Hungarian Historical Phonology özvegy

özvegy 'widow'

First attestation/Old Hungarian data

1302 personal name Wzwegh (see EWUng)

Important dialectal forms

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Uralic/Pre-Hungarian reconstruction

? *widwä-

Loan etymology

Indo-Iranian (Pre-Alanic) *widawāči- > Ossetic idæʒ

Cognates suggested in earlier research

None

Commentary

The Indo-Iranian origin of the Hungarian word is convincing on both phonological and semantic grounds (even though it is not accepted by some sources such as EWUng). The loan has to be old, as it precedes the regular sound change *wi- > ö; the absolute dating of this sound-change is not known, but this happens in inherited vocabulary regularly, but probably not in Turkic loanwords. The loan also predates the final changes of the spirantization of word-internal *t, but it is unclear whether the word has been borrowed with *t as the substitute of Iranian *d, or whether it was borrowed to an intermediary phase of a spirant (*t >) *d, before it changes to z.

özvegy seems to reflect the (derived) proto-form of the Ossetic idæʒ < *widawāči. The word is borrowed before *wi > i in Alanic, but at a time when *č had already become voiced. Abaev (1965) reconstructs "Old Ossetic" *widwæʒ as the donor form (Joki (1973) gives essentially the same, Pre-Ossetic *vidväʒ).

The dialectal forms like ëgyvez are due to metathezis.

Conclusion

A convincing loan from Iranian, borrowed before the latest Proto-Hungarian changes.

References

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Abaev 1965

EWUng 1092, s.v. özvegy: not ← Ir

Joki 1973

Milanova, Holopainen & Bradley 2020