# Ὠκεανός
## Ancient Greek
### Etymology

Uncertain, though generally acknowledged to be a non-Indo-European substrate loan, with Beekes noting that the concept of a "world-river" is not native to Indo-European mythology. A possible relationship with the Semitic root *ʕ-w-g (“to be crooked, tortuous”) has been discussed. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “What are some examples of Semitic words with this root?”) Another possibility includes a derivation from unattested Sumerian *A-ki-an(u) (Water of the Land and Heaven).
Beekes suggests a Pre-Greek form *ūkʲān-. Michael Janda has reminded the scientific community of an earlier comparison with the Vedic dragon Vṛtra's attribute āśáyāna- “lying on [the waters]”, claiming it to be an exact phonetical transposition of the Greek word, both stemming from Proto-Indo-European *ō-ḱey-m̥[h₁]no- (“lying on”), related to κεῖμαι (keîmai, “to lie”).

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ɔː.ke.a.nós/ → /o.ce.aˈnos/ → /o.ce.aˈnos/
* (5th BCE Attic) IPA: /ɔː.ke.a.nós/
* (1st CE Egyptian) IPA: /o.ke.aˈnos/
* (4th CE Koine) IPA: /o.ce.aˈnos/
* (10th CE Byzantine) IPA: /o.ce.aˈnos/
* (15th CE Constantinopolitan) IPA: /o.ce.aˈnos/
* Hyphenation: Ὠ‧κε‧α‧νός

### Proper noun

Ὠκεᾰνός • (Ōkeănós) m (genitive Ὠκεᾰνοῦ); second declension
* Oceanus, a Greek water god usually said to be a Titan, one of the sons of Uranus and Gaia.
* The great freshwater river thought to encompass the world
* The great saline outer sea (the Atlantic), as opposed to the Mediterranean.

#### Derived terms

* Ὠκεᾰνῐ́ς (Ōkeănĭ́s)

#### Descendants

* → English: ocean, Ocean, Oceanus, Okeanos
* Greek: Ωκεανός (Okeanós)
* → Latin: Ōceanus, Ōcianus (Old Latin)
** French: Océan
** Italian: Oceano
** Portuguese: Oceano
** Sicilian: Ucìanu
* → Russian: океа́н (okeán)
* → Turkish: Okyanus
* → Arabic: أُوقْيَانُوس (ʔūqyānūs)
* → Arabic: قاموس

### References

* ↑ Joaquín Sanmartín, Glossary of Old Syrian [GlOS] Preprint 7: ʔ - x(ḫ). Updated March 2016, p. 240
* ↑ Bernal, Martin: Black Athena: The archaeological and documentary evidence. Rutgers University Press, 1987, Chapter 7, page 301
* ↑ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) “Ὠκεανός”, in Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 1677
* ↑ Traced back to Adalbert Kuhn, ὠκεανός, in: Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiet des Deutschen, Griechischen und Lateinischen, vol. 9 (1860), 240, who had refined an earlier suggestion by Theodor Benfey.

### Further reading

* “Ὠκεανός”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
* “Ὠκεανός”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
* “Ὠκεανός”, in Autenrieth, Georg (1891) A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, New York: Harper and Brothers
* “Ὠκεανός”, in Slater, William J. (1969) Lexicon to Pindar, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
* Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, page 1,018
* Michael Janda: Die Musik nach dem Chaos. Der Schöpfungsmythos der europäischen Vorzeit. Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck 2010, p. 57 ff.