d say, that
the sun was a wheel, a _rota_. If, on the contrary, the round sign
reminded the people of an eye, then the sign of the sun would soon become
the eye of heaven, and germs of mythology would spring up even from the
barren soil of such hieroglyphic language.

But now, suppose that a real name was wanted for the sun, how could that
be achieved?

We know that all words are derived from roots, that these roots express
general concepts, and that, with few exceptions, every name is founded on
a general concept under which the object that has to be named can be
ranged. How these roots came to be, is a question into which we need not
enter at present. Their origin and growth form a problem of psychology
rather than of philology, and each science must keep within its proper
bounds. If a name was wanted for snow, the early framers of language
singled out one of the general predicates of snow, its whiteness, its
coldness, or its liquidity, and called the snow the white, the cold, or
the liquid, by means of roots conveying the general idea of whiteness,
coldness, or liquidity. Not only Nix, nivis, but Niobe(35) too, was a name
of the snow, and meant the melting; the death of her beautiful children by
the arrows of Apollon and Artemis represents the destruction of winter by
the rays of the sun. If the sun itself was to be named, it might be called
the brilliant, the awakener, the runner, the ruler, the father, the giver
of warmth, of fertility, of life, the scorcher, the destroyer, the
messenger of death, and many other names; but there was no possibility of
naming it, except by laying hold of one of its characteristic features,
and expressing that feature by means of one of the conceptual or
predicative roots.

Let us trace the history of at least one of these names. Before the Aryan
nations separated, before there was a Latin, a Greek, or a Sanskrit
language, there existed a root _svar_ or _sval_, which meant to beam, to
glitter, to warm. It exists in Greek, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, splendor; {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}, moon; in
Anglo-Saxon, as _swelan_, to burn, to sweal; in modern German, _schwuel_,
oppressively hot. From it we have in Sanskrit