From: Rick McCallister
Message: 62049
Date: 2008-12-14
> From: Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>So, taking into account the antlers, is it related to horn? or to roe(buck)/ Or is it related to roan, the color?
> Subject: Re: [tied] Reindeer domestication : two origins
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, December 13, 2008, 8:26 PM
> 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 If OE hra:n had not been replaced by its Norse cognate, it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