A Note on Beavers

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/16/01 2:25:15 AM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> The Beaver definitely appears to be a native of Anatolia.

-- not of, as I said, most of Anatolia.

> Boy, beaver just doesn't seem to be a good candidate for a PIE word.

-- it's generally accepted.  If you have any evidence to the contrary, please
state.

> Especially if it's supposed to come from something like "reddish-brown".

-- our word for "bear" comes from a term meaning "the brown one".  That
doesn't make it any less a word for "bear".  That is elementary linguistics.

> There seems to be an extremely transparent meaning in Greek that would be
> hard to miss if it wasn't assumed the word was PIE.

-- proven, not assumed.

> But the Greek words above don't come from the beaver.

-- the PIE word for "beaver" was *bhebhrus.

>From which Galish "bebru", Avestan "bawra, Lithuanian "bebras", etc.

> Based on all the above, I think that one might guess that the application of
> the bebr- word to the beaver is late.

-- no.  Securely placeable in PIE and with cognates in Celtic, Germanic,
Italic, and Indo-Iranian.