Re: [tied] Re: Ther Beaver and Its Teeth (Origin?)

My Welsh dictionary gives <afanc> and <llostlydan>. The latter is descriptive ('broadtail'). The former (< *abancos) is possibly derived from *ab- 'river' (as in <afon>) and in addition to 'beaver' means also 'dwarf, water-sprite' in Brittonic and Irish folklore. The British beavers were hunted to extinction about 1600.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: danjmi

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 10:24 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Ther Beaver and Its Teeth (Origin?)

From a book I read as a teenager (George Borrow's "Wild Wales") I learned the Welsh word for beaver was "afanc". Borrow, besides being a very entertaining writer, was an amateur linguist who would fit nicely with some of the wilder contributors to Cybalist. Writing in the 1850s, when palaeontology was an exciting new field, he thought the name had been transferred from the extinct British crocodile to the (I believe now also extinct) British beaver. I just looked up "beaver" in an online Welsh dictionary, and , by God, there was "afanc". Since I've remembered this useless bit of information for fifty years, can anyone give me an etymology for "afanc"? Dan Milton

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