cat < ?

Rick Mc Callister rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu
Sun Jan 7 20:11:16 UTC 2001


cat seems to be one of the most problematic of all animal names

	Corominas says cattus "wildcat" was first documented in late Latin
4th c. and springs from an unknown source [Corominas 1980]
	Buck (1949: 182) goes back to Greek káttos, kátta, gáttos from an
unknown source
	He also gives Latvian kak'is, kak'e "cat" [Buck 1949: 182]
	Entwistle (1936: 40-41) derives it from Gaulish cattu
	Gamkrelidze & Ivanov (1995: 515) (English trans.) offer
Indo-European *khath "cat", possibly from Nubian kadi:s
	G & I also list Arabic kitt, Aramaic katta, Georgian katla, Laz
k'at'u, Kabardian gedu, Dido gedu, Avar keto, Turkish kedi [Gamkrelidze &
Ivanov 1995: 515]

	General lore has domestic cats originating in North Africa; but
wildcats are almost universal.
	So is IE *khath "cat" plausible?
	My problem is that the cat words all look too much alike.
	I'm trying to imagine how a Nubian word would have made it into
early IE. Is the ancient Berber/Libyan word known? Egyptian was something
like miu, wasn't it?
	If it's from Gaulish; could it be derived from catu- "fighter"? -I
remenber seeing a similar sounding word meaning "stealthy" or whatnot. Both
of these describe tomcats pretty well.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701



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