I remind everyone that Manfred Mayrhofer spent his entire life writing etymological dictionaries of Sanskrit, the Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen and the Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen. Even if you don't read German (and the KEWA has English glosses), you are always better off trying to make sense of his comments than Whitney's (or almost anyone else's) guesses. For most of the words mentioned in this thread, he has reliable and relatively up-to-date comments. He refers to the two possible explanations for gōvinda- (including references to Vedic gōvíd- and gōvindú-, gā́ ávindan, Avestan vīdat̰.gu-, etc.) and adduces ἐρέβινθος ‘chickpea’ and Kannada are-viri ‘be half open’ in the case of aravinda-.

2018-06-03 17:19 GMT+02:00 Hock, Hans Henrich via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>:

fwiw: Another possible source of govinda is gopendra ‘chief of the cowherds’

Hans Henrich

On 3 Jun 2018, at 10:06, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Thank you Madhav,

You mention aravinda as possibly non-indo-european. Does that also apply to govinda?

Monier-Williams has govinda as go-vinda with vinda ifc as "finding". But I vaguely recall (though I can't find it anymore) that MacDonells or Whitneys grammar had a footnote somewhere that the etymology of govinda was uncertain and that it might be from go+indra through the prakrit.

Harry Spier

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 9:36 AM, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:

I was under the impression that words like Mukunda, Aravinda, Maranda, Mucakunda were historically of non-Indo-European origin. Did Michael Witzel write something about such words? Trying to remember. Best,

Madhav Deshpande

Professor Emeritus

Sanskrit and Linguistics

University of Michigan

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 6:10 AM, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Dear list members,

Can someone give the etymology of mukunda?

Is the information in Monier-Williams under "muku" a folk-etymology?

muku = mukti (a word formed to explain mukun-da as "giver of liberation")

Thanks,

Harry Spier

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