Insights
SOME ETYMOLOGIES FROM “HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF SARDINIAN LANGUAGE”:

SOME ETYMOLOGIES FROM “HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF SARDINIAN LANGUAGE:
“ABBA Log., aqua Camp. ‘water’. Wagner argues that abba derived directly from Lat. aqua, by virtue of the outcome of Lat. -q- > Sard. -b-. But I’ve already explained that for -q- andb- we are not at all in front of a derivative process, a phonetic standard diachronically derived from another, but in front of two synchronic phenomena, already operating on their own behalf before the Roman invasion. Abba already exists in Akkadian dictionary: abbu ‘swamp, bog’; abbû ‘aquatic fauna’; bā ‘water’. Already existed in Sumerian language: a’abak ‘sea (water)’, a-ab-ba ‘idem’ (< a ‘water’ + ab ‘sea’ + ba ‘marine creature’). Originally there was a double record, which bequeathed two Sardinian lemmas: abba at north, ácua, aqua at south. The Campidanian register is based on Akk. agû, egû ‘wave, current, flood’, which then came under the influence of Lat. aqua. Phenomenon of Lautverschiebung north ≠ south.
ÁCUA, áqua Camp. ‘water’ < Lat. aqua. See abba
BARANTA surname and numeral, ‘forty’, which according to Pittau (and to entire “Romance” establishment) corresponds to Lat. quadraginta. But this hypothesis leaves icy, due to the phonetic difference between both lemmas (quadrisillable against trisyllable, as well as qu ≠ b-). This lemma is Sardian; as for the surname, is based on Sum. bar ‘strange, foreign’ + anta ‘companion’, meaning ‘foreign partner’ (evidently referring to a soldier of the composites armies, those created by the great empires or by the Sea Peoples).
About the numeral, it should be noted, first, that Lat. quadraginta had an independent development from Italian quaranta (forty) and Sd. baranta.
The Italian lemma was originally created on the basis of Akk. qātu ‘hand, four’ + Sum. ara ‘times’ (qāt-ara- ‘four at a time’, multiplier) + nta prefix in verbal chain of ablative-instrumental (‘from’), 3rd sg. The original meaning of the whole chain qāt-ara-nta ‘forty’ was ‘four times per (ten)’. Note that Sum. nta, in turn, has basis in -na- (dative prefix in verbal chain, hence a-na means motion to ‘to, at’) + ta (ablative particle).
In turn, Lat. quadraginta developed on qāt-ra-nta with the explicit inclusion of Sum. ag ‘to make; effect a change ‘(see Lat. ag-ō) + gin ‘to go’. The compound was qāt-ra-ag-gin-nta = ‘four times for (ten) is going to…’. But in Logudoro that form not ever prevailed: they decided to keep the Ug.-Heb. base arbʽ ‘four’. In the Middle Ages, when it was imposed the Camp. quatu, quattru, the archaic Log. arb‛ ‘was gradually understood how it was *ar-ba- ie *sar-ba- ‘the four’, from which sprang *ar-ba-tor > *sar ba-tor > (sar) battor, which became battor. As you can see, the Logudorian b- is original, distinct from Camp. qu-.
BARDÀNA. In Sardinia it means ‘robbery, cattle rustling’. Wagner (HLS § 220, La Lingua Sarda 287) argues this Sardinian word follows from Anc. It. gualdana (with transition g- > b-). But Wagner’s hypothesis is wrong, as the true meaning of bardàna as ‘organized assault by shepherds against a village’ has the same basis as Sd. bárdia, árdia. In turn bárdia, árdia, várdia, are pronunciations, differentiated according to the villages, of a Sardian word indicating the same phenomenon which then denoted also medieval warlike rides: it has etymological basis in Ass. ardu, (w)ardu(m) ‘slave, servant’ (hence Sd. surn. Ardu). So árdia, bárdia, várdia, guárdia is properly a ‘service’, and originally pointed to the “horse service in war” by the local cavalry.
