154 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



■foremost among northern migrating peoples. To the same race the 

 Etruscans belonged. 



The threefold Tyrseni, Tuscer, Naharcer, Japuscer, carry us back 

 to Mesopotamia, the land of the Nairi or Naharina, and to the 

 included region of Khupuscai, as well as forwai-d to Navarre and 

 Guipuzcoa. The former even take us to this continent, where the 

 Aztecs or Citin also called themselves and their tongue Nahuatl 

 or Navatl. Who the Tuscer were, it is harder to say, for the final 

 er is a termination ; otherwise the great Basque name Euskara 

 would at once suggest itself in such a form as the Dioscurias of 

 Colchis, now Iskurieh, near which Chapsoukes or modern Khupus- 

 cians and eastern Guipuzcoans dwell. In the East, Hamath is more 

 prominent than the Mesopotamian Hittite names, whether we view 



it in the Himalayas, the Emodi montes of antiquity, or in Yamato, 

 the mountain door, or native name of Japan. ^^ It is possible, there- 

 fore, that radical differences in grammatical construction, resl^lting 

 from independent culture and environment, may have characterized 

 two distinct branches of the Hittite family prior to their great 

 migrations, which began in the seventh century before Christ. 

 Certain it is that the auxiliary forms of the Ibero-Etruscan inscrip- 

 tions are not those of the Hittites in Asia. 



Of the Etruscan words furnished by classical authors, many at 

 once reveal their Basque character. Lar or Lars, as in Lars Por- 

 senna, is the Basque larri, great. Lucumo is, as the Cippus of 

 Perusia reveals, al auka ma, composed of al power, aulza choice, and 

 ema give, denoting an elected potentate. Varro informs us that 

 atrium, tlie fore-door or porch, was an Etruscan word. It is the 

 Basque athari, a porch. Hesychius gives damnus a horse, which in 

 modern Basque is zamari ; ataison, a vine, not so easily recognizable 

 in ardanza ; aracos, a hawk, which is probably arrano, the eagle; 



falae, mountains, which is pilla, a mound. Festus furnishes nepos, 

 luxurious, in which we may detect the Basque napur, a glutton ; 

 hurts, the plough tail, which is either huru, the head, or hurdax, the 

 extremity ; suhulo, a flute-player, which exhibits the same form as 



21 It has been suggested to me that too much is made of what may he a mere accidental 

 similarity of name. It must be remembered, however, tbat the theory of chances is against 

 the constant repetition of several names in a series ; that the names appear in connection with 

 cognate languages, modes of writing, and other confirmatory connections. To build any 

 ■ theory, which I have no desire to do in any case, upon verbal resemblances alone would be as 

 unwise as it would be to overlook them in an inductive process for ascertaining fact. 



