Dmitry Pruss writes me:
We have an etymology discussion under my Facebook post with ermine pictures. Vasmer says one thing about горностай, Trubachyov another, and wiktionary shies away from it but suggests a paper with discussion.
Does the learned world of the hatters know?
I’ve added links so interested parties can follow up; to summarize, Trubachov says it’s from an Old Saxon *harmenes-tagl- / *harmenes-tail- ‘ermine’s tail,’ while Vasmer calls that idea mistaken (“Ошибочно”) without further analysis, rubbishing another couple of hypotheses in the process (“unacceptable… also unacceptable… absolutely fantastic”), and says Proto-Slavic *gornostajь remains unexplained (“остается необъясненным”). All thoughts welcome!
In fairness, Wiktionary suggests that the origins of the word “ermine” itself are also debated.
Well, he calls it “verfehlt”, which is not quite the same, I think; and he points out that there is ‘further analysis” of this hypothesis in Agrell BSl 42, even if he finds the offered alternative “unbefriedigend” (unsatisfactory). If Vasmer had given a “further analysis” for each hypothesis, his dictionary would have taken up ten volumes (at least) and not three, and there wouldn’t have found a publisher for it.
If it’s Proto-Slavic, it’s way too early for [h] to be borrowed as [g].
Sitting in an airport waiting for a delayed connecting flight, and now stupid me lost my comment when reloading.
Anyway, based on Wiktionary alone:
1. To get to initial g-, don’t we have to suppose a recentish borrowing and subsequent nativization through the Slavic dialect chain? Then the source for the first element might be OHG harmo.
2. The second element could also be *stajь. This takes us not too far from Eng- stoat, for which we might reconstruct *stait- (rather than *stut-): I guess this could be a verbal adjective meaning “stiffened” or something like that, maybe another word for “tail”, but I can’t find any other evidence for that. The Slavic form would have to be folk etymological.
3. Could the Slavic folk-etymology be something like “tall-stander” — and a further folk etymology in Slovene “mountain-dweller”?
If Vasmer had given a “further analysis” for each hypothesis, his dictionary would have taken up ten volumes (at least) and not three, and there wouldn’t have found a publisher for it.
Sure, I wasn’t complaining, just noting.
I hope that spam filter will let me in this time.
@Trond Engen
To get to initial g-, don’t we have to suppose a recentish borrowing and subsequent nativization through the Slavic dialect chain? Then the source for the first element might be OHG harmo.
I’m not sure how it could look like. OHG harmo with /h/ is loaned into one dialect resulting in /x/, then it gets voiced to /ɣ/ and it’s loaned again to another dialect with fortition to /g/? This last step seem to be unusual in Slavic context.
Could the Slavic folk-etymology be something like “tall-stander” — and a further folk etymology in Slovene “mountain-dweller”?
So the first part of *gornostajь would be interpreted as related to *gorьnъ? West and South Slavic descendants have metathesis, so this folk etymology would make sense in case for East.
That is very much *stut-, as explained here in German.
@Nachasz: I haven’t thought this through, but I imagined that if the folk etymology happened in West Slavic, sound correspondences and metathesis might have followed naturally as the word wandered east and south.
@David M.: I should have thought of *stut- (Ger. Stutz, borrowed as Da. studs, Norw. stuss “short end, joining element”). That means that my lofty suggestion for Slavic *stajь falls flat. OTOH, we have a decent etymology for Eng. stoat.
I was thinking of Steiß, which looks like it should be an exact cognate, but it’s fake – it’s taken from the wrong kind of dialect; the (attested) form that should have become standard is Steuß, as explained at the link.
For some reason I can’t explain, *-ūt > Eng. <oat> ~ <ote> seems to be regular.
Wiktionary does mention a formally possible connection to Scand. stut “young ox” but has no other semantic bridge to offer than the unsatisfactory “brown”. “Tail” or “stub” is better, but not perfect. Most other reflexes of *stut- seem to coalesce on “short end” – as does Norw. stutt adj. “short” – and that’s not a striking characteristic of an ermine’s tail. Unless we can make something out of the forms with short and long vowel, I’m leaning towards withdrawing my decency judgment.
@Trond Engen
(…)if the folk etymology happened in West Slavic, sound correspondences and metathesis might have followed naturally as the word wandered east and south.
The problem is that, as far as I know, neither reflexes of *gora nor reflexes of its derivations exhibit any metathesis. Association between *gornostajь and *gora likely could not arise in West Slavic if all examples from this branch have metathesis.
Association between *gornostajь and *gora likely could not arise in West Slavic if all examples from this branch have metathesis.
Yes, I have always intuitively folk-etymologised Czech “hranostaj” as “edge-stander” or even “edge-stable”. The “mountain” or “up” meanings did not occur to me at all until I heard the Russian version.
@possible common origin of *gornostajь and PGer. *harmô
Apparently *harmô has some cognates in Baltic languages: Latvian sermulis and Lithuanian šermuonė̃lis. Their common ancestor in PIE seem to have initial *ḱ, which underwent centumic development on Germanic side and satemic on Baltic.
In this case *gorno in *gornostajь may be one of those unexpected centumic words, that were either inherited directly from PIE or loaned from PGer. at early stage, before Grimm’s law had started working.
Or from Italic, Celtic or *Crotonian.