Earlier this week I posted some questions about the etymology of Kerberos. After some hours of silence, the issue started getting tossed about on twitter by some great people. And, I think, the conversation not only offered some great new suggestions, but it may have generated something new. The punchline is that we have two new suggestions.
One, suggests that it may be a borrowing from Asia Minor, related to Proto-turkic kara-boru (“black-wolfhound”); the other posits a Phoenician root *klb-‘rz (“hound of the earth”). I could describe how we got there, but I would rather just post all the tweets here. Note, the kind conversation, the collaboration, and the wordplay!
(In my humble opinion, this is twitter at its best).
Thanks to the stalwart correspondents who made this possible!
ICYMI: Etymologies for Kerberos https://t.co/yKoWPPZJ0i
— sententiae antiquae (@sentantiq) February 9, 2016
http://twitter.com/BhriguTheBard/status/697179265197068288
@BhriguTheBard @sentantiq so 9-8th cent – well within the Phoenician orbit. I am tempted to guess Phoenician klb-'rz 'hound of the earth'
— Armand D'Angour (@ArmandDAngour) February 9, 2016
@BhriguTheBard @sentantiq what are the earliest attestations? Mycenean?
— Armand D'Angour (@ArmandDAngour) February 9, 2016
@sentantiq @BhriguTheBard @PIELexicon Bingo! Proto-Turkic kara-boru 'black wolfhound'
— Armand D'Angour (@ArmandDAngour) February 9, 2016
@ArmandDAngour @sentantiq @BhriguTheBard The underlying semantical field there was not "Spotty the dog" but darkness and night, I feel.
— Proto-Indo-European Lexicon (@PIELexicon) February 9, 2016
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