> It is an interesting question why cats weren't common enough in
> the ancient Indo-European world to have a general I.E. name.
It seems to be older that the IE invasions.
Trask: The History of Basque, p. 265
"
Sex-marking is not common in Basque, except by lexical means, as in
gizon 'man' and emakume 'woman', behi 'cow' and zezen 'bull'. The
adjectives eme 'female' (a loan from Gascon) and or 'male' are
sometimes attached to animal names when the distinction is thought
necessary: katar 'tomcat', kateme 'female cat' {katu 'cat'), oilo
'hen', oilar 'cock, rooster'.
"
Besides katu Basque also has kathu and gatu; Trask assumes (as always)
a loan from Latin. For some reason Italian (gatto) and several Romance
dialects seems to have sporadically the same lenition which is typical
of Basque (but which katar/katu seeme to have escaped).
German Kater, Du. kater "tomcat"
German Katze, Du. kat "cat"
That suffix -er "male" is very rare in German and Dutch.
Perhaps = -er in Engl. gander?
Schrijver: Lost Languages in Northern Europe, in
Early Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European
"
In view of this relatively wide range of possible scenarios, one could
maintain that there is as yet no compelling evidence for direct
contact between Uralic and the language of geminates. Yet some such
evidence can be produced.
Proto-Finno-Ugric *urå 'man, male' (Sammallahti 1988: 542; UEW, p.
545) is represented by Hungarian úr 'lord, sir', Finnish uros genitive
singular ur(h)oon 'hero', uros genitive singular uroksen 'male (of
animals)', urho 'hero, fighter', Proto-Lappish *ore:s 'male'
(Lehtiranta 1989, no. 811). The Hungarian form has received various
alternative explanations, which render the Finno-Ugric etymology
somewhat less secure. Semantically, the application of Finnish uros to
male animals is matched by various Lappish forms, such as Southern
Lappish orra (Meraker) 'male reindeer', hurrä 'one year old male
reindeer', and Western Lappish hurrie 'grouse' (Lagercrantz 1939:
1511-1513, 4516, 8356; orthography simplified; note, however, that the
latter has been explained as a loan from the Scandinavian word for
'grouse', on which see below).
This application of *urå to fauna offers a possible clue to the
understanding of an element *u:r-, *urr- in Germanic words for
'aurochs' and 'capercaillie, black grouse', in other words, two of the
biggest and most majestic animals of Northern Europe: Old High German
u:ro 'aurochs' < *u:ro:n, Old High German u:r-ochso, Old English u:r,
Old Icelandic urr 'id.' < *u:raz, Old High German u:r-hano 'male
capercaillie'; Old High German orre-huon 'female capercaillie', Old
Icelandic orri 'black grouse', Modern Norwegian, Modern Swedish orre
'id.' < *urr-.
Proto-Germanic *urr- is usually explained on the basis of
Proto-Indo-European *wr.s- or *h1r.s- 'male', but the former would
have yielded **wurr-(cf. *wlkwos 'wolf > Gothic wulfs), while *h1r.s-
would account for *urr- but not for *u:r-. It seems more likely that
*u:r- and *urr-, showing as they do an alternation of single and
double r and a concomitant alternation of long and short *u, were
borrowed by Germanic from the language of geminates. The language of
geminates would then have borrowed the item from Finno-Ugric if
Hungarian ur is cognate; if not, Lappish and Finnish may have borrowed
the word from the language of geminates. It is possible to bypass the
language of geminates, however, by assuming that Germanic borrowed the
etymon directly from Proto-Lappish, including the consonant gradation
r - rr. Either way, it is more likely that Finno-Ugric was the donor
language than that Germanic was.
"
The first idea that comes to mind is that *or "male" would belong to
Vennemann's putative Vasconic substratum in all(?) of Europe, and that
it was added to the "cat" word to form kater etc.
Anyone have a better idea?
Torsten