--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > >
> > Häkkinen in her etymological dictionary suggests that a possible
> > reconstructed Uralic *kojra - male animal, was an extention of *koj-
> > man, male.
> >
> > *Kojra at this stage did not mean dog specifically. Hungarian ended
> > up with modern day 'here' - testicle from this suggested root. In
> > Finnic the word for dog was 'peni'. It is thought that koira meaning
> > dog is possibly fairly late.
> >
> > Sorry I don't know the specific function of the -r.
> >
>
> If it's so recent, how come it's common to Finnish and Estonian?
>
> Torsten
>
I guess recent is a relative term. Considering that Finnish and
Estonian were essentially the same language a thousand years ago one
would have to speculate that the transition in meaning from 'male
animal' to 'dog' happened before that. The separation of Hungarian
happened thousands of years before that, but a cognate exists, but has
nothing to do with 'dog' in Hungarian.
If in fact *kojra is an extention of *koj-, in Uralic already, it
provides the only evidence in Finnish for *koj-. *Koj- itself
produces no modern Finnish words, although it is more productive in
other FU languages.
As I have already mentioned the former word for dog was peni, with
cognates in Finnic, Saami languages, Vogul, and Permic.
If you are determined to find the *kWVn/r- word in Finnish, it exists
as 'susi' - wolf, as a loan from Baltic <s'unte < k'unto-
Peter P