BATTÍU Log. ‘widower’; battìa ‘widow’, from Akk. bābtu(m) ‘loss, deficit’, of which battίu is adjectival. Instead the Camp. bagadíu ‘not yet married’ has basis in Akk. (w)aqû(m), waqā’um ‘to attend to, waiting for’ (from which Lat. vacuum ’empty’); bagadíu is adjectival of the Akkadian term.
BATTOR Log. ‘four’. This shape is similar to, but distinct from, Lat. quattuor ‘four’. The Latin word has etym. basis in Akk. qātu(m) ‘hand’ + Sum. ur ‘to gather, collect’: qātu-ur ‘a gathered hand’. Note the quaternary Semitic numbering originated from the count by moving your thumb over the other fingers. This phenomenon was also in use in Thrace (Aristotle). So Latin has preserved the Sumerian-Semitic structure: qātu-ur > quattu-or. In Campidano the initial base was qātu without Sum. final ur); then qātu (read quátu) became quattru, but not by Latin influence but by “Mediterranean” procedure. In fact, the original Sum. ur was metathesized soon in Italy and in Campidano: qātu-ur > quattro, qāt(u)-ru. But in Logudoro that form not ever prevailed: it was decided to keep the Ug.-Heb. arbʽ ‘four’. In the Middle Ages, when Camp. quatu, quattru, prevailed, the archaic Log. arb‛ was gradually understood how it was *ar-ba-tor > *sar ba-tor > (sar) battor, which became battor. As you can see, the Logudorian b- is original, distinct from the original Camp. qu-. Note, however, that the (supposed but non-existent) reduction palatal → velar of numerals never occurs in the original syllables of the type -qui- but only in those of the type -que-, -qua- (see kimbe, Lat. quinque ≠ baranta).
DO Engl. ‘fare, agire’. Basis in Sum. du(-g) ‘to build, make’; also ‘to speak’ as in frases aš du(g) ‘to speak a curse (to curse)’, di du(g) ‘to speak a case (to judge)’, anir du(g) ‘to speak a graon (to moan)’, ĝiš du(g) ‘to make the penis (to love)’, maškim du(g) ‘to make the clerk of the court’, ecc. From these examples we note an identity of action and form of Sumerian and British verb.
EWE Engl. ‘pecora’. Base in Sum. u ‘ewe’.
EARTH EnGOOSE Engl. ‘oca’. Base in Akk. ūsu(m), us’um ‘goose’.GOOSE Engl. ‘oca’. Base in Akk. ūsu(m), us’um ‘goose’.
LULLABY Engl. ‘ninna-nanna’, from Sum. elulam ‘song’, ‘sad song’.
MANY Engl., has the basis in ancient Akk. manû(m) ‘to count, calculate’.
NET Engl. ‘rete’; Germ. Netz, Goth. nati, Anglos. net(t), etc. Semerano OCE II 674 refers it to Lat. nassa and nōdus, and recalls the basic Semitic corresp. to Akk. nadûm (to throw the network in the water). While giving some validity to Semerano’s instructions, it is preferable Akk. nêtu ‘to surround, encircle’, where you can see the effects of the ‘network’ rather than the needs determining that use.
SAME Engl. ‘identical’, ‘the same’. Base in Sum. sa ‘equal to’ + me ‘to be’: sa-me = ‘to be equal to’.
SET (to set) Engl. ‘put, place’, ‘to regulate’, ‘place’ (ex. a trap), ‘fix, establish’; cf. Sd. séttiu, sédiu ‘right position’, ‘way of being’; torrare a séttiu is cosas ‘put things right’, assettiái ‘put in place’; cf. It. assettare ‘put in place, fix’, assetto ‘accommodation or disposal coordinated to the conduct of an operation’. Base in Sum. se ‘to set, dwell’, ‘live’ + du ‘build’, ‘plant’, ‘hold firmly’: se-du = ‘firmly establish’, ‘settle firmly’, then Lat. sēdēs ‘where you live’, ‘chair’, ‘throne’, sedēre ‘sit, stand still’.
