I love it when doctoral candidates write in… They always have the juiciest bits of info. Here’s one from Sheldonista Julia P. at Ohio State about Zeus/Jupiter:
“Hi! I’m working on a doctorate in historical linguistics, and I just thought you might be interested to know that Arthur is technically wrong about Zeus and Jupiter being completely different names. In fact, they’re etymologically related. So, Greek and Latin (and English, and Irish, and Russian, and Hindi) are all part of the same language family- Indo-European. “Zeus” is the Greek outcome of the Proto-Indo-European word *Dyeus (which means “sky god” as best we can figure). “Jupiter” is the outcome of *Dyeus-piter, or “sky god-father”. Language is weird sometimes, huh?”
It really is! That’s fascinating! I’ve never seen the linguistic roots of both laid out like that. Thanks, Julia!