Esitethen which is the past tense of Σιτέω / Siteo which means to feed someone (original : with grain and wheat). The modern Slavo-macedonian word sita which means to eat to fulfillment, having no Slavic equivalent leads us to believe that (like thousands of other Greek words in this Slavic dialect that borders Greek speaking areas) is most certainly a loan word from the Greek noun Sitari / Grain-Weat and its derivative verb Sitepsa /Σίτεψα, meaning I am already full of food or I became fat with too much food.

A Greek name that is etymologically and semiologically distantly related to Sitas is found on an inscription from the island of Euboea, where among numerous other Greek names we also encounter the name Sitarchos/ Σίταρχος:

Regions : Aegean Islands, incl. Crete (IG XI-[XIII]) : Euboia (IG XII,9) , IG XII,9 245, Euboia — Eretria — early 3rd c. BC — cf. Addenda Ultima p.VII — cf. IG XII,supp.183,24
Σώστρατος Θέωνος Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Αἴσωπος Νήσωνος ἐγ Ν(—)
Εὐαγόρας Λυσιστράτου ἐγ Ν(—)
Φιλώνιχος Φιλήμονος Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Χαίριππος Χαιριδήμου Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Δ̣ίμων Βύβακος Στυρ(όθεν)
Σκύθης Παραμόνου ἐγ Νε(—)
Κλεόδημος Δαφνίωνος Στυ(ρόθεν)
Σίταρχος Θέωνος Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Sitarchos son of Theon, from the town of Zarekos

Sitarchos was originally a trade name describing the official who was entrusted with the duty of procuring the grain necessary to feed (προς σίτησιν/ pros sitesin) the city. His office was called Sitarchia/Σιταρχία as this inscription from Cyprus indicates:

SEG 20:244 SEG 20:243 SEG 20:245
Fragmentary petition addressed to Ptolemy VI or Ptolemy VIII by troops
stationed at Paphos. Fragment of a stele of fine white marble.
Kypros — Nea Paphos (Kato Pafos) — ca. 154 BC? — AJA 65 (1961) 100, 4
[— — ἀπολ]ε̣λ̣ε̣ι̣μ̣μ̣ένοι(?) Λ̣[ύκιοι(?) — — — — — —] the devastated Lycians
[— φιλαν]θρωπηθῆναι ἀπ̣[ὸ — — — — — — — — —] philanthropically assisted by
[— βασι]λικῆς δόσεως [— — — — — — — — — — —] royal donation
[— — — —]ω̣ν τὰς Σιταρχί[ας — — — — — — — — —] the Sitarchies

An equivalent officer in South Italian Greek of Magna Graecia / Μεγάλη Ελλάς would be called Sitagertes / Σιταγέρτης, as is attested in the following inscription:
IG XIV 645 Italy, incl. Magna Graecia:
...ἄλλαι συνθήκαι γεγράπται. ℎότι δέ κα μὴ πράξει ℎο ἀνℎελόμενος κὰτ τὰν συνθήκαν ἢ μὴ ἐν τοῖς χρόνοις τοῖς γεγραμμένοις, ℎυπόλογος ἐσσήται τοῖς πολιανόμοις καὶ τοῖς σιταγέρταις τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶ <ϝ>έτεος, καθὼς καὶ ἐν τᾶι ἄλλαι συνθήκαι γεγράπται...

...as written other treaties. Whatever responsibility the undertaker takes upon himself to complete according to the contract if he does not complete within the agreed time frames, he will be held accountable to the polianomoi (πολιανόμοις - the city law-officials) and to the sitagertai (σιταγέρταις - the city grain-officials) of that year as it is written in the related contracts...

In Macedonia, and more particularly in Paionia, we find the name Sita, on a double funerary inscription:

Regions : Northern Greece (IG X) : Macedonia , Spomenik 71 (1931) 74,174 , Spomenik 71 (1931) 75,175
Makedonia (Paionia) — Resava: Čakovec — date? — Dimitsas, He Makedonia 287 — cf. TIR K34,109 (prov.)
Γαΐᾳ Τίτου Βυρδί-
ων Σίτα τῇ συμ-
βίῳ καὶ ἑαυτῷ ζῶν.
Τίτῳ Βάκχα Νεικη-
σὼ τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ αὑτῇ
ζώσῃ.
To Gaia, daughter of Titos Byr-
dion son of Sitas to his life-
companion and to himself while still living.
To Titos son of Bacchas, Neike-
So to her husband and to herself
while still living.

The names are mixed. Gaia and Titos/Titus are clearly Latin names, which indicates that this inscription is dated to the Roman era. Byrdion / Βυρδίων, as K.G. Kourtides in his “Istoria tes Thrakes”/History of Thrace (Κ.Γ.Κουρτίδου, Ιστορία της Θράκης, 1932) tells us is a typical Thracian name, along with Βύζος/Byzos, Βίτων/Biton, Βίττος/Bittos, Δέβειθυς/Debeithys, Δίτύβιατος/Ditybiatos, Πιατοϋς/Piatoys, Βίθυος/Bythios, Βείθίβτράλης/Beithybtrales, etc).
Bacchas / Βάκχας and Nikeso / Νεικησὼ are Greek names. This leaves us Sitas, which, as we saw in the beginning of this article is also a Thracian name. therefore, while this inscription is found in Macedonia, it is obvious that we are encountering Hellenized and Romanized Thracians, quite possibly intermarried with Greek speaking Macedonians and Hellenized Paionians.
This is the only inscription that we have been able to locate that the name Sitas is documented in Macedonia.

Moving away from Macedonia now, we move to western China, where we encounter the curiously Greek-sounding Tocharian-B language. Tocharian was spoken by an extinct and yet to be indentified indo-European-speaking people that inhabited what is now Xinjiang, a land now inhabited mostly by Turkic speaking Uigurs and Han Chinese. In the literary documents of the Tocharians we find the word “sito” which meant “grain field”.

Looking deep into our common indo-European legacy, we find the common Indo-European root word *seh1i- whose original meaning was: “to sow”. This word seems to be the original root of all the Sitos-related cognates found in Greek, Latin, Tocharian, Sanskrit and Thracian. But this, as we will find out, is only the beginning.
The word sitos/σίτος means “wheat” in Greek. It is a very ancient word since it already appears documented as “si-to” in Linear B clay tablets of Mycenaean / Achaean Greek from the mid-second millennium BC. Sitos happens to be one of those rare words that are lost in the mist of the distant linguistic pre-history of the Eastern Mediterranean. The only other word which I can think of that is so widespread across diverse linguistic families, from Africa to Europe and the Middle East, is the word for “cat”, which also transcends linguistic family barriers, possibly due to its Egyptian origin.

The Greek “sitos” for wheat appears as an isogloss “zitu” in Basque (the only local
non Indo-European language of the European continent) and it means “cereal”. It also appears as “zid” in ancient Sumerian, a very ancient Semitic language of Mesopotamia, where it means “wheat flower”. The word for “wheat” or “corn” in ancient Egyptian is “sw’t”. In most Slavonic languages zito/ Житo means cereal (Russian, Bulgarian, Serbocroatian, Slovenian and Slavomakedonski among other languages and dialects. Сито/Sito means “sieve” in Russian and Serbian, and it is used mostly to describe the flower strainer used for cleaning up the flower from the grains, so it is related to sitos and to zito. In Greek an almost identical isogloss exists: sita/σήτα, meaning the strainer net, obviously related etymologically to the wheat grain. The white (wheat ) bread is called Sitnyj chleb / ситный хлеб in Russian, an obvious isogloss of sitos/σίτος and zito/Житo.

Aleksandar Donski is trying to convince us that “according to etymology and pronunciation” Sitas is a “name that is identical to the present day Macedonian adjective "sita" (eating to satisfaction).” But if we look into Russian, we find out that an almost identical and for sure related word exists in Russian too: Ситост/Sitost, eating to fulfillment. Сытный / Sitnij means ritchly nourishing in Russian. Are the Russian Makedonci too?

If you ask some delusional pseudo-macedonians in Skopje, professor Boshevski of the so called Macedonian Academy of the Arts and Sciences of Skopje, among others, they will answer in the affirmative: all the Slavs, the pseudomacedonians claim, are indeed Makedonci. If we are to retain some semblance of seriousness though, we will have to admit that sita and sitost and sitnij are Slavic isoglosses. Therefore, if we also remember the Greek verb siteuo, then the picture becomes very cleare: Since wheat became domesticated and was first cultivated somewhere around the middle east, deep in our human prehistory, almost ten thousand years ago, and since the early Indo-Europeans learned the trade of cultivation from the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia and Anatolia it becomes explainable why the word for wheat is so common to so many linguistically diverse people such as Egyptians, Greeks, Tocharians, Slavs, Basques and Sumerians, among others, all being related through the use of this rich and nutritious cereal.
Let us then return to the ancient Thracians. The word “Siros” meant the place where someone stores the grain, in the Thracian language, the granary.
( http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/glossary/thra.html ).

The name of my hometown Serres / Σέρρες, an ancient city dominating the agriculturally fertile basin of Strymon / Στρυμών river in Central-Eastern Macedonia of northern Greece, whose preΗellenic name is Sirris / Σίρρις, according to Herodotus, is probably related to the Thracian word Siros, the granery. The name of a village in the nearby province of Drama, Sitagroi/Σιταγροί, the “Wheat fields”, shows that such a name would not be unusual. Sitagroi is a very ancient village after all, about 7000 years old: Prehistoric Sitagroi: Excavations in Northeast Greece, Ernestine S. Elster, Colin Renfrew, 1968-1970, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.06.21. Volume 2: The Final Report. Monumenta Archaeologia, 20. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, 2003. ( http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-06-21.html ).

Sitas, we can now say with a high degree of certainty, was a Thracian name, which (while distantly connected as a word to the common -for many Indo-European and not only languages - word for the wheat grain) was nevertheless unrelated as a name to Greek, not necessarily derived from it. No stone inscription or other literary documentation exists that can tie this name to the Hellenic-speaking ancient Macedonians. On the other hand Sitas is most definitely not a Slavic name either. It is too ancient a name to be even considered as a south Slavic name. The Slavs did not arrive into the lower Balkans until the 7th century AD, several hundred years after the first attestation of this name by Thucydides and long after the Thracians had lost their linguistic and ethnic identity. The name Sitas, therefore (as well as the related Sitalces/Sitalkes and Sitalkas/Sitalcas), is most definitely and clearly a Thracian (Tracum, as the Rufus Sitas inscription reminds us) name whose original meaning was derived from the word for wheat-grain and the wealth that is derived from its cultivation.