unenägu

dream (from une, hypnos- and nägu, face)

This is a very interesting one. According to what I was told, the word une is related to sleep. However, when searching in a few dictionaries, I was surprised to find out that une is also translated as hypnos- or oneiro- for complex words. For example, Hypnos, the greek god of sleep, is translated in a dictionary as unejumal, literally god of the sleep. The word oneiro– is related to Hypnos’ sons or brothers.  As a side comment, this made me realize that the word sueño in Spanish is also related to another god, but from Roman mythology: somnus.

Unenägu should mean then “face of the sleep” or ¨face of Hypnos¨.

3 Responses to “unenägu”


  1. 1 MarjaMeme November 18, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Sounds good – face of the sleep 🙂 May I say a thing or two?

    “une” is a genitive of “uni” – sleep. “Nägu” means face all right, but it is related to “nägema” – to see. So in this case, I guess that the right interpretation would be “sleep seeing” – nägu is the process of seeing, you know.


  1. 1 luupainaja « The word collector Trackback on October 21, 2009 at 10:50 pm

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