SHE Engl. ‘she’ (dem. pron. of 3rd person, and independent pronoun) < Akk. šī ‘she’.
SILK Engl. ‘seta’, etymological base in Sum. sikil ‘pure’, ‘to be or to make pure’.
SUN Engl. ‘sun, It. sole’, etymological basis in Sum. šun ‘to shine, to (be)come bright’. See also the Sardinian surname Sonnu, which doesn’t correspond to substantive sonnu ‘sleep’ < Lat. somnus, but has etymological basis in Sum. šun ‘shine, to become bright’ (see Germ. Sonne ‘sun’). Then it pointed in origin the sun, and then the Sun God.
TILL, until Engl. preposition which espresses an event stops at the time or point mentioned. Etymologic base Sum. til ‘to complete, to end’.
BE, BI ‘here, there’. This adverb and preposition of place ha a reference in Ug.-Phoen.-Hebr. b- (be); Engl. by ‘at’, ‘in’, ‘near, close’.
ÉYA, ÉY. This adverb of affirmation, with corresponding semantics It. sì, is almost identical to those used by Anglo-Saxon and Germanic: Engl. yà, yèa, yès; Germ. yà, jà. It’s an assertive Eurasian relic belonging to the First Linguistic Koiné (note Eurasian Koiné began in the Paleolithic by Neanderthal Man), whose etymological basis resists in Sumerian e, i, ei (e-i), ia. Precisely: e vocative interjection; i vocative expression, vocative exclamation = It., Engl. hey!; ia exclamation oh!, a kind of exclamation (consisting of i + a ‘a bird cry’). The discreet use of the four Sumerian phonetic formations, very similar to each other and as such fungible, brought, along the millennia, the mutual contamination or merger, with the results that today remain by Sardinian, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic.
DÉU, DÉUS. This Sardinian name is truly universal, in spite of what a linguists’ crowd thinks. It is worth mentioning Ζεῦς, ‘God’ par excellence, who was the highest god of Olympus. Son of Cronus and Rhea and brother of Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, he appeared in Greece as the father of gods and men. But his appearance as leader of a pantheon takes us around 1200 BCE (Iliad), when the name Déus/Zeús was circulating in the Mediterranean for thousands of years.
Indeed, Sardinian Déu is pan-Mediterranean, pronounced Zeús in Greece, Deus in Rome. The linguistic evidence confirms an antiquity much more remote of Sardinian word with respect to Greek and Latin one. This pan-Sardinian word, along with the Greek and Latin, has an archaic basis in Sum. de ‘to create’ + u ‘totality, world’ : de-u = ‘Creator of the Universe’. Skr. deva ‘god’ has the same root as Sumerian, further evidence that it was the Sumerian basin to irradiate the concept of the Universal Principle. It is worth adding that from the basis di ‘splendor’, de ‘creator’ the Sumerians forged their own term to appoint properly God, which is dingir, di-ĝir, that exactly means ‘God of the Sumerians’ (where di means ‘God’ , ĝir means ‘indigenous, native’ or ‘Sumerian’, ‘who lives in the land of Sumer’).
It is not true that Gr. Zεύς transcribe z- from Indo-European *dy- (Rendich, LI): it’s indeed from Sum. d-. In a context of parallel comparisons, confusion was gone from the intrusion of lemma θεός Greek ‘god’, as they did not want to realize that θεός is not a proper (personal) name but a genus name who indicates any Greek god of the pantheon, from which it is distinguished properly Ζεύς with his personal name.
Mainly they did not want to take into account the concept of Greek θεός is specified by the collateral verb θέω ‘to shine, blaze’: so that θε- is a distinctive (oppositional) shape having the same concept as Sum. di ‘blaze’, which was approved by other “Indo-European” roots dī- (ex. Lat. dī-us), relating to the ‘light of day’, ‘to shine, make it clear’, which in fact have a base in Sum. di ‘to shine, blaze, to be bright’. So Lat. di-us ‘bright, divine, of heaven’, di-es ‘day’, Gr. dī-os ‘bright, divine, heavenly’ have a base in Sum. di ‘to shine, to be bright’ + u ‘universe’, with the original meaning of ‘to illuminate the universe’; they are thus not separable in *d-ī, such as the Indo-Europeanists would claim: they translate it as ‘continuous motion (ī) of light (d)’ (see Rendich), ie in a way that is the antithesis of scientific thinking.
