From: Joao S. Lopes
Message: 62047
Date: 2008-12-14
On 2008-12-14 00:14, Rick McCallister wrote:
> The obvious thought is that reindeer is a compound word from rein +
> deer, since they are ridden and used for sleighs, etc. But Spanish has
> reno instead of "venado de riendas", etc., so it must be a folk
> etymology in English.
> So I looked up reindeer on the and got the following:
> Online Etymological Dictionary
> reindeer
> c.1400, from O.N. hreindyri "reindeer," from dyr "animal" (see deer) +
> hreinn, the usual name for the animal, from P.Gmc. *khrainaz (cf. O.E.
> hran "reindeer," Ger. Renn). Probably cognate with Gk. krios "ram," but
> folk-etymology associates it with rennen "to run."
If OE hra:n had not been replaced by its Norse cognate, it would have
yielded something spelt *<rone> or *<roan> in Modern English. Talking of
OE reindeer and domestication: Ohthere the voyager told King Alfred how
the "Finns" (Saami) used decoy "rones" to capture wild ones:
http://web.uvic. ca/hrd/iallt2003 /oldenglish/ OEparagraph- 3.html
The existence of a truly PGmc. word for 'reindeer' (*xrainaz) is not
impossible. The reindeer disappeared from the North European Plain,
Southern Scandinavia and Scotland ca. 7000 BC, but the PGmc.-speakers
must have lived within trading range of the reindeer hunters or herders
of northern Scandinavia. Whether *xrainaz was made up of inherited
elements or borrowed is anybody's guess at present.
Piotr