Austro-Asian language group
Replies: 10 - Last Post: Mar 11, 2013 11:07 AM Last Post By: Paanwallah
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Source for Austro = Greek
Your source is quite mistaken. The (ancient and modern) Greek word for south and the south wind is notos (often Anglicised as notus). Noto- and notho- as prefixes for southern are found in some words, but not very common ones, for example Nothofagus is the southern beech family of trees. As Vinny says, auster is Latin.See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemoi
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I was asuming it being unlikely that Austro-Hungarian Empire streched that far in the past
Confusingly, in the name of the country of Austria, the austr- bit means east not south. From Osterreich, the East Kingdom. The au- spelling for east turns up a few times: in Icelandic, austur, and Norwegian aust, for example. These words descend from from a proto-germanic word referring to the dawn, shining, etc.The practically identical Latin Auster for the southern wind is completely unrelated and just one of those very confusing coincidences (like the Roma people and their Romany language are quite coincidentally similarly named to Rome, Romans and Romania). Latin Auster probably comes from the same root as austere, meaning dry and harsh, because, in the Mediterranean, the south wind (scirocco), from across the hot Sahara, is often a dry and harsh wind.
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Interestingly, in China Austria (pronounced AoDiLi) is frequently mixed up with Australia (pronounced AoDaLiYa). Once I have sent a container to Austria and the shipment agent assured me that it will arrive in Australia soon. Fortunately they had sent it into right direction unlike in case of a colleague of mine who's shipment was sent to Santiago/Spain instead of Santiago de Chile.
