Basque <(h)anka>

[Larry Trask]

Just a brief interjection here.  Corominas, as I understand him, does
*not* propose that any Persian cobblers traveled to Europe.  Instead,
he proposes only stimulus diffusion: that is, he proposes that artefacts
and techniques for making them diffused from Persia through the
Mediterranean, along with names for some of these.

However, whatever one may think of Corominas's account, it is
irrelevant to the point that started this thread.  Basque <hanka>
and <zanko> are borrowed from Romance, as shown clearly by their
forms.  Where the Romance words came from is a wholly different
issue.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk