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[Hans-Werner Hatting]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:32:14 -0800, Jasmin Harvey forwarded the following
post:

>The Celtic word for "cat" is perfectly reconstructible as _kattos_ (also
>feminine _katta_). This gives _cat_ in both Irish and Scots Gaelic, _kayt_
>in Manx, _cath_ in Welsh, _kath_ in Cornish, and _kazh_ in Breton.  Many
>etymological dictionaries say that it's a borrowing from Latin _cattus_,
>but it seems completely obvious to me that the reverse is true, that
>_cattus_ in Latin (which appears rather late) is in fact a borrowing from a
>Celtic or other northern European source, displacing the original _felis_.
>That the word is native there is confirmed by the Gaulish name _Cattos_ and
>the tribal name _Chatti_ or _Chattes_ ("the Cats" -- ie, "the Wildcats")
>from the Celtic-Germanic border country.

This proposal seems to be quite implausible to me. It would mean that
Germanic had a word for cat (a common development with or an early loan from
Celtic), which was then loaned to Latin from Celtic (probably not earlier
than the 1st century BC or AD) and then loaned back to Gmc. before the High
German sound shift (as German has _Katze_, which is affected by the sound
shift /tt/>/tz/), i.e., not later than the 7th century AD.
Moreover, it would mean that Latin got the word for the household cat from
the Celts, while the evidence quoted by others in this discussion shows that
the use of the household cat came from the south. I think it is more
plausible that the word came with the thing, that is the use of the
household cat. The proposal also does not account for the k/g variation in
Greek and Romance.

I would think of the quoted Gaulish name _Cattos_ and the name of the
_Chatti_ as not related to this question, but as formed from the root *kat-
quoted before.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting