SV: [cybalist] Re: Hamp and his dog

Michel Defayes writes: "All animals are named after one of
their characters, or sometimes their function. The main characteristic of a
dog is that it is noisy and most names, dialectal or other, refer to this
character. "

Is this really the one and only main characteristic of dogs? I can think of several other "main characteristics" - they always follow their master, they've got four legs, they wag their tails, they can be used to find people or animals because their sense of smell is better than ours, they keep flocks of cattle together, they don't like postmen...

Actually, a good, well trained dog is not noisy.

To explain how an animal got its name just by picking one more or less characteristic trait and then try to make the names of that animal in several languages fit into this theory seems to be a weird way of doing etymology.

Hakan