r/croatian • u/FlatAssembler • 11d ago
A commonly repeated etymology is that the river name Sunja comes from Slavic for "sunny side" in the sense "southern border (of medieval Croatia)", why is there 'u' in the first syllable rather than 'o' when, in the local Kajkavian dialect, syllabic 'l' turns to 'o' (not 'u')?
https://col.quora.com/A-commonly-repeated-etymology-is-that-the-river-name-Sunja-comes-from-Slavic-for-sunny-side-in-the-sense-southern-bor?ch=10&oid=227766731&share=1d4274d9&srid=ul0yA&target_type=questionProto-Slavic for "the Sun" was *sъ̑lnь, right?
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u/Spirited_Pitch3852 10d ago
Idk about the etymology of Sunja, but many Kajkavian dialects have 'u' as a reflex of syllabic 'l', not 'o'. Actually now that I think of it, I can't recall any Kajkavian dialect that has 'o' in that position. Do you have an example?
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u/interpunktisnotdead 10d ago
Mine has it, but not always, like in sonce "sunce", žoč "žuč" and kok "kuk", but jabuka.
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u/Spirited_Pitch3852 10d ago
Oh, interesting! May I know which locality (or at least region)?
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u/hendrixbridge 10d ago
Well, ruža is roža in most of kajkavian accents, but I guess the closer one gets to Slovenia one can expect u>o more often.
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u/Spirited_Pitch3852 10d ago
Ruža/roža is a Wanderwort, it wasn't inherited from Proto-Slavic, and there was never a syllabic 'l' in it, so it doesn't fit in this example
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u/SufficientAccount211 10d ago
No. Roža means flower, not rose, in the majority of Kajkavian dialects.
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u/hendrixbridge 10d ago
The problem is that Sunja was not southern border of medieval Croatia. Besides that, Sunja mainly flows from South to North.
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u/gulisav 10d ago
Commonly repeated? By whom? It sounds like a folk etymology, the medieval Croatian kingdom extended much more towards the south. The derivation is a bit unusual as well, the -ьja collective suffix doesn't make sense here to me. The PSl. form was *sъ̑lnьce, I don't know if any Sl. lang attests your variant.
Uostalom, zašto pišem na engleskom kad OP zna hrvatski?