SARDU. Then I’ll try to take a chance (albeit with the panting of the doubt) starting with the Sardinian surname Sardu, which at first seems a gentilicium perfectly autochthonous, ie of Sardinia. Do you want to give this name to Libyan (ie African) Sardus, which Pausanias believes the eponym of Sardians? Or should we even mention the Herodotus’s Sárdeis in Anatolia (Lydia)? But Semerano and other Semitists claim the original name of Sárdeis is Sfard, Persian Saparda, Hebrew Sephārad. Look at the difference!
I admit the difficulty of identifying the exact pronunciation of a name or a personal name, after thousands of years (see in § 3.1.1). But, thank goodness, this difficulty is not a barrier forever. For the most part, the difficulty of understanding the real origins of phonetics is inherent in our limited culture. A glaring example is the name of the Hyksos pharaoh Salitis, so called by Manetho but known in Memphis as Šarek, and Šeši in Kerma (the Nubia’s capital). The solution of the snag is simple: the key is in -r- of Šarek, who must have been the phonetic result of -l- in Quartu S.E., which is a bit like -r- uvular in Paris. It is well known that Egyptians didn’t pronounce -l- and substituted it with -r- (the exact opposite of the Chinese!).
The Greek-Alexandrian intellectuals in Egypt had to understand the difference in pronunciation, and Manetho wrote Salitis, with -l- (and with Greek suffix). As for the even more difficult Šeši, it’s diminutive of Šarek: it was a habit of Egyptians to shorten the names of the pharaohs, both for their complexity and because Pharaoh represented everything (home, life, health…) and he was affectionately called by ypochoristics. As for the Greeks, I candidly admit they were not only masters of paronomasias (of which filled their texts), but also of phonetic misspellings, relating to personal names and place names. All that said, you can not close on surname Sardu (which someone supposes of Lydian origin) without remembering the Akkadian occurrence, which is sardium, anc. Ass. ‘a song of blessing’: it has obvious relationship with the sacred. On the other hand, we have the second occurrence: they have always spoken of sardìna (sardine) as fish referred to Sardinia (and I have no objection), but nobody has ever put in relation this fish-name with anc. Ass. sardum ‘packaged, weighed down’, a clear sign that this fish was even then salted in wooden baskets or asphodel baskets, and therefore the current sardine has the etymology from Akkadian concept of “packaging”. Third occurrence: Sardus and Sardinia may have the same basic language of the ethnic Šardana.
ŠARDANA. The word Šardàna (ŠRDN), found in the famous stele of Nora (besides in Egyptian texts), in that while it’s to be translated as ‘Sardinia’, is also the homophone of his ethnic (Šardana = ‘inhabitant of Sardinia’). Fuentes-Estanol for the Phoenician language, gives Šrdn for ‘Sardinian’ and Šrdn’, also Šrdny, Šrdnt as a proper name. In this matter we can never underestimate the presence of apophonies of which were rich Canaanite languages. In the Egyptian texts Šardana are registered as Šarṭana, Šarṭenu, Šarṭina (EHD 727b). Other times in Egyptian texts they are marked just as Šarṭana n p iām ‘the Shardanas those of the sea’ (for n EHD 339a, for p EHD 229a, for iām EHD 142b). Wallis Budge considers them from Sardinia. The same think the Egyptian archaeologists and philologists, along with the majority of the scholars of English and American school, and even the Israelis. A majority in the world that comforts. Also because the name still survives in Sardinia as surname: Sardánu, and it’s impossible to deny it’s the continuation of archaic ethnic Šardana (ŠRDN).The Sumerians called Sardinia as Sardū, from sar ‘garden’ + dū ‘all, everything’, which we modulate in sar-dū ‘a whole garden’: this island was seen like this by people accustomed to the wretched productions of the deserts. In Akkadian there is a relationship suffix -ān, corresponding to Sardian -ánu, Lat. -anus, which exactly is a quality, profession, origin suffix: then sar-d-an, šar-d-an. But I don’t forget that Sardō was the wife of Tyrrhenian Agronus son of Atys the Lydian. From her didn’t take name the city of Sárdeis in Lydia, while instead assumed this name the island first called Argyróflebs, then Sardinia (from scholium to Plato’s Timaeus).
