Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian (EDH)

1. Introduction
ALFRÉD TÓTH : ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF HUNGARIAN (EDH)
16. Austronesian and Hungarian
16. Austronesian and Hungarian
Many researchers assumed already very early that there is a strong linguistic connection between India,
China, Tibet, Burma, Japan and the Malayo-Polynesian archipelago (e.g. Kőrösi Csoma 1834/1984,
Podhorszky 1877, De Charency 1896, Uxbond 1928/2006, Matsumoto 1928, Rivet 1929). This is also
one of the reasons, while up to now the linguistic classification of the languages involved in this huge
area is still controversial. For example, Rivet (1929), from whose work we took the data for the present
article, considered amongst “Oceanian” not only Melanesian, Polynesian, Micronesian and Indonesian,
but also Mon-Khmer, Munda, Australian and Tasmanian. Nowadays, there is no classification, that
unites all these languages. We have chosen here the name “Austronesian”, to which we add – quite
unusually – also Mon-Khmer, Australian and Tasmanian. This decision has, however, rather practical
reasons than theoretical implications: The comparative corpora of the Australian and the Tasmanian
languages (extinct since 1905) with the other languages here under discussion are too small or not even
existing to be treated separately, so we follow Rivet (1929) with the only exception, that we do not take
into consideration the Munda languages here, because they are treated separately.
Another problem is, that Rivet (1929) does not make clear, which dictionaries he used for his booklet.
Furthermore, he does unfortunately not differentiate between the hundreds of languages that range
under “Melanesian, Polynesian, Indonesian”, etc. At the time, when Rivet wrote his word lists, the big
dictionaries of Traeger (1891) und Skeat/Blagden (1906) had appeared since a long time. Without any
doubt, Rivet could have enlargened his corpus massively, had he used this standard works. Considering
the fact, that Rivet brings on 46 pages only ca. 150-200 etymologies, while Gostony (1975) contains
1042 entries, it does not astonish, that the common Hungarian-Sumerian-Austronesian etymologies,
that we are able to present in the following, are so few, namely 82 or 3%. Therefore, here is still much
work to be done in the future: The systematical comparison of Gostony’s dictionary with Traeger,
Skeat/Blagden and most of all Dempwolff (1934-38) – and also with Brunner (1982).
Rivet, however, deserves the praise, that he was the first to understand and establish the linguistic
connection between what he calls Oceanian and Sumerian: “En résumé, du Japon à la Tasmanie, de la
Méditerranée et de l’Afrique à l’Amérique, on peut suivre pas à pas les multiples étapes, presque
exclusivement maritimes, des membres d’une seule et même famille linguistique, dont le centre de
dispersion paraît avoir été l’Asie méridionale ou l’Insulinde”. In other words: Rivet assumes a gigantic
substrate, that reaches from Japan to Tasmania, from the Mediterranean Sea and Africa to the Americas
and to the South Seas. This presupposes in accordance with the conviction of the present author, that
the Sumerians did not just “disappear”, but emigrated out of their homeland, probably under pressure
of Semitic people, who invaded already since the 26th century into Mesopotamia.
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