Deciphering the ancient names of animals (Part 2)

L M Leteane | Friday April 1, 2016 15:39

This week, we consider the names of more animals, but mainly concentrating on domestic animals.

The ancient, generic term for ‘animal’ – also reflected in Sumerian, the oldest written language – is GU. This transliterates as ‘goo’ (‘a thing’) in Setswana. Although ‘go-o’ (as in ‘goo mo’: ‘this thing’) now sounds like an abbreviation of ‘golo’ (as in ‘golo mo’), the latter is a composite term comprised of the Sumerian terms GU (‘thing/ creature’) and LU (this). Indeed, LU/LO as meaning ‘this’ is retained as a term applicable to a greater variety of object names in Nguni languages, e.g. ‘lo mtwana’ (‘this child’) is strictly ‘ngwana yo’ in Setswana. In Sotho and Setswana, ‘this’ now varies greatly according to the initial consonant, thus: logong lo (this log), ntlo e (this house), setlhare se (this tree), etc.

As such, kgomo (cow) – arguably one of the earliest and certainly most valued of domestic animals – is goo-mo (‘this creature’) whereas a crocodile is (I).GU.ANA (now ‘kwena’), literally meaning ‘away creature’. ‘Cow’, therefore, the ‘here’ creature (domesticated) and ‘crocodile’ is the creature living ‘away’ from people. Naturally, in Nguni, ‘cow’ is nkomo (n’gu-mo). The English term ‘cow’ is itself an obvious variation of gu. Gu features in another domestic animal: the sheep (n’gu: now nku). In Sumerian legend (specifically the Enuma Elish) the moon is called ‘Kingu’ (KI.NGU, which literally means ‘Earth’s Sheep, but implies ‘Earth’s follower’) because it follows (orbits) the Earth. Indeed, a sheep is known as a ‘follower’ in other cultures, even biblically, because it followed rather than preceded the shepherd.

The English term ‘goat’ is, etymologically, GU.AT (‘procreating creature’: ata – ‘add’ in English – means ‘increase’. The goat has indeed been traditionally associated with ‘lust’ and this carries through in the Setswana name podi. The key word here is evidently ‘pod’ which my conventional dictionary defines as “a somewhat elongated, two-valved seed vessel”. This exactly describes the proportionately large scrotum of a male goat relative to its size. In fact, the proto-term for ‘pod’ (i.e. the original ‘Babel’ term for it) is phuthi: ‘that which envelopes/contains’ – as Setswana can still ably discern. As language split up into dialects, certain sound-changes cropped up and the r/d one is well-known (e.g. mari/madi, hibiru/hibidu, etc.). Thus, ‘podi’ became ‘puri’ in certain languages and we can discern that the Latin term capri (as in Capricorn, whose astrological sign is a goat) is originally ga-puri (‘that of the [large] pod’).

Another well-liked and often indispensable domesticated creature is the horse. It was actually spelt and pronounced hros in its original Icelandic and Old High German (OHG) form. From a Setswana angle, I discern that they regarded it as an animal to horosa (‘make one arrive at a [distant] place’). The understanding allows us to further relate it to the French term hors (‘far, away from, out of’) which in turn relates to the Sotho term hole (which is hore in Egyptian because of the linguistically well-known l/r sound-change) – meaning ‘distant, far away’. The ‘horizon’ is thus the hore-zone. When hore is applied to ‘horse’, it implies an animal capable of taking one to distant places.

In terms of etymologies, we should expect different takes on the impressive capabilities of a horse: namely its speed, strength, and stamina. Each language will pick out the aspect they find most intriguing in a horse. Thus, in Setswana culture, the fascinating thing they picked was its speed. I discern that the name pitse (Setswana for ‘horse’) was originally bitse! (a lively expression describing speed). It is akin, and most likely related, to the German term blitz (‘lightning quick’).The French term for ‘horse’ is cheval (pronounced ‘she-fal’) and from the Setswana protolanguage we can discern this as she-falala (‘that which [easily] escapes’), i.e. ‘that which one cannot [easily] catch’ – also alluding to its speed.

Others regard it as a beast of burden because of its strength and endurance, so the Dutch term perd celebrates these qualities. The per (whose r is best pronounced like the French r) in perd is an opportunistic linguistic coalescing of pega (load up) and peri (a suffix meaning ‘at/around the edges/boundaries’). Pega alludes to its ability to carry heavy loads, while peri – as in ‘perimeter, peripheral, peripatetic’, etc. – is the key word in the proto-term pereta (‘move from distant place to distant place’). Of course, ‘boundaries’ and ‘distant places’ relate to each other. We can thus safely say that perd relates to pereta. Incidentally, we can thus detect that the term ‘bird’ (bereta) emanated from pereta (the p/b sound-change is another well-known one in linguistics).

Speaking of birds, the English term ‘chicken’ emanates from the Middle English (ME) term chiken which in turn emanates from the Old English (OE) cicen which relates to the Dutch (D) kieken/kuiken and the Low German (LG) küken. It is the latter that gives away the fact that it was, like the Setswana term koko, an onomatopoeic term (a term emulating a natural sound), in this case emulating the distinctive sound of chicken.

Turning now to ‘pig’ – the last domestic animal we will consider here – conventional etymology is unsure of its origins. Let me help out. Pigge (ME) and big (D) meant ‘young (small) pig’, so the terms related to picanin (small) rather than to a pig itself which is better traced through hog, swine, etc. (space does not allow me to deal with these). In Setswana, a pig is a kolobe (Nguni: n’gulube) which we have related to ‘globe’, i.e. ‘that which is rotund (fat)’.

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