[cybalist] Re: Hamp and his dog

In his post of Sat. 06 May 2000, Hakan Lindgren wrote:

Piotr and Glen,
your discussion about the etymology of the word *kuo:n is starting to
get interesting... I'm listening.

Glen wrote:
In fact, I have some trouble accepting
that a word for a common and anciently cohabitating animal would be
replaced
so completely by a new formation. Are there examples of this process in
written languages?

One more example of a familiar animal that recently changed its name:
the German word for horse is Pferd, which was borrowed from Latin
paraveredus in the 6th century AD.There is written evidence for this.
The English word palfrey comes from the same Latin word.

When I look up the etymology of some other domestic animals it seems
like many of them are hard to explain - unlike family terms like
brother, sister, which can be traced very far back. If anyone on the
list can shed some light on the etymology of words like cat, dog, hound,
horse I'd be interested to read it.

Hakan Lindgren


I did check out the etymology of the 4 terms that Hakan included above
and discovered that ALL 4 terms are more ancient than OE and all can be
attributed to (or akin to) Old Frisian. But archaeologically I know
that both horse, cat, likely dog (wolf) and hound are much older than
OE.

In the Alekseev Manuscript (lecture 6, Neolithic in Eurasia), Alekseev
mentions that the wild horse is found in eastern Mongolia and is known
to have lived in the Gobi Desert. Legends about wild horses have been
known from Chinese sources, but it wasn't unitl 1868 when Prezewalskii
killed one and brought the skin and skull to Europe that a true specimen
was able to be observed. Thus a new species was fixed and named the
Prezewalskii horse.

In Europe wild horses are abundant in the Neolithic but there is an
absence of the horse from Egyptian monuments prior to the beginning of
the 18th century BC and nothing older in Old Semitic (Mesopotamian)
literature. It was the Hyksos who brought along the horse when they
invaded Egypt.

According to Alekseev, the origin of the domestic horse could be in
Africa or Mongolia but the domestication of the horse appears to have
been in the steppe areas of Russia. From Dereivka, a Neolithic site in
the mid Dnieper Valley dating to the fourth millennium BC are found
skulls from several horses. The domesticated horse (and camel) were not
used for meat, milk, or wool but rather for riding and loading.

The recent excavations of Scythian Tombs especially those at Ak-Alaka
and Kuturguntas (see Polosmak) reveal the presence of horse skulls,
legs, and torsos along with horse trappings. Apparently the horse was
given "magical" significance by the Scythians and offered elegant
burials not unsimilar to those of royalty.

Hope this helps,
Gerry