(also genitive), Oscan Dípatír, and Umbrian Iupater and Iuve patre.^5 A similar
compound appears also in Illyrian Deipaturos, recorded by Hesychius as a god
among the Stymphaioi.^6
The name Dyeus originated as one of a number of words built on the root
di /dei‘give off light’ and located in the semantic sphere ‘brightness of
heaven, heaven, daylight, day’.^7 Latin dies‘day’ is in origin the same word as
Iu(piter), though it developed a quite separate declension, starting from the
old accusative die ̄m. The old nominative still survives in the phrase nu ̄-diu ̄s
tertius‘the day before yesterday’, literally ‘now (it is) the third day’. The sense
of ‘day’ also appears in Vedic divé-dive‘day by day’, Greek #νδzο (< $ν–
διfyο) ‘in the mid part of the day’, Armenian tiw‘bright day’, Old Irish die
‘day’, Welsh heddyw‘today’, etc. In some forms relating to ‘day’ the di root is
extended by -n- instead of -w-, as in Vedic dínam‘day’, Latin n(o)undinum,
Old Irish noenden‘nine-day period’, Old Church Slavonic dı ̆nı ̆, Lithuanian
diena‘day’, etc.
The -w- forms are more typically associated with the (bright diurnal) sky.
Vedic dyáu-, besides being the name of a god, is the common word for
‘heaven’. The word occurs once in the Avesta, in reference to Angra Mainyu’s
falling from heaven (Yt. 3. 13), and we may recall Herodotus’ statement
(1. 131. 2) that the Persians call the whole circle of the sky ‘Zeus’. Greek
εOδιο,ε1δα refer to a ‘good sky’, that is, fine, calm weather; they have their
counterpart in Church Slavonic du ̆zˇdı ̆, Russian дождь (< dus-dyu-), ‘rain’.
Besides dyéw-/diw- MIE had the adjectival form deiwó- ‘celestial’, which,
as we saw in the last chapter, was the common term for ‘god’. In part of the
Indo-European area it may have been used as a synonym of dyéw-, as deiwós
was the source of the Finnish loan-word taivas, Estonian taevas, ‘sky’, and also
of the Lithuanian Die ̃vas, Latvian Dievs, whose role in the mythological
songs, as we shall see later, parallels that of the Vedic Dyaus and Greek Zeus.^8
(^5) E. Vetter, Handbuch der italischen Dialekte (Heidelberg 1953), 186, 218; H. Rix in
D. Q. Adams (ed.), Festschrift for Eric P. Hamp, ii (JIESM 25, Washington 1997), 144–9; id. in Per
Aspera ad Asteriscos: Studia Indogermanica in honorem Jens Elmegård Rasmussen (Innsbruck
2004), 491–505; Tab. Iguv. IIa. 7, 18, 22, IIb. 24.
(^6) Hesych. δ 521. The Stymphaioi or Tymphaioi were a mountain people of Epirus, on
the borders of Thessaly and Macedonia. ∆ει- perhaps represents De ̄ from a vocative Die ̄.
Cf. Krahe (1955–64), i. 54, 64; Mayer (1957–9), ii. 39; C. de Simone, JIES 4 (1976), 361 f.
(^7) On the whole complex cf. C. Watkins in Mayrhofer et al. (1974), 101–10; J. Schindler, RE
Supp. xv. 999–1001; Haudry (1987), 29 f., 36–8, 40–4; Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 196, cf. 211;
E. Seebold, HS 104 (1991), 29–45; S. Vanséveren, ibid. 111 (1998), 31–41; B. Schlerath in Meid
(1998), 91–3.
(^8) Cf. von Schroeder (1914–16), i. 528; Haudry (1987), 44. The Germanic Tı ̄waz (Norse Tr,
etc.) also goes back to deiwós (cf. Chapter 3, n. 1). But he does not seem to be the old Sky-god,
and it is preferable to suppose that he once had another name, which came to be supplanted by
the title ‘God’.
- Sky and Earth 167