Taboo replacements

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

>Wasn't it more a case of initially distinguishing between 2 types of horses:
>caballus, a large lumbering draft horse of horthern European
>origin as opposed to equus a swift cavalry horse originating in the
>Caucasus or Caspian region

-- folk-entymology.  "Caballus" is generally given simply as "nag". cf. Greek
"kaballes".

It was a slang term.

>Caballus> won out because not too many people ever came into contact with an
>equus

-- no, equus was the generalized word for "horse".

>And zebra is supposedly from Old Spanish ecebra, ezevra, etc. said
>to be a derivative from equus plus some ending.

-- Vulgar Latin *eciferus, from Latin equiferus (equi + ferus), "wild horse".

>Pony is related to the name of the horse goddess Epona, right? And
>so, is cognate to equus, isn't it?

-- no; another folk-entymology.  It's from Latin "pullus" which meant "colt".
Via French poulenet, which is a diminutivie of poulain, which means, of
course, "colt".

The derivation "young horse" ==> "small horse" is fairly obvious, I think.