Rick McCallister pisze:
> No chance it could be a folk etymology? I'm assuming
> there were hedgehogs in the British Isles before the
> 15th century.
Funny. I used to take it for granted that <hedgehog> was a
folk-etymological rationalisation of something related to *h1eg^Hjo-. I
no longer think so. The OE reflex of *h1eg^Hjo- would have been +icg,
and there's no evidence at all for such a word. If you've ever heard
hedgehogs doing their usual grunts and snuffles in a shrubbery, their
modern English name becomes self-explanatory.
Piotr