On 2008-07-29 02:57, Joao S. Lopes wrote:
>
>
> I'm collecting animal names in Latin, and grouping them by ending.
> There's a bunch of names in -R. Final R or S through rhotacism?
>
> salar "salmon" (< salire "to jump"?)
> olor "swan"
> turtur "turtle-dove"
> vultur "vulture"
> her "hedgehog"
> passer "sparrow", anser "goose" (<*hanser < *g^Ha:ns-is-)
<e:r> 'hedgehog' is a case apart -- a root noun from *g^He:r, with a
generalised long vowel of the nom.sg.
<a:nser> is not likely to contain an *-Vs- suffix, given Slavic *goNserU
'gander'. If the word is one of the puzzling items suspected to be (pre-
~ Proto-)Italic loans in Slavic (like *sekyra 'axe' and *pastyrI
'shepherd'), there must have been an Italic *-er- (whatever its origin)
in *g(^)Hans-er-.
<salar-> looks like a loanword. It's certainly related to <salmo:n-> and
I've seen them both classified as Gaulish words (on the authority of
Pliny?).
<turtur> (if not simply an onomatopoeic reduplication), <vultur> and
<passer> may contain minor allomorphs of agentive *-ter- (*'-tor-). That
leaves <olo:r-> as a potential *-s-stem (*e/olo:s?).
Piotr