It suddenly occurred to me that the Russian word кролик ‘rabbit’ looked sort of like a diminutive of король ‘king’; I chuckled at my homemade folk etymology, and then wondered what the actual history was. Lo and behold, it turns out my jokey guess was substantially correct; Vasmer:
(Л. Толстой, Блок и др.), укр. крíлик. Заимств. из польск. królik – то же, которое является калькой (“маленький король”: król; см. коро́ль) с нов.-в.-нем. диал. Künigl, Königshase, ср.-в.-н. küniklîn из лат. cunīculus; см. Мi. ЕW 131; Бернекер 1, 572; Унбегаун, RЕS 12, 20; Брюкнер 269; Карлович 261. Лит. kralìkis происходит из польск.; см. Брюкнер, FW 96, 175.
In other words, the Russian word is borrowed from Polish królik, literally ‘little king,’ which is a calque of MHG küniklîn, which is borrowed from Latin cuniculus ‘rabbit’ but adapted to look like a German diminutive of künik ‘king.’ Fun with etymology! (Oh, and the Latin word is the source of English con(e)y, as in Coney Island.)
Welsh cwningen “rabbit” is from Middle English, according to GPC.
Makes sense, as UK rabbits seem to be the fault of the Normans. (Apparently the Romans brought rabbits to Britain, but they don’t seem to have escaped into the wild at that point.)
“Rabbit” itself seems to be an etymological mystery, though it seems clear that it originally only referred to baby rabbits. A bit like “bird” versus “fowl.”
[Mooré luiila and Farefare niila “bird” must also have begun life as diminutive forms: the -la is a “diminutive class” suffix, moribund in Western Oti-Volta, but alive and well elsewhere. The expected non-diminutive form turns up in e.g. Kusaal niiŋ, Dagbani nooŋa.]
Liberman’s Analytic Dictionary has over four dense pages on rabbit. He thinks it’s likely to be a Germanic root plus a French suffix. There’s also Walloon robett ‘rabbit’.
Or “pig” versus “hog” and “swine”.
Etymonline quotes from Mencken (BTW U.S. ‘Jackrabbit’ = U.K. ‘Hare’)
wikip confirms the bit about the Belgian non-hare. And “Hares are generally larger than rabbits, with ears that are more elongated, and with hind legs that are larger and longer. ” — which is how I distinguish them. I guess if you’ve never seen a genuine rabbit you wouldn’t know the difference. (The biological difference has to do with whether at birth the young are relatively mature.)
Then does U.S. not have any genuine rabbits in the wild? (Other than the Belgian non-hare.)
I wonder if this bit of trivia somehow inspired the Bun Xkcd? Indeed, someone already pointed to it on the Explain Xkcd wiki entry.
Br’er Rabbit is presumably really Br’er Hare. (His West African forebear certainly is.)
Plenty of American bunny rabbits (Sylvilagus sp.) New world hares (Lepus sp.) are called hares in the Arctic, jackrabbits in the United States.
AntC: There are lots of true rabbits in North America. The cottontail species are a clade of true rabbits, and since European colonization, the eastern cottontail had become quite cosmopolitan in North America, including the Caribbean. The smallest, highest ranking species is a threatened pygmy variety native to the Pacific Northwest. They often live in substantial numbers in the green spaces of regional zoos, fed but allowed to run free.
Wordorigins has covered rabbit and coney / Coney Island; it’s unclear whether Coney Island was named after rabbits.
Latin cuniculus is itself of unknown origin.
the rabbits were a Mediterranean species until the French introduced them further North (and, later on, the Brits helped them spread down under). I had to learn this when making sense of genetic papers about the actual origins of Australian rabbits (there have been two separate successful introductions, but the second one accounts for less than 1% of the rabbit land in Australia)
there have been two separate successful introductions,
Speaking from NZ, the only “successful” approach to rabbits would have been to not introduce them at all.
There’s been occasional talk of introducing some further species to predate the rabbits; and there were illicit attempts in 1997 to introduce hemorrhagic disease. So NZ’ers don’t see anything cute about rabbits. Easter Bunny notwithstanding.
The Romans said rabbits (cuniculi) were native to Spain, while hares (lepores) were found all over. Latin dictionaries therefore assume ‘cuniculus’ is a Spanish word – Celtiberian? Basque? there may be other possibilities. It also means ‘burrows’ and ‘mines’ and editors are not sure whether Catullus calls Spain ‘cuniculosus’ in poem 37 because it’s full of rabbits or full of mines.
The Latin word for ‘hare’ (lepus, lepŏris) is almost identical to the word for ‘charm, pleasantness’ (lepōs, ōris), and both are masculine. There seems to have been a folk belief that eating hare would make you handsome. Martial makes a cruel joke out of it (5.29):
Si quando leporem mittis mihi, Gellia, dicis:
“Formosus septem, Marce, diebus eris.”
Si non derides, si uerum, lux mea, narras,
edisti numquam, Gellia, tu leporem.
