Re: [tied] Dog

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 3238
Date: 2000-08-18

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Dog

 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2000 12:05 AM
Subject: [tied] Dog

I wrote: ... it occurs only once in an accidental Anglo-Saxon gloss to a Latin text, where "canorum" is translated as "docga".
 
Sorry, actually it's translated as "docgena" (Gen.pl.); *docga [dogga] is the Nom.sg. implied by that form. Colloquial names of animals and human nicknames often followed this "weak declension" word-formation pattern in Old English (e.g. "frosc/forsc" 'frog' was reshaped as "frocga", presumably as a kind of diminutive, 'froggie', and cf. such OE names as Offa), which is why I cosider it likely that Dogga was originally a dog's proper name. Unfortunately we can't ask the owner what inspired him to call his hound Dogga. The name could be a diminutive of anything that begins with "d" and contains a u/o-type vowel and a velar -- even a byform of "Duck" (OE du:ce).
 
Piotr