CE SE ASCUNDE ÎNTR-UN ETNONIM DE BASM?

Abstract

As shown by the Romanian Dialectology and Historical linguistics, the Romanian form strir (pl. striri, in Rom. împăratul stririlor [Engl., lit. the emperor of foreigners]) – from a fairy tale published by the folklorist Petre Ispirescu, Țugulea, fiul unchiașului și al mătușei [Engl., lit. Țugulea, the son of the old man and of the old woman] – is to be connected with Lat. extraneus, as a Romanian Northern phonetic form of străin "foreigner". However, this connection is not always (immediately) seized, the denotation of the word itself being thus lost. Consequently, those who operate with the text in one way or another either try to reconstruct a plausible meaning of the word, based on some sort of contextual reasoning, or emendate the form of the word in order to secure a certain, easier
(though possibly perplexing) reading (cf., e.g., stir – or știr –, < Bg., Srb. štir, "amaranth"; v. MDA s.v.). The reason why the correct connection is usually ignored lays upon the direct provenience of this particular fairy tale, which is Southern, and, consequently, upon the absence of other linguistic features of Northern character from the text. The author of the article first argues the ground on which this particular form strir – pl. striri – appears in the fairy tale, and then discusses the interpretative extension that one may adopt regarding it, given the fairy tale‘s morphology and specificity.