SARDŌ is a female name, Sardūs is man’s name: I untangle the problem with the help of Sumerian sar-dū ‘a whole garden’ (which, I repeat, was the name of Sardinia, but also a feminine name!). This Sumerian word was so famous, that he had to be attributed to men too, by virtue of the fact that Sumerians used the most often -u for both sexes. And since the Phoenician suffixes (we will see them) are quite different from the suffix -u-s (scholion to Timaeus), we must admit that, regardless of the final -s (typical of Greeks), the Gr. -ū- (-ou-) is the ‘exact repetition of Sumerian final. So, once again we find (but the findings in this regard are endless) that the Greeks borrowed certain names from the Sumerian-Semitic basket, not vice versa. I conclude that Sardus is anchored to Sardinia.
ATTUS. I wrote that Lydian Atys was father-in-law of Sardō. Now I wonder if Atys can to hang itself to Sd. surn. Attus, with variants Atzu, Atza, Atzas, Atzéi, Atzédi, Atzéna, Atzéni, Atzénu, Attsóggiu (Attus + Soggiu), Atene, Attena, Attene, Attìli, Atzàra.
Certainly the etymology of surn. Attus is to be found in personal name Atys, belonged to the third and penultimate name of royal Lydian list, father of Lydus (the list begins in the twelfth century a.e.v.). «It’s so called also a Croesus’ son, and the name back again in later Lydian onomastic» (Talamo 26). «The name of the Lydian king is in close relationship with Attis (Attys) of myth. Moreover it suffices to think to the fact in the tradition of Herodotus the son of Croesus, Atys, relives the experience of Attis. Therefore there is a need to examine the myth of Attis in his dealings with Lydia». Attis was a god of vegetation linked to death and resurrection of nature, mentioned in Pausanias 7.7.10 and Arnobius, Adversus Nationes 5.5. Attis (Attys) was a young Phrygian shepherd, whose legend is narrated in connection with the oriental cult of the Great Mother. Son of Nana (one of the many personifications of this Phrygia goddess), Attis became extraordinarily beautiful and even his mother fell in love with him (she’s under the name Agdistis), but Midas wanted him to marry his daughter. During the wedding party Agdistis with the sound of a syringe caused madness in these. Attis castrated himself. From his blood sprang violets.
BELLU. We continue with Sardinian surnames of Anatolian mold. Pittau for Bellu proposes the paronomastic comparison bellu ‘beautiful’. Instead its etymological basis is Akk. bēlu(m) ‘lord, owner, master’. This term is found in the personal Belu < Belo, a king of the Lydian royal list but of Assyrian origin (IX-VIII sec. a.e.v.: Herod. I, 7).
CHICCA is based on Anatolian land. This surname has been feminized, it was originally Kikki: it’s the name of one of the last kings, around 800 a.e.v., of the autonomous central states of Luvi (neo-Hittites), who settled in Centre-Oriental Anatolia.
COZZI, Cotti, Cotzi are three Sardinian allomorphs of Hebrew name Cuzzi. In any case, it seems more reasonable to see in Cotti and its variants the ancient Cotys, the second name on the Lydian royal list (which begins in the twelfth century a.e.v.). The name was also frequent in Phrygia and Thrace. «In Thrace Cotys is frequent as p.n. of king until a late period, but Kotys and Kotitto is first and foremost the name of a deity to whom are dedicated orgiastic cults, like those of Dionysus. Aeschylus recalls it…. There is also in Phrygia, in Tembris’ valley, a town by the name Cotyaion. This is clearly the result of Kotys + suffix» (Talamo 24). Thalamo (p. 25) on the trail of several German researchers claims that Kotys is of Thracian origin, and its presence in Lydia is explained only if it arrived through the Phrygians, not before their migration in Asia.
