`zebra'

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

We may be getting somewhere with those zebras and those obscure African
languages.

First of all, thanks to Jim Rader for mentioning Loewe's article in KZ 61,
which I've started reading yesterday, obviously simultaneously with him
(""Uber einige europ"aische W"orter exotischer Herkunft", 37-136). This is
a very interesting article, and its author was much at pains to dig out the
most oblique sources needed to find out how certain words came first to
european languages (i.a. cannibal, tobacco, chocolate, banana, gnu etc.).
Sometimes, their "exotic" pedigree is confirmed, sometimes rejected.
For /zebra/, we can learn from Loewe that Amharic is definitely out, since
the original locus for this allegation (Hiob Ludolf - the pioneer of
Ethiopic studies - "Historia Aethiopica" 1681) doesn't even talk about such
an Amharic word. It mentions /zecora/, which, however, I again can't find
in my Amharic dictionaries. This doesn't mean much, they could be
inadequate, the word could long be obsolete, or I could be too stupid to
find it.

Now, Ludolf  adds that the animal in question is called /Zebra/
"congensibus", without getting precise. Loewe tried to secure its source,
without, however, reaching a definite solution. He finds the form /zerba/
in Girolamo Merolla's 1692 "Relazione del viaggio nel Regno di Congo".
Since Merolla *was* in the congolese empire, and Ludolf wasn't, the latter
form may be closer to the actual source, than our /Zebra/.
Loewe, for reasons I'm not repeating here, narrows the search down to
Bunda, i.e that language, which was described inter alia by Cannecattim.
Chatelain 1888-89 calls this same language /Kimbunda/ ("Grammatica
Elementar du Kimbunda ou Lingua de Angola"). This should be enough to
determine, among all those mindboggling similar names, which language is
spoken about (I have another tiny thing here, rather a phrase-book than a
grammar, by Schatteburg "Sprachschatz des 'Umbundu'",1931, which is about a
similar language (I'm aware of role of prefixes in Bantu grammar and the
fact that even in the specialist literature sometimes language names get
confused with ethnonyms or place-names; look for the root, with credits to
Eduard Selleslagh), from much the same region (it is called the
"Eingeborenen-Hauptverkehrssprache in portugiesisch Angola"), however a
superficial inspection of both booklets with my untrained eye shows me
clearly closely related, but not identical languages (e.g. I find rather
different numerals aso.).

Now, why Kimbunda in the first place ? Loewe was unable to find /zerba/ or
anything close to it in the sources of these languages, his assigning the
word to "Bunda" is largely based on - educated and sophisticated -
conjecture (btw, the "Umbundu"-phrasebook gives for "zebra" /ongollo/).
So, after all this, we don't really have an African source for /zebra/,
Amharic was a misunderstanding, and the "congolese" source can not be
verified, and was based on conjecture in the first place.

All this brings us back to Europe, and I think the fact, brought to our
attention again by May Wheeler, but mentioned before, that actually we have
forms like (en)zebro, (en)zebra, ezebra, azebra, cebrario, ezebrario for
the "wild ass" in Old Spanish and Old Portuguese. This is usually taken as
going back to Latin /equifer/. Someone (I forgot who) objectioned that this
etymology requires an intermediary state *ecifer- and found no motivation
for the -qu- > -c- development. While this may be important and indeed
problematical, it does not remove the existence of those Old Iberoromance
words, which are still with us, regardless whether there Latin > Romance
derivation is problem-free or not. So, foraging into Africa was, I'd say, a
wrong move in the first place. The wild ass, called by the words mentioned,
died out on the peninsula towards the 16th century, its name being
transferred to an interesting animal found (somewhere)in Africa by
Portuguese seamen. Whether any native African word resembling it
incidentally played a role in keeping this old word with the new (but
related) meaning, remains open, until the Bunda-word will actually be
found, which may be never.

I find Latin /equifer, -i: m; -us is late/ well attested, but, as Max
Wheeler observes it maybe an odd compound (though I'd use the formula N+A
here < equus + ferus); some explain this as a loan-translation from Greek
/hipp-agros/ (cf. caprifer). This type of compounds is labelled
"post-classical" in my sources (e.g. Debrunner "Griechische
Wortbildungslehre").

The problem of the Latin > Romance derivation seems to remain, since Latin
-kwi- should have yielded -gi- in Spanish (<seguir>). The pre-iberoromance
form *ecifer- seems indeed hard to motivate, but I think we go to far if we
simply rule it out, and, especially, by preferring an African etymology for
/Zebra/, as if the Old Spanish words never existed. Instead of a hitherto
unknown sound-law, which we will never find, we should think about some
analogy here (especially common in zoological terminology all over the
world). In this respect, some attention should be due to Latin /cervus/
"deer" and its reflexes (kat. cervo, sp. ciervo, pg. cervo); this is not
the same, and it contains /r/ and /v/ in the opposite order, but to think
of some analogical influence here, it is sufficient to concentrate on the
initial consonant. In fact, I do think this is, by and large, the story of
/zebra/.

St.G.

Stefan Georg
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D-53111 Bonn
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