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Abstract: I will analyze in this paper the possibility for a common origin of a word that appears in Romanian as abur "vapor, steam", in Albanian as avull (id.), and in Basque with two forms, as ibar "valley, watered meadow" and ibai "river". Romanian abur and Albanian avull are words of the substratum vocabulary of these languages, with a common origin, the Romanian form being more primitive. If a connection between the Basque ibar / ibai and the PIE root of the previous Albanian and Romanian words could be established, then the three words would have had a common origin.
Keywords: etymology, common origin, Indo-European, abur, avull, ibar.
1. Romanian abur and Albanian avull
The Romanian abur(e)- pl. aburi (noun, masc.) means "vapor, steam",1 and forms the following derivate words: a abura or a aburi (vb., "to make or produce steams, to exhale"), aburat (adj. from part., "wet"), abureala (noun, fem., "breath, breeze"), aburitor (adj., from part., who exhales), aburiu (adj. (vaporous, whitish). The word was taken into the Modern Greek, as rl[l7rpo~.2 The form in Greek shows that it is a loan from the Romanian, and not from the Albanian.
The Albanian avull ("old avulle -17'h century-, Gheg abull' 3 ) has the same meaning as abur in Romanian, both autochthonous, from the substratum.4 V. Orel (2000) gave the etymology for the Albanian word as: "avull 'steam, vapor' < EPA ·abula continuing ·Ilbb(u)lo-, close to OHG nebul 'fog', OS nifol < Gmc ·nebulaz."5 As signaled by S. Paliga (2006), the Romanian form couldn't be a loan from the Albanian (as many such cognates), because "Albanian avu11, with vagainst bin Romanian is newer (as suggested or implied by all those who suggested IE ab- 'water' as the origin of these forms. Also Alb. 11, as in other cases, reflects a later evolution r > 11."6 Thus, the Albanian avu11 comes also from the PIE root with an -r suffix, as the Romanian abur, not from the class with -1. The old forms in Albanian demonstrate this. As we shall see below, a group of hydronyms in ab(h)ro-I ebro- came also from ·f!bh(ro/ri)-. The root ·f!bh(ro/ri)- was congruent, with not such a distant phonetic structure to a ·h2eP-, with the suffix -r.
2. Balkan and...