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Ianua

by El Wud4 Sounds

The etymology of the Latin word Ianua (door) would refer to the god Ianus, usually depicted with two faces (the so-called Giano Bifronte), since the god can look at the future and the past but also because, being the god of the door, he can look both inside and outside. Already the ancients put the name of the god in relation to the movement: Macrobius and Cicero made it derive from the verb ire (to go), because according to Macrobius the world always moves in a circle and returns from itself to itself. Modern scholars have confirmed this relationship by establishing a derivation from the term ianua, (door), but it is with Georges Dumézil that the meaning is specified: the name Ianus derives from the Indo-European root ei-, expanded in y-aa- with the meaning of passage that, through a form * yaa-tu, has also produced the Irish ath, (ford).