Kamień means “stone.”A variation appears in all Suavic languages. In some cases it came to signify a chimney. Another related word may be the German Kammer as in “chamber” or just “room.”
Vasmer
In Prussian it apparently referred to a (presumably stone) fire wall (kamenis).
There are a number of kamieńs throughout Suavic lands. Here is just a sample:
- Kamień – numerous examples in Poland
- Kamieniec – numerous examples in Poland
- Kam’yanets’-Podil’s’kyi – in Ukraine
- Kamen – in Croatia, just East of Split
- Kamenz – in Germany, NW of Bautzen
- Cammin – in Germany near Rostock and also near Burg Stargard
But there are also other similarly named towns outside of accepted Suavic settlement area. The most commonly cited example is, of course:
- Kamen (on the river Seseke) and Bergkamen (nearby) – both NE of Dortmund south of the River Lippe
The Baltic languages are somewhat similar to Suavic languages. Thus, we have the Latvian akmens or the Lithuanian akmuo. Thus, it might be that the Suavic –ka became the Baltic –ak. However, the reverse is also possible since words similar to the Baltic versions appear in Old Indian and Persian – áshma/áshman (which, however, also may refer to the “sky” – certainly, the “ash” is indicative of a connection with a Deity name). Because the -ak appears in the Indian, Persian and Baltic versions, it may seem (and, indeed Brueckner thought) that the -ak became the -ka in Suavic. That is that the Suavs’ derived their version from the older IE version represented in these other languages.
But what about the other European languages?
The Greek and Latin words are different. The Greek the word is πέτρα which also means a rock formation. This is the same word as in Spanish (piedra*) or Portuguese (pedra), Italian (pietra) or Romanian (piatră). [*note: Does jędrny then mean “someone with “stones”?]
The Germanic languages have instead “stone.” This is the case with German (Stein), Dutch (steen), Danish (sten), Norwegian (stein), Ocelandic (steinn) and Swedish (sten).
Thus, it would seem that the Baltic/Indian/Persian would form one grouping, the Suavic a different but related (and, possibly, younger) grouping and the Latin/Greek an entirely different grouping. Germanic, at first glance,seems to lie outside all of these altogether.
Germanic, of course, also has the separate word “hammer.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the English hammer comes from:
“hammer (n.) [the] Old English hamor meaning “hammer,” from Proto-Germanic *hamaraz (source also of Old Saxon hamur, Middle Dutch, Dutch hamer, Old High German hamar, German Hammer). The Old Norse cognate hamarr meant “stone, crag” (it’s common in English place names), and suggests an original sense of the Germanic words as “tool with a stone head,” which would describe the first hammers. The Germanic words thus could be from a PIE *ka-mer-, with reversal of initial sounds, from PIE *akmen meaning “stone, sharp stone used as a tool” (source also of Old Church Slavonic kamy, Russian kameni meaning “stone”), from root *ak- “be sharp, rise (out) to a point, pierce.”
What is curious, however, is that the “hammer” has a similar construction to the Suavic. That is, the vowel “a” follows the “h” as it follows the “k” in Suavic. Thus, hammer would also be a younger version of some sort of an IE akmon. But the even more interesting thing is that you do not have to stop there. There are other words with a “ka” prefix that may relate to stones.
To bring this back to place names. There are place names in Spain, for example, that contain the word Camino. Now, camino, refers to a “path”, a “road” or a “way.” You might think that it comes from the verb caminar – “to walk.” But the opposite is true, that is caminar means “to walk on a path.”
The Spanish word supposedly comes from Celtic. What Celtic word? Well, cammin and this, in turn, from cam. These words signify “places of walking and passing. Specifically, cammin refers to a “journey” but also a “path”. There was Saint Cammin who gave his name to Tempul-Cammin. But neither Welsh nor Irish seems to contain any similar cammin that is in any way associated with a “path” or “journey.”
(Indeed, there is also a question that can be asked about the English (Germanic) “come” about which the Online Etymology Dictionary says the following: “from Proto-Germanic *kwem- (source also of Old Saxon cuman, Old Frisian kuma, Middle Dutch comen, Dutch komen, Old High German queman, German kommen, Old Norse koma, Gothic qiman), from PIE root *gwa- “to go, come.””)
Building a camino – “Slow! Slaves at work”
Yet, we do know that kamień means “stone” in Polish and similar Suavic words exist in all Suavic languages.
And to get back to chimney, this is what the Online Etymology Dictionary says about that:
“chimney (n.) late 13c., “furnace;” late 14c., “smoke vent of a fireplace, vertical structure raised above a house for smoke to escape to the open air;” from Old French cheminee “fireplace; room with a fireplace; hearth; chimney stack” (12c., Modern French cheminée), from Medieval Latin caminata “a fireplace,” from Late Latin (camera) caminata “fireplace; room with a fireplace,” from Latin caminatus, adjective of caminus “furnace, forge; hearth, oven; flue,” from Greek kaminos “furnace, oven, brick kiln,” which is of uncertain origin. From the persistence of the medial i in OF. it is seen that the word was not an ancient popular word, but a very early adoption of caminata with subsequent phonetic evolution [OED] Jamieson [1808] notes that in vulgar use in Scotland it typically was pronounced “chimley.” From the same source are Old High German cheminata, German Kamin, Russian kaminu, Polish komin. Chimney-corner “space beside a fireplace” is from 1570s.”
Chmineys were and are, of course, made of stone. And so were some rooms (Kammer). And, too, many roads. But only in Suavic languages does the word kamień signify “stone”. And, no, it’s not in Sanskrit.
This raises several possibilities…
One is that the Suavs’ indigenous homeland did not (following the logic of people like Meillet) contain stones or rock formations. The best choice is the Arctic where any stones would have remained hidden under the snow-covered ice sheets. But even there some rocks would have surely popped up to the surface, at the water’s edge at least. Thus, ultimately, given that most matter/planets are made of rock, this would point to some sort of fluidic space in an alternate universe as the Suavs’ Heimat.
An alternative is that the Suavs forgot whatever word they had for “stone” and assigned the “camin” like words to “stone” upon coming into contact with people who built roads, rooms and chimneys. This is, at first, tempting but difficult to believe given the akmens type versions and, of course, the PIE reconstruction all of which do seem to be related to the Suavic version and to mean “stone”.
But where did these others get this idea if they started from an alleged IE -ak? Perhaps, like with Suavic, they flipped the -ak into a -ka but themselves forgot that this terminology originally came from the PIE word for stone?
Finally, there is the rather fascinating possibility that all these words have a Suavic etymology and that the newcomers incorporated that word into their language and ran with it (or walked with it, in the case of the Latins).
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