Re: [tied] hawk

On 2006-10-14 10:26, Anthony Appleyard wrote:

> English "hawk", Anglo-Saxon "hafoc", Old Norse "hauk", Finnish
> "haukka". Is "hawk" found in any IE language except Germanic? Did
> Germanic take it from a local Finno-Ugrian language that was spoken in
> south Scandinavia or Schleswig-Holstein area before the IE-speakers came?

Yes, in Slavic: Pol. kobuz, Russ. kóbec (< dimin. *kobIcI)
'sparrow-hawk', as if from *kAbHAug^os (*A = *o or *a), which matches
the Germanic word *xaBuka- rather well. The initial syllable may be of
prefixal origin. The Finnish word is obviously a loan from Scandinavian
(as are similar 'hawk' words in Celtic languages). Even _if_ the word is
a non-IE loan, the source must be something else.

Piotr