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[OE] Not surprisingly, considering the central importance of the sun to human life, the word for it in the vast majority of modern European languages goes back to a common Indo-European source – *sāu- or *su-. These variants have however differentiated into several distinct camps. The *sāu- form adopted an -lsuffix, and evolved into Greek hélios (source of English heliotrope), Latin sōl (whence French soleil, Italian sole, and Spanish sol, not to mention English solar, solarium, etc), Welsh haul, and Swedish and Danish sol. The *suform with an -l- ending has given Russian solnce, Czech slunce, Serbo-Croat sunce, etc. But the modern West Germanic languages have inherited the *su- form with an -n- suffix, giving German sonne, Dutch zon, and English sun.
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