“If you ever send me a hare, Gellia, you say
‘You will be handsome, Marcus, in seven days.’
If you are not mocking me, if, my light, you are telling the truth,
you never ate a hare, Gellia.”
Why would he think she’s mocking him? I suppose he thinks she’s implying he really needs to eat a hare.
Successful from the rabbit’s viewpoint and in comparison with the numerous failures.
The British loved their rabbits (it took them only ~500 years to develop this affection after the introduction to England from France in 1300s), and brought them over to Australia over and over again. The popular myth says that the 1788 First Fleet was the start of rabbit rule, but in actuality, neither 1788 nor several more attempts in the following decades suceeded.
Almost all of Australian rabbits come from the stock of Thomas Austin’s hunting estate in Barwon Park, dating back only to 1859. It took them over 60 years to cover the entire continent, The other extant introduction is in Kattai NP.
I wouldn’t have guessed it, but that makes кролик cognate with Algerian Arabic ڨُنينة gʷnina. IIRC the Latin term is difficult to trace further back, and has been suggested as a “Mediterranean” substratum word.
“The conies* are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks”
Proverbs 30:26 KJV
* Rock Hyrax
Mixing up hares and rabbits is also frequent among German speakers; lots of people call rabbits Hase instead of Kaninchen, especially if they encounter them in the wild.
Another name for the Rock Hyrax is Dassie (from Dutch ‘das’ – badger).
Armed with my confirmation bias I now see that the biblical Coney does indeed look like a rabbit/badger hybrid.
It also means ‘burrows’ and ‘mines’ and editors are not sure whether Catullus calls Spain ‘cuniculosus’ in poem 37 because it’s full of rabbits or full of mines.
Presumably “cunicolusus” is also a pun on “cunnus” given Catullus’ typical subject matter, no?
I’d probably read that line “sons of little hairy cunty Celtiberians”.
What’s going on with Kaninchen, anyway? It doesn’t look to have any kingly remodeling. Were there other MHG forms along with küniklîn? Is that one dialectical?
Dwds has
Kaninchen n. hasenartiges Nagetier. Mnd. kanīn(e)ken, Deminutivum zu mnd. kanīn…entlehnt aus afrz. (besonders nordfrz.) con(n)in, das (mit Suffixwechsel) neben afrz. con(n)il steht, hervorgegangen aus lat. cunīculus ‘Kaninchen’, übertragen (im Hinblick auf den Kaninchenbau) ‘unterirdischer Gang’. Auf afrz. con(n)il beruht ahd. cǒnol (Hs. 12. Jh.)….
So Kaninchen ex Middle Dutch kanīn ex Old French con(n)in/con(n)il where the last-named has an Old High German reflex and both old French terms are derived from the Latin (I suppose there is some reasoning or evidence that the OHG has to be ex OFr and the OFr has to be ex Latin, e.g , the OHG has to be a borrowing from somewhere and the OFr term is traceable to VL).
The Romans said rabbits (cuniculi) were native to Spain
Previously at lh
Spain, Land of Rabbits?
Corominas, on cuniculus, under conejo:
I omitted footnotes on the -iculus suffix and on other interpretations of the Mozarabic word.
I tend to trust Corominas, but I am scratching my head. How would ‘rabbit’ and ‘ferret’ ever overlap? (Except the former, reluctantly, within the latter.)
@MMcM, PP: Grimm states that there is a wide range of dialectical forms. Under that lemma, it discusses the forms with Ka(r)n-, forms with Kön-/Kün- are discussed under Königlein, literally “little king”. There is also a lemma Könighase “king hare = rabbit” which is marked as Bavarian and Austrian; interesting whether DM knows that designation?
Königlein looks like an interesting folk etymological calque of cuniculus. I’d think that other forms with König have the same origin, maybe as second degree nativizations.
@Trond: yes, that’s exactly what they are, as also noted in the OP 🙂
I lost track. Well, it’s never to late to have a revelation!
How would ‘rabbit’ and ‘ferret’ ever overlap?
What does the second half of untxarta mean?
Ferrets have been used for centuries to drive out rabbits (ferreting), right?
I got confused. untxi is ‘rabbit’. I don’t know what the -arta is.
It has been suggested (plausibly, to my mind) that “cuniculus” is borrowed from a Celtiberian word meaning “little dog”, (Celtic */kun/), a descriptive term which one could easily imagine applied to rabbits.
In which case…Welsh “ci” and the first syllable of “cwningen” (cf. David Eddyshaw’s comment, the first of this thread) are long-sundered doublets!
It looks even better with the plurals cŵn “dogs” and cwning “rabbits.”
(Cwning is, unfortunately, obsolete. The Young People of Today say cwningod. I blame TikTok.)
Benjamín García Hernández, “El origen de cuniculus (> conejo) y su difícil, pero legítima, relación con cunnus (> coño)”, here. The English abstract:
This gives a whole new slant to the term “bunny girl.”
