StaroslovÏnskÈ *vútrü ëkov·¯í *)
*vъtrь „smith“ in Old Church Slavonic

Summary/Abstract: Old Church Slavonic / Middle Bulgarian *vútrü is glossed as ‘÷áëêåýò, faber ferrarius; ôÝêôùí, faber lignarius’, also more generally as ‘artifex, opifex’. The closest parallel appears in Prussian wutris ‘smith’ (EV 513: ‘Smyt’), plus autre ‘smithery’ (EV 514: ‘Smede’), could be loans mediated by Church Slavonic. In the article all relevant etymologies are discussed, finally a new solution is presented. It is based on the reconstruction *vúrtrü assuming the dissimilative lost of the first r, analogically as in the oronym Tatry, originally *Túrtry, as it is documented in the record Turtur Mons in Gesta Hungarorum from the 13th century. This reconstruction allows us to connect it with the Baltic designation of ‘copper’: Lithuanian va¢rias, Latvian var‚ö, Prussian wargien (EV 525) /varjan/ or with Avestan v©r©èram.j°â ñ ‘mit metallenen Schildern’. Just the latter parallel can be interpreted as one of the specific early Iranian loans in the Slavic cultural lexicon.

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