Re: micifuz, mico

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

>
> I doubt that Micifuz has anything to do with <mico> 'monkey'. I would look first at the Spanish interjections <miz>, used to call a cat, and <fu>, used to express the snarling of a cat. The former, reinterpreted as a vocative, has produced <Miz> as a familiar cat's name, which in turn has been thematized as appellatives, <mizo>, <miza> (more commonly <micho>, <micha> by a form of hypocoristic palatalization adapted from Basque; cf. <chicharra> 'cicada' which has also substituted a Basque ending), familiar-register terms for 'cat'.
>

I won't say "adapted from" but "shared with", as expressive palatalization is found in Romance varieties of the Iberian Peninsula such as Mozarabic. Spanish chicharra is a Mozarabic word corresponding to native cigarra and Basque txitxar.

In a previous message I erroneously quoted the form zigar 'mite', which in despite its phonetical similarity to the Spanish word actually designates  a different insect. This is an IE substrate root *dig´(h)- 'tick' found in Celtic, Germanic and Armenian.