THE PREROMAN ORIGIN OF SASSARI AND THE COLONIZATION OF NURRA AND ROMÀNGIA.

Sàssari is a name used by the citizens; in the hinterland the town is named Thàthari. Its original root seems properly Thar-, identical to the one of Tharros (Tharr-os or Thar-os), but subjugated to the doubling of two initial syllable letters, as already used by the Sumerians and the Akkadians to intensify, sometimes with holy aim, the name or the verb, or to put it into the plural, too. For Thà-tha-ri the doubling could have been necessary, maybe, to distinguish this locality from the original one (Tharros). Amongst Sassarians the use of doubling toponyms or common names is still in force: e.g. the Buddi-Buddi locality, the giuru-giuru grass. But even in the rest of Sardinia the doubling is common: e.g. Ollollái (Ol-Ol-ai), moreover with the -ai Hebraic suffix.

Thàthari-Tharros isn’t the only toponym twinning in Sardinia. The phenomenon is common in the island but is common all over in the ancient Mediterranean, in Anatolia, in the Near-Orient, too. In Sardinia there is Tìana, Bari, Olbia, Neápolis, Sìnnai, these toponyms being identical to Tiana (Anatolia), Bari (Italy), Olbia (Anatolia), Neapolis (Italy) Sinai (Egypt). For the twinning we don’t have to summon the bizantine monks’ initiative nor the Phoenicians’, for the actors were the Shardanas, whose collaboration with the Phoenicians was peaceful.

The problem should be why the Phoenicians repeated the name Tharros in a place far from the sea. But meanwhile let’s clear the field from the hypothesis that Sàssari (Thàthari) is as ancient as Tharros, and let’s accept the historical and archaeological data that suggest a medieval origin of the city. Thàthari isn’t a toponym (place name) but a coronym (land name): it indicates a not-urbanized territory able to produce agrarian and pastoral stuffs, maybe forestal too (shipbuilding industry).

The near toponym of Porto Torres (the ancient Tyr-ris, Tyr-is) helps us to remember that Phoenicians (the Týr-ioi) marked the territories to their own advantage. So it is the same for the Canaanite toponym Silki, which marks a place once niched amongst the forests two kilometers from Thàthari and now incorporated into the city. Silki is the same of the Phoenician Sulki (now S.Antioco).

Regarding the etymology of Sàssari, we can derive the toponym (or coronym) from the Akkadic basis ša-šērru that means ‘the one of the womb, baby, descendant’, that’s ‘sister’ (sister of Tharros). Curiously, Sassari still mantains the three-sibilants palatal pronunciation, heritage of the ancient š (English sh). But we have to consider another Akkadic term too, ša-ašari that means ‘the one of the same place’ (to say ‘twin’, ‘the one which stays in Sardinia too’). A further option to consider is šaššaru(m) that’s ‘tooth (symbol of Shamash, the sun-God)’. By means of four names - Thàthari, ša-šērru, ša-ašari, šaššaru(m) - we are able to compose the final etymology. In those days the Shardanas-Phoenicians gave the territory named Thàthari the attribute of ‘twin’ (ša-ašari), or ‘sister’ (ša-šērru) or gave the land the Shamash attribute (‘tooth’, šaššaru). The name plus attribute, with the passing of time, brought about two names to the city, which nowadays is still named indifferently Thàthari and Sàssari.

For the shape Thàthari there’s a fifth etymological option too, supplied by the ethnic Uddadhàddhar. But I wish to send back the evidence to my book “Toponomastica Sarda”.

Now I’ll talk of Porto Torres toponym. In the book, in discussing the headwords Villa-Sor, Tyros, Tyrris, Tharros, Thàthari I outline the reasons of their semantic identity. Tyrris Libysonis was certainly founded by Romans, and the archaeological excavations don’t give pretexts to those who, in imagining behind the adjective Liby- a punic pre-foundation, wish to translate the toponym as ‘Libyan tower’, that’s Carthaginian. But Romans could never attribute to their own harbour-estuary on the Mannu river the name of their worst enemy. Anyhow the pre-foundation there was, and even if the archaeologists haven’t found material evidence, we have the linguistic evidence. When the stones lay silent, the toponyms continue narrating our ancestors’ history. The root Tyr- doesn’t match any ‘tower’ but for the phoenician Tyr-os.

That between the Sassarian and Portotorrian people (plus the Sorsian people) there’s a unified language and tradition, is documented in many features. This people was always proud of being townsmen (that’s native of a Roman town, opposed to rurales of hinterland, bearers of Punic traditions). This hiatus between city and country lasts for 2000 years. Yet today the plebeian Sassarians harbour a vivid dislike for the biddìnculi, ‘the rustics’, and the Sassarians still keep the cross memory, an execution intended to non-Romans, still brought to life nowadays by a typically latin curse Malam crucem!, sassarian La cròzi màra ‘The evil cross (could be inflicted to you)!’ = Chi dhu crùžada sa giustìssia (Cagliari) ‘May the evil justice hang him on the cross!’.

