Taboo replacements

[Robert Orr]

LARRY TRASK:
>> 	And zebra is supposedly from Old Spanish ecebra, ezevra, etc. said
>> to be a derivative from equus plus some ending.

>This is one story.  The four dictionaries in my office give five
>different stories, though all agree that Spanish or Portuguese is the
>direct source.  The stories are:

>(1) of unknown origin;
>(2) from <Zephyrus>, the wind god, because of the animal's speed;
>(3) from some Italian development of a Latin *<equiferus> `wild horse;
>(4) from an unspecified Congolese language;
>(5) from Amharic <zebra:> `zebra'.

>You pays your money...

>(1) is undiscussable.
>(2) looks fanciful to me.
>(3) seems to have a phonological problem, unless there were Italian
>	dialects in which /kw/ was reduced to /k/ very early.
>(4) is hard to evaluate without specifics, but why a Congolese
>	language?  Zebras are found on the eastern savannahs, not in
>	the Congolese rain forests.
>(5) looks good, if the word is real, but how would an Amharic word
>	get into Spanish and Portuguese?  (Of course, the Portuguese
>	were all over east Africa early on, but in Ethiopia?)

        when you consider what you have to assume to get Tamil yaanai-kolra
- "elephant killer" 1) borrowed into Portuguese 2) transferred all the way
to South America 3) become establsihed enough in the language to refer to
another giant snake, i.e.,  "anaconda" (the exact path taken by stages 2 and
3 is open to debate), (5) above doesn't really look like a problem at all.