Namos - The Name

One of the most easily visible cognates between all Indo-European languages. The concept of namos is pretty self-explanatory. As a simple label, it means a name, the name of someone or the name of something; often times it has the same connotation as word does in our modern tongue, that is, a certain repetition of sounds that represent a specific concept to the Indo-Aryan mind. The meaning of the concept, then, was tied into the very word itself by means of the name.

A P.I.E. verb, "nimo", relates very closely to namos. It means "to take one's due", or to assert one's place, and this transferred to the word nehmen which in German means simply "to take". (The English cognate is the outdated term nim, which also means to take). Indeed, to bear a name is to take on a label, and therefore an existence in the human world. With a name, a thing can come into existence, it can be known and spoken of, and therefore anything that had a name, or rather took a name, also took hold of the state of a definite existence which was applicable to language. Names supported the entire system with which the Indo-Aryans identified the world and themselves, and also founded the basis of communication between them, which is evident in today's languages.

In many subsequent Indo-European cultures, the names of people proved to be a very significant ordeal. Often times people or gods would have many names. For gods, these usually included epithets to honor the gods or specific titles that were in some way descriptive of the god's nature. People's names usually related to their family's origins and the place that they were born in. For warriors, sometimes names came from the victories that they achieved or places that they conquered.

From the very beginning, personal names were indicative titles that bore meaning. These were in some way significant to the name's bearer and may have had a deeper but misunderstood relationship in the ancient Indo-Aryan religion.

One must also not deny the stark similarity between the root namos and the root numos, which may have meant "number", implying that both names and numbers originated from the very same metaphysical concept. The original word behind numos, which was nemo, was a verb meaning "to divide", which fits perfectly with the concept of numbers. However, with the implications of namos having a similar origin, one could speculate that the word for "name" was originally a term originating from the concept of division. The naming of things meant to discriminate between the various forms in the world, and thus to divide the world into separate nameable parts. This may have had metaphysical or religious significance as well, as it implies an original totality of the universe, that is, a unified, holistic unity (the monad) from which the cosmos was divided according to each number, and therefore was divided into the separate nameable parts that we have today, the various forms which inhabit the universe. These proto-gnostic musings hint at the cosmological nature of the Aryan religion, which until recently scientists have seen as dealing only with the gods of the earth and physical nature (like the elements of fire, earth, etc.)

If we go further to bridge the gap between sound differences, the root nonos, meaning "nine", could possibly also have originated from the same concept of namos. As you know, the ancient Norse religion had nine worlds, and the number nine is seen in all ancient Indo-Aryan cultures as the end of the cyclical numerical system, since it started over at ten when a zero was added as a place holder. Being cyclical in nature, nine thus became the point at which both the numerical system ended and began again - a symbol of infinite unity and eternal continuance as well as the cyclical nature of all quantitative fluctuations, such as time and space. Representing the point at which a circle both ends and begins anew, the number nine as a whole represents the circle of the monad as well, or the number One. While One is the whole and the all, Nine is the specific point at which time begins and ends, that point of identical similarity which repeats itself endlessly along the line, and therefore exists both infinitely and not at all as the transition of time. Nonos is also associated with the root newos or nowos, which means "new", further implying Nine's role as both the end and the "new" and fresh beginning.

Namos is a word which relates to many things. Its relations stretch far and wide and harbor vast numbers of senses of meanings which, if one divides and names them, can be drawn out into several specific concepts that more or less have cognates in all modern-day Indo-European languages. Namos is the name of the thing, the bridge between idea and form, existence and recognition, and affirms the existence of something in our minds.