CUBADDE. Now let’s look at the surn. Cubadde, Camp. Cubaḍḍa, which seems an Akkadian form, with the usual accusative ending, of ḫuballu ‘pit, trench’. But it’s more reasonable to see it as corruption of Kuvav (or Kubaba), Lydian name of the goddess Cybele.
GARDU. Another surname probably originated from Lydia is Gardu. If it were the equivalent of Cardu ‘thistle’, as proposed by Pittau, it however should not derive from the Latin but from Akk. gardu(m), qardu(m) ‘mangy, despicable’. What is impossible, because never a surname derived from defamatory words. Gardu was the name of a Phrygian king who in turn gave its name to Gordion city, meaning ‘powerful’. Phrygian Gardu has etymological basis in Akk. qardu ‘strong’.
IḌḌA. I don’t accept that another paronomasy should stifle the freshness of the surname Iḍḍa. It’s believed equivalent of Sardinian iḍḍa, biḍḍa ‘village’. Indeed the etymological basis is Lydian. Iḍḍa < Hyde is the oldest name of Sárdeis (middle name Sfard), the capital of Lydia. The city stood on a high cliff. The name corresponds to Greek-Aegean Ida, who was a famous mountain < Akk. iddu ‘top edge’, eddu ‘sharp’.
MEDAS. In defense of the real roots of surname Medas I should now set again the anthropological reasons already given for Attus. Medas is documented in Carte Volgari AAC XIII, and certainly refers to an ancient surname; there is no reason of method why it should be derived from the Sd. adjective meda ‘a lot, much’. The etymological basis seems at first to be in Akk. medû ‘to become visible, become clear’ (in the sense of ‘pure’, often attributed, even in the distant past, to personal names). If with the passing of the time it took the suffix -s, it owes to the needs of the speaker to distinguish well between the surnames *Meda and Medda. It’s highly probable the original *Meda has relevance with the legendary King Mida (Midas), son of Gordius and king of Phrygia, known worldwide for the extraordinary wealth; cf. Irpino Mita, De Mita.
MÉLIS, Meli, Mele, Meles is an ancient Sardinian surname. Not by chance it’s registered in CSMB 134, 139; in Carte Volgari AAC XVI, in CDS II, 43, 45. I recall meanwhile the oldest appearance of this term, the Akk. mēlû ‘height, altitude’, which evidently served as the title of royal ‘heights’. We find in fact Meles, a king of the Heraclides dynasty reigning in Lydia, who in the tradition of Nicholas of Damascus (FGrH 90, 44, 11; 45,;46: see Talamo 58) had to go for 3 years exile in Babylon to atone for the murder accomplished by one of his family.
MITA. Go to Medas.
PALA also this surname must be subtracted from the nth banal forcing (it’s seen as pala ‘shoulder’ and ‘mountain slope rather large and linear’). Indeed Pala was a region of north-central Anatolia, as indicated in Hittite documents and inhabited by the Palaites. In full historical era it was the region including Bithynia, Paphlagonia and Pontus. The Sardinian surname may very well indicate an individual transplanted to Sardinia under the navigation of the pre-Lydians and coming from Pala (nomen originis). Or he could be a Palaita made prisoner when the Sea Peoples overran the Hittite power, then put to the oars and then transplanted to Sardinia.
If instead we wanted to go back to Pala as ‘shoulder’ or ‘flat mountain slope’, we would have liked an etymology that instead the proposer (Pittau) has missed. I compensate for, as there is just a Hittite word corresponding to that of Sardinia, also present in the Mediterranean. It’s Hittite palḫi-, palḫai- (adj.) ‘broad, wide, open, flat’, which corresponds to Lat. plānus ‘broad, wide, open, flat’: see Punta Palái, a flat top on Márghine. However It cannot be silenced the Sumerian pala ‘dress’, ‘a royal dress’.
