Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1965, Page 86

84
KEMP MALONE
is possible enough that the h is prosthetic in origin. As my old
master, the lamented Holger Pedersen, made clear to me long ago,
the rough breathing is a sound readily lost and sometimes added in
languages that have it, the Germanic tongues included. He gave
German heischen (cognate with English ask) as an example in which
h, originally prosthetic, came to be incorporated, and A. Noreen
pointed out a like Zusatz in Old Icelandic; according to him, “h
wird nicht selt. im anlaut vor vokalen .. . zugesetzt ... Immer h
zeigt hiúpr ... kurze jacke ohne armel.”9 Let us then proceed on
the hypothesis that the h of llinn was not original and see what we
can make of the inn that is left.
Ilolthausen in his Wörterbuch gives no etymology for Hinn but
marks it “dunkel.” Yet if we drop the h the inn can be explained as
a gradational variant of Qmð. This goes back to pre-Gmc *omst-
(fem. consonant stem), whereas *inn, earlier *inþ, still earlier *imþ,
would go back to pre-Gmc *emt-, with e-grade of the first, nil-grade
of the second vowel.10 And if Qmð and *Inn (later Hinn) are vari-
ant forms of the same name one can see why both forms might be
used to name the same island. The fact that both appear in a list of
eyja heiti is only what one would expect and carries with it no im-
plication that they are names for different islands.
As time went on, nevertheless, they must have undergone diffe-
rentiation, since the main island is now called Hinn, the outlying one
And. How this came about remains uncertain but if we may judge by
Snorri’s usage the present differentiation was not current when he
was writing Heimskringla.11 I conceive that in his day both islands
usually went by the name Qmð (> Qmd > Qnd). If so, the out-
lying one might have been distinguished by a prefixed út, later
9 Noreen, 224.
10The raising of e to i before nasal + cons. (a Germanic change) may have
taken place before or after the change m > n before the dental consonant. For
nþ > nn, see Noreen, 199.
11 His one use of Hinn occurs in the tale of Sigurð slembidjákn and belongs
to the tradition about this character.