that ‘a rigorous, pedantic application of current phonetic and grammatical
rules to such a highly specialized field of language as hieratic onomastics
would be sheer fallacy’. Freedom of treatment was ‘quite a typical feature of
mythological nomenclature, prompted in part by the severe rules of taboo
and partly by the vital needs of ecstatic expressivity’.^53 It is widely accepted
that the force of taboo can operate by deforming rather than suppressing
the supernatural being’s proper name.^54 That might explain some of the
anomalies that confront us. It might, for example, have played a role in
the irregular dialect variations found in the names of many Greek gods ––
Poseidon, Athena, Hermes, Apollo, Ares, Dionysus.^55 At any rate it is a
convenient theory.
Gods’ names are not invented arbitrarily, like those of aliens in science
fiction. Originally they have a meaning, they express some concept, and some-
times this is still apparent or discoverable.
In PIE, before the development of the three-gender system characteristic of
MIE, there was a two-gender system which simply distinguished between
animate and inanimate. In some cases there were pairs of words, one of either
gender, for what we would think of as the same thing. For instance, Fire
considered as an active principle was *hn
̊
gwnis (animate), but as a mere
physical entity *péh 2 ur
̊
(inanimate); the first gave the Latin masculine ignis,
the second the Greek neuter πυ
ρ, English fire, etc. Water as a living, moving
thing was h 2 e ̄ ̆p- (animate), as an inert element u
ˆ
ο ́dr
̊(inanimate). If either
was to be accorded divine status, it was naturally the animate, and in Vedic we
dulyfind Agni ‘Fire’ and A ̄pah
̇
‘the Waters’ as the recipients of hymns.
On a similar principle other things could be made into deities by trans-
ferring them to the animate gender.^56 Thus the Indo-Iranian god of the
contract, Mitráh
̇
/Miθro ̄, is the masculinized form of the neuter mitrám/
miθrəm‘contract’. Indra’s monstrous enemy Vr
̇
tráh
̇, who blocked the waters,
is the masculinized form of the neuter vr
̇
trám‘blockage’. What is in Vedic the
neuter noun vánah
̇
, genitive vánasah
̇(< vénos, vénesos), ‘loveliness’, appears
in Latin as the female deity Ve n u s, genitive Veneris. Zarathushtra very fre-
quently sings of Asˇa -‘Truth’ as a divine principle, mostly as a neuter (asˇ
̇
əm,=
Vedic r
̇
tám), but when he wants to address him directly, or represent him as a(^53) de Vries (1956), ii. 275; Jakobson (1962–88), vii. 44 f., cf. 13.
(^54) The phenomenon can be illustrated from English exclamations of an earlier generation:
‘by Gum’, ‘Golly’, ‘Gosh’ for (by) God, ‘O Lor’ for Lord, ‘Jeepers Creepers’, ‘Cripes’, ‘Crikey’ for
(Jesus) Christ, ‘Heck’ for Hell, ‘well, I’ll be darned’ (or dashed, danged) for damned.
(^55) As noted by Müller (1897), 399 f.
(^56) Cf. Paul Thieme, Mitra und Aryaman (New Haven 1957), 20–6, 38, 81 f.; id., Paideuma 7
(1960), 135–46; Pisani (1969), 257 f., 264; Johanna Narten, Die Aməsˇ
̇
a Spən ̇tas im Awesta (Wies-
baden 1982), 64.
- Gods and Goddesses 135