Peter Kirby

Haran:

See here for the thread on Ebla, with my listing of words in the TLG ending in IANOI.

Can you identify any that aren't based on Latin?

I think that Spin has scored the point that the development went Christus -> Christianus (or plural Christiani) -> Christianos (or plural Christianoi).

best,
Peter Kirby

spin

Just in case anyone reading might misunderstand, most of the examples Peter provided at the URL above were constructed directly in Greek, from geographical names like Baktria or Asia with a euphonic -n- inserted plus a case ending, eg Baktrianos so we get an -ian- but it is not an affix: the word divides Baktria-n-os. The few that really have an -ian- affix are directly from Latin.

Incidentally, I have come across a post of some years back I think from B-Greek which makes the point about the Latin construction of "Christian", so it is not *sigh* a new idea, it seems.


spin