PALÌTA. I save even Palìta from the paronomastic trap, because they want it to corresp. to the subst. palitta ‘scoop’ (for fireplace and brazier). This word is rather Sardian and originally pointed to a ‘dress from Pala’, from Akk. pālītum ‘dress of Pala’. The clothes weaved in Pala were sumptuous. See Sum. pala ‘dress’, ‘a royal dress’.
PALMAS. What shall we say now, to defend the surname Palmas, Palma? The paronomasia sentenced it to mean palma, pramma ‘palm’. While the name is very ancient, as also documented in condaghe of Trullas 156. Were named as Palmas also many sites and villages of Sardinia, five of which now disappeared: now I enumerate, such as place names or coronyms, Palmas Arborèa, Golfo di Palmas, San Giovanni Suérgiu (ancient Palmas), Porto Scuso (which means ‘port of palm trees’).
The etymology of Lat. palma is traced first to the ‘palm’ of the hand (which led by similarity to the name of a type of date palm because of its branches), and is compared with Gr. παλάμη ‘palm, dexterity, skill’, πέλαγος ‘sea, the sea surface’, Akk. palkû ‘broad, wide’. Indeed, the true etymology of Sardinian pàimma, prama, pramma, palma ‘palm’ (Phoinix dactylifera) has a base in the Akk. compound palû, pelû ‘egg’ + amû ‘a spiny plant, a thorny plant’ (construct state pal-amû), with the overall meaning of ‘thorny plant that produces eggs’. This Akkadian compound refers to the date-plant, with the branches from the spiny leaves. Some trees produce fruit very large, resembling the eggs of large birds like the crow, the hens of small body. Instead, the Sardinian surname Palma, Palmas is Lydian. In fact, in this region at the time of the Mermnades dynasty palmus was intended as Lydian king of the whole realm, as opposed to the rulers of the smaller towns.
POROḌḌA. Just to make a siesta in this exhausting exposure, I would like to enter, to demonstrate the influence of Anatolian, even the common word poroḍḍa, poroḍḍu ‘full belly’. Today, it is said in a joking way, but once it was a serious word, if not a word of envy, given the hunger still there by ancient peoples, for famine, war, or other calamity. This term is taken from Hittite Purulli, great spring religious festival that celebrates nature which leads fruit to the ripening (in short, a sort of potlatch). The Hittite matrix, as previously described for other entries, is not surprising. In fact, the Hittite Empire (1600-1200 BCE) collapsed brutally by force of the Sea Peoples, but it had launched its own influence to the Aegean Sea; it had leisure to leave some cultural legacy to the people of Cappadocia and over the entire Anatolia, including Lydians.
TÌANA. This surname of origin Tìana means ‘a native of Tìana’ (a village in Sardinia). Eliezer Ben David mentions the names of the Jewish Greek Thessaloniki: Tiano, Ziano; also in Beirut: Tian. These names are derived from the ancient Tyana, in Cappadocia (central Anatolia). In 708 the Arabs occupyed Tyana, the most important Byzantine fortress, from which one can infer the usual flight of Byzantine monks, who almost for two hundred years were accustomed to occupy even the most inaccessible areas of Sardinia. It’s credible that they were precisely the Byzantine monks who founded this Sardinian village. Tyana in Cappadocia is ancient. Apparently the monks gave to new site the name of the country of origin. This is what happened to many other Sardinian place names.
URÍGU. I conclude this kind of surnames with the analysis of Urígu. It doesn’t mean ‘native of Uri’. Zara (CSOE 82) considers it of Jewish origin: Uri, Ḥuri (Ez 10:24; Ex 31,2). In this case the Hebrew name dates back at least to 19 e.v. But perhaps it’s more convincing Urikku, which repeats the name of the Luwian-Hittite king, known in 740 a.e.v. because he paid tribute to the Assyrian king Tiglatpilesser III.”
Source: Historical Grammar of Sardinian Language, Salvatore Dedola