From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17313
Date: 2003-01-01
----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 11:40 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Modern Greek patronymic suffix -POULOS
> Latin pullus 'chick, young fowl'. In post-Classical Greek <-poulo> (pl. <-poula>) was a neuter diminutive suffix (forming names of young birds, then of other animals, then of human offspring), and was finally employed as a masculine family-name suffix (<-poulos>).
I forgot to add that <pullus> is ultimately connected with Indo-Iranian *putra- 'child, son' < *putlos (thus also with <-putra> as an Indic family-name element), though the semantic development of the Latin word in Greek is much later and independent.
Piotr