I have no doubt that that fine classical scholar Hugh Heffner had this in mind.
So Catullus presumably knew this.
So contrarian was I in my youth that I did weird things like study Ancient Greek rather than go with the flow and learn Spanish the way the majority of Americans of my generation who took any foreign language in school did. So I was unaware of the apparently quite wide-ranging semantic scope (with considerable regional variation within the Hispanosphere) of https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/co%C3%B1o#Spanish and related terms/phrases.
Yes, I once noted here that when WIktionary explains Irish coinín “rabbit, vagina” as a calque of English cunny, and cunny as “cunty”, that is utterly weird because French connin means both things.
I wonder where the -in in French forms comes from.
“Algerian Arabic ڨُنينة gʷnina.”
Wiktionary gives Moroccan Arabic: قنية (qniyya), قلينة (qlayna), the latter is strange.
In my browser italicised Arabic is much larger and more readable (though leaning to the right).
@drasvi
In the absence of Étienne, maybe
https://fr.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-in#fr
e.g., connil was parsed as cunnellus and not as cuniglus, and then ellus replaced by inus?
Well, all right. That would be straighforward.
After all cunuculus and Russian krolik are technically diminutives (krol in the sense “male rabbit”, possibly “giant male rabbit” is something a child can form).
Wiktionary also cites:
Emilian: cunili, cunij, cunej, cunì ⇒ cunin, cunen
Piedmontese: cunij, cunì ⇒ conin
Friulian: cunin
And English forms:
Middle English: coni, konyng, conynge, cunning, conig, cony, conyne, konyn
English: cony, coney, cunny, connie
Scots: kinnen, kyunnen, connie
It explains cunny as “obsolete form of cony … ”, “(…diminutive…) cunt …”, treating these two as unrelated.
“conynge”
speaking of konungs…
Benjamín García Hernández, “El origen de cuniculus (> conejo) y su difícil, pero legítima, relación con cunnus (> coño)”
Thank you for bringing this study to our attention here, Y!
Under coney, the first edition of the AHD (1969) gave the ultimate origin of the word as something like “probably of Iberian origin”, the usual line. But by the third edition (1992), this had been changed to “possibly from cunnus, female pudenda”. I have been unable to discover the immediate source for this particular etymology in the AHD3. (Most of the paper editorial records and files of the AHD since its inception were discarded when Houghton Mifflin moved its lexicographical department to smaller offices during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. The rest of the files must have been discarded when Houghton Mifflin Harcourt closed the lexicographical department permanently in 2019 and sold the AHD off to HarperCollins.) But an early instantiation of an etymological association of cuniculus and cunnus etymology is here (1861), for example. The AHD editors, for better or worse, later changed the etymology back to the party line (the Iberian etymology).
Aelian on κόνικλος from Περὶ ζῴων ἰδιότητος (On the characteristics of animals):
To interpret this, it is interesting to note that Περὶ ζῴων ἰδιότητος generally avoids the mention of Roman authors and anything overtly Latin. Aelian often prefaces his accounts with expressions like ‘a certain hunter told me…’, ‘a fisherman told me…’, but he also notes his own doubt and incredulity about the truth of some of the things he has heard. But I wonder if Aelian is just recycling Pliny and other authors here. (Philostratus, Vitae sophistarum ii. 31, says that Aelian claimed to have never travelled outside Italy.)
The AHD editors, for better or worse, later changed the etymology back to the party line (the Iberian etymology).
That must have been one of the last etymology changes they ever made: the 2016 printing of the fifth edition still had “possibly akin to cunnus, cunus, female pudenda”. (Blizzard was also one of the last.)
Most of the paper editorial records and files of the AHD since its inception were discarded when Houghton Mifflin moved its lexicographical department to smaller offices during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. The rest of the files must have been discarded when Houghton Mifflin Harcourt closed the lexicographical department permanently in 2019 and sold the AHD off to HarperCollins.
I can’t even begin to describe how angry this makes me. Couldn’t they have found someone to take that valuable material off their hands? It’s like the studios discarding movies that weren’t currently bringing in money. A pox on their houses!
Louis Bonaparte, as King of Holland, allegedly declared himself Konijn van ‘Olland ‘Rabbit of Holland’, probably pronouncing koning ‘king’ something like /koˈnin/ instead of /ˈkonɪŋ/.
That’s what the people do who, instead of Gesundheit!, say Schönheit! when someone sneezes.
In German, hares are the default lagomorphs; in English, rabbits are.
In short, someone at some point must have reinterpreted cuniculus as caniculus “little doggie”. Then presumably someone swapped out the entire compound diminutive suffix by MHG or perhaps rather MLG -în, and someone else later added -chen, giving the modern Kaninchen (with stressed long i).
I don’t. However, elegant variation for Austria’s public-owned broadcaster is the hill in Vienna on which it stands, and that is called Küniglberg.