Saxon and Scythian

"The Old Church Slavonic language was codified by the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius around the middle of the 9th century.", is it wrong?

Persian historians and geographers have mentioned "Sakalaba" some hundreds years earlier, maybe you believe they were another people (not Slavs)?!

 

Middle Persian "Hormoz" isn't similar to Old Persian "Ahura Mazda", so they worshiped different gods!!!

 

There are basically two ethymologies for the word Slav both are inherently Slavic in origin:

 

First, Slav come from the Slavic "Slovo" i.e. word which means that they were "people of words"  who understood each other and spoke in the same language (in some Slavic languages Slavs are called Slovene). On the other hand some other people are called "mute" in some Slavic languages i.e. they are  those "who don't have words (which Slavs could understand)" e.g. Germans are called "Nemcy" coming from "Nem" meaning "mute."

 

Second possible ethymology Slav comes from Slava i.e. "Glory" in Slavic.

 

I'm not totally sure about the origins of the word Sakaliba, but Slavs never called themselves Sakaliba. Sakaliba is most likely just a Persian/Arabic form of pronouncing "Slav."

 

Besides, Sakaliba was used not only for Slavs, Ibd Fadlan uses is for Volga Bulgars as well.

 

Why do you need to say that every word under the Sun has Iranic origin?

 

It's the same is I say that Persian comes from the Russian word 'Persik" which means a peach.

 

Well. The use of "cheloveka" is indeed limited to the combination with some numerals. But it's totally literal and is widely used. I can even refer you to the news articles in Russian by the official mass media which use "X cheloveka" if you are interested.

 

 There was "cheloveki" in the Old Russian. It's indeed is not used now and sounds funny. . I guess the word which was referred by those authors was "cheloveki."

 

But for "The Men" "Liudi" is indeed the best translation. However, "The Three Men" would be "Tri Cheloveka"

We could, but I don't know enough about prehistoric German and Indo-Iranian tribes. I would think it unlikely though that they ever saw an assimilation of peoples like that which I would consider necessary for a 'creole' to emerge.   On the other hand, if they traded I bet they had a pidgin to trade in.  And that could lead to some exchange of words between the languages themselves remaining after the pidgin vanished.   After all that's how we got 'orange', to give Cyrus one.

Like I and several scholars argued extensively, not every linguistic contact produces pidgins or creoles, not even when a specific activity like trade is involved.

 

In pre-history, certainly there was significant assimilation, especially at the boundaries between linguistic groups. In that book on Circum-Baltic languages I quoted from earlier, a scholar suggested that Baltic languages were once spoken on a wide area from Berlin to Moscow. If this is true, it means a lot of Baltic speakers were assimilated by Fino-Ugric, Slavic, Iranic or Germanic speakers, possibly also Turkic (if the former succeded to survive unassimilated for that long).

In reverse we also know at the dawn of "Germanic history" of many Germanic populations (or arguably mixed with steppe elements - like those of Huns or Alans which very likely encompassed some "barbarous" Germanic elements in their roamings) which eventually were assimilated by other populations (Slavic, Romance, etc.). In some cases, either their numbers were insignificant relative to the local population, or their culture was/became disconsidered/viewed as of low prestige, so that it's hard to find today traces of their passing (like in large parts of Eastern Europe and Balkans we can't find (m)any traces of Goths, Gepids, Vandals, etc.)

 

The word "orange" however does not support Cyrus' case because it did not come into English directly from an Iranian language, but through Mediterranean trade, passing through many languages (thus a relatively large difference between forms, the English etymological dictionary gives the Persian form narang, Cyrus can enlighten us which are the contemporary forms of this word in Iranian languages)

 

 

Secondly, I'm talking here about the names not about the people themselves. Why do you think the name "Slav" originate from "Sakaliba"?

 

It's just simply more natural to think that "Sakaliba" originates from "Slavs."

 

In any case, Slavs never called themselves Sakaliba.