h₂erǵ-nt-om
“the white metal, silver, money”argent, Argentine, silver
Nominal from *h₂erǵ- giving Latin argentum, English argent, Argentine.
Discussion
The PIE form *h₂erǵ-nt-om (the white/shining metal, silver) derives from the root *h₂erǵ- (white, shining, bright), with the participial suffix *-nt- and the neuter ending *-om. The literal meaning is "the shining/white thing" — silver named by its most visible property, its reflective brilliance.
Latin argentum (silver) continues the form transparently and gave: Argentina (the "Silver Land" — named for the Río de la Plata, the "Silver River," where Spanish explorers found indigenous people wearing silver ornaments), argent (the heraldic term for silver/white), and the chemical symbol Ag. The word French argent (money) shows a characteristic Romance development where the metal-word became the word for money generally — in French, argent means both silver and cash.
Sanskrit rajatá- (silver, white) preserves the Indo-Iranian reflex with the expected satem treatment of the palato-velar: PIE *ǵ > Sanskrit j. The Avestan ərəzata- (silver) confirms the Iranian cognate.
Old Irish airget (silver) and Welsh ariant (silver, money) provide the Celtic reflexes, both showing the expected Celtic treatment of the root. The Irish form appears in medieval texts describing the wealth of kings — silver was the primary precious metal in Celtic economies.
Armenian arcat' (silver) provides further attestation. Greek árgyros (ἄργυρος, "silver") shows the characteristic Greek development and gave English Argonaut (literally "Argo-sailor," though the ship's name may relate to the "shining/swift" sense of the root).
The Germanic branch replaced the inherited silver-word with a different form: English silver (OE seolfor, from PGmc *silubrą) is of uncertain, possibly non-IE origin — some scholars suggest a borrowing from a pre-IE substrate language or from Semitic. This replacement means English uses a mysterious word for silver while retaining the PIE root only through Latin borrowings (argent, Argentina).
The naming of silver as "the white/shining thing" parallels gold (*ǵʰel-, "the yellow/gleaming thing") and copper (*h₂eyos, possibly "the coloured metal"). PIE speakers evidently named metals by their visual properties — a taxonomy of shimmer and hue that modern chemistry has preserved in the elemental symbols: Ag for argentum, Au for aurum.