The Sassarians’ quarrel with the biddìnculi comes across in the quarrel between Sorso and Sènnori. The toponym Sorso, testified in RDSard. year 1341 and pronounced Sòssu, means ‘foundations (or town)’< Akk. šuršu(m); Sènnori means ‘flocks, sheep (and goat) < Akk. ṣēnu(m). Therefore at Sorso were citizens, to say urbani < Urbs (Rome). In the adjacent place, a hill named Sènnori, there were shepherds, a people managing a trade that the “Romans” (< Rome) dwelling at Sòssu claimed as showed in by Rome. Truth to tell, the shepherds were native, were Shardanas, who produced the Pecorino Romano, that was (and still is) the sheep’s milk cheese made in Sardinian mountains. Romano is from Hebraic Rōmēm ‘that of the mountains’.

As a matter of fact the Romans, while they were colonizing Románia (north-west Sardinia), displaced Corsi’s and Bàlares’ tribes to the mountains, relegating them to a shepherds destiny and determining the first important dialectal differentiation in a island which till those days had kept a substantial linguistic unity (see book).

And when we have verified that Sassari, Thathari, Porto Torres, Silki, Sorso and Sennori have oriental names, we are in the core of a huge discovery, in the centre of the 38% of semitic headwords I have acclaimed. The sassarian land is almost saturated with Semitic words and, except some Latin toponyms (e.g. Ischara di la ciògga ‘slug ladder’, from Lat. cochlea ‘snail’, or La Crucca = ciogga minuda ‘snail’, equally from lat. cochlea; or San Michele di Plaiàno from a Latin agricultural landowner Plarianus), it contains quite a lot of extremely ancient words, existing before the Phoenician language. It is the Shardanas’ language, moulded by the universal language of 2350 b.C., the Akkadian, whose heirs Babylonians and Assyrians, in their advance beyond Amurru (Syria), Canaan (Palestine-Jordan), Phoenicia, Anatolia (Turkey), moulded the Mediterranean languages. Before the initially thin Indoeuropean gangs poked their noses into the Mediterranean, the linguistic plancher had already been built, the hard hoof was made.

In Sassari it is said Chi ti fària un ràju ‘May lightning incinerate you!’ (< Akk. rahium ‘lightning’). When the Sassarians say cannagùru, they indicate the’ rectum’ plus ‘sphincter’ (< Bab. χanāqu + Sardian suff. -ru, that means ‘throttle’). But the most disturbing expression is the one for what the Sassarians are illfamed. Muslims cannot mention God in vain, nevertheless they repeat at every sentence Inshallah ‘if God wishes’. So do Sassarians. Their plebeian word is only an ancient invocation to all-powerful God. The women today prefer another word: the Jesuits convinced them to invoke Our Lady, and for every fear or pain exclamations in Logudoro is said Soberàna! ‘Sovereign!’, while the man says Cazzu! (< Bab. kattu, gattu ‘form, physical build’ of deity), nowadays understood as ‘prick’ by bizantine priests’ paretymological influence. This exclamation is the same of Tadannu! (in the Campidano) (< Akk. Dandannu!, an invocation to all-powerful God, by islanders now understood as Ita dannu! ‘what a pity’, ‘what a damage!’).

From the lessical heap, now I take at random Serra Secca, today an urban area but till 1960 a deserted land with only a national road. It doesn’t mean ‘dry sierra’ (< sp. sierra ‘indented mountain ridge’) but ‘spring-height’ < Ugaritic ṭrr (pronounced tzerra) ‘rich of water’ + Bab. šēχu ‘high’. The ancient Sassarian suicides’ cliff was Kighìzu < Akk. kikkišu ‘reed fence, wall’. And if La Landrigga ‘the swineherd forest, the grazing due’ has a typical latin name (< glans, glandis ‘acorn’, then *glandicola > *landiricola > Landrìgga), the wild Monte Alvaro hasn’t a Spanish but a Babylonian origin (< arbu ‘waste, uncultivated’). It’s not the proper name Alvaro but an adjectival term which occurs in many Sardian mountain toponyms. The numerous mountains named Albo, Arbu, Alvu, Alvaro are inevitably calcium-magnesiac heights, very stony, very rugged. So that Barbagia too derives from Bab. arbu, showing the ‘uncultivated land’, the mountains of the Iolaenses tribe (further named Barbaricini < *Arbària ‘uncultivated land’ > lat. Barbària, by Romans understood as ‘land dwelled by Barbarians’).

At random I also take culi-sáida (Motacilla flava ‘blue-headed wagtail’, a curious sparrow that in Logudorian dialect repeats the Assirian-Bab. compound χulû sā’idu, better χulī-sā’idu: a bound form or genitive chain meaning ‘trembling back-side’).

The toponyms are territorial predicates, show the places vocation, as the Giòscari valley, which has the semantic basis in the Aramaic-Canaanite Ziw ‘flowering (month)’ + Akk. χārru ‘water channel’. Buddi-Buddi means ‘reed valley’ from Ass. budduru ‘reed bundle’. Sardinia has a lot of reeds. The famous three-reed breath instrument named launeḍḍas derives from Bab. laχu ‘mouth, jaws’ + nīlu ‘flooding’ and means the typical inflated flautist’s cheeks. Another sardian history is told by the date palm; the surname Talu < Hebr. tâlu ‘young date palm’ has the same in Tratalìas town (phonetic doubling from Tal-Tal ‘date palm forest’ > metathesis Tra-tal + suff. -ìas).