Van Beek Lucien. Homeric κρείων ‘lord’ and the Indo-European word for ‘head’

Indogermanische Forschungen. — 2014. — Vol. 119. — 99-124 p.Abstract: An old idea, commonly accepted today,1 is that Homeric κρείων ‘lord, ruler’, Classical Greek κρέων derives from the same verbal root as Vedic śr- ‘beauty, splendor’, śréyas- ‘more beautiful’, Avestan sraiiah- ‘id.’, sraiian- ‘beauty’ and other related forms. In this article, I will challenge this idea, and argue instead that κρείων derives from the PIE nominal stem *ḱrh₂-s- ‘head’. More precisely, κρείων is the outcome of a masculine n-stem derivative PGr. *krāh-on- ‘chief’, derivationally related to (but distinct from) the oblique PGr. *krāhn̥t- ‘head’, the outcome of the PIE neuter *ḱrh₂-s-n-. This PGr. *krāhon- was reshaped as *krāhontafter other nt-stems with a similar meaning, notably γέροντ- ‘old man’. Keywords: Etymology, Homeric Greek, metrical lengthening, quantitative metathesis, internal derivation, nominal composition