Originally posted by undo
hey can you help me out. do you happen to know the etymology of
odin? i need something more indepth than what wikipedia offers

[edit on 12-10-2009 by undo]

"The attested forms of the theonym are traditionally derived from Proto-Germanic *Wōđanaz[1] (in Old Norse word-initial *w- was dropped before rounded vowels and so the name became Óðinn). Adam von Bremen etymologizes the god worshipped by the 11th century Scandinavian pagans as "Wodan id est furor" ("Wodan, which means 'fury'"). An obsolete alternate etymology, which has been adhered to by many early writers including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in his Libri tres de occulta philosophia, is to give it the same root as the word god itself, from its Proto-Germanic form *ǥuđ-. This is not tenable today, except for the Lombardic name Godan, which may go back to *ǥuđanaz (see also goði, gaut, god).

It should be noted at this point that Old Norse had two different words spelled óðr, one an adjective and the other a noun. The adjective means '"mad, frantic, furious, violent."[2] It is cognate with Old English wōd.[3] The noun means "mind, wit, soul, sense" and "song, poetry."[4] It is cognate with Old English wōþ. In compounds, óð- means "fiercly, energetic" (e.g. óð-málugr "speaking violently, excited").

Both Old Norse words are from Proto-Germanic *wōþuz[5], continuing pre-Proto-Germanic *wātus[6]. An extra-Germanic cognate is Proto-Celtic *wātus "mantic poetry" (continued in Irish fáith, "poet," and Welsh gwawd, "praise-poetry") and Latin vātes, "prophet, seer" (a possible loan from Proto-Celtic *wātis, Gaulish ουατεις). A possible, but uncertain, cognate is Sanskrit api-vat-, "to excite, awaken" (RV 1.128.2). The Proto-Indo-European meaning of the root is therefore reconstructed as relating to spiritual excitation. The Old Norse semantic split is reflected in Adam von Bremen's testimony of the synchronic understanding of the name as "fury" rather than "poetry" or similar.

Meid[7] suggested Proto-Germanic *-na- as a suffix expressing lordship ("Herrschersuffix"), in view of words like Odin's name Herjann, ("lord of armies"), drótinn ("lord of men") and þjóðann ("lord of the nation"), which would result in a direct translation of "lord of spiritual energy", "lord of poetry" or similar. It is sufficient, however, and more common, to assume a more general meaning of pertinence or possession for the suffix, inherited from PIE *-no-, to arive at roughly the same meaning.

Rübekeil (2003:29)[8] draws attention to the suffix variants *-ina- (in Óðinn) vs. *-ana- (in Woden, Wotan). This variation, if considered at all, was dismissed as "suffix ablaut" by earlier scholars. There are, however, indications from outside Old Norse of a suffix *-ina-: English Wednesday (rather than *Wodnesday) via umlaut goes back to *wōđina-. Rübekeil concludes that the original Proto-Germanic form of the name was *Wōđinaz, yielding Old Norse Óðinn and unattested Anglo-Saxon *Wēden, and that the attested West Germanic forms are early medieval "clerical" folk etymologies, formed under the impression of synchronic association with terms for "fury".

The pre-Proto-Germanic form of the name would then be *Wātinos. Rübekeil suggests that this is a loan from Proto-Celtic into pre-Proto-Germanic, referring to the god of the *wātis, the Celtic priests of mantic prophecy, so that the original meaning of the name would be "he [the god/lord] of the Vates" (p. 33), which he tentatively identifies with Lugus (p. 40)."