Greek Squirrels

I took a trip to the library and found that the entries in the Dictionary of Old English do not contain etymologies. Darn and double darn. But, I spoke to someone from the project who said that Cleasby and Vigfusson were wrong about the Germanic squirrel being a corruption of the Greek term.

Then I decided to see if the Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for the Middle English 'aquerne', which it does. It was last used in print in 1200 C.E.. The entry also states that the first element of the word is identified with 'oak' but that the origin of the word is uncertain. So that is that - our best guess is Anatoly Liberman's - and there were no Greek squirrels running around in migration period Germany.

More on Squirrel

The Germanic name for squirrel is annoying me. Is it a corruption of the Greek term? Everyone who says so is quoting Cleasby-Vigfusson but were they correct? I tried to look up the Old English term 'acwern'. The 'ac' in front looks like 'oak' and, since so many OE words are compounds and this is supposed to mean 'shade-tail', then wern or weorn should mean tail but I cannot find an entry in the Bosworth Toller dictionary or the Clark-Hall. I have not been able to access the Dictionary of Old English at the University of Toronto, although I should. They are definitely past the a's but the entry might not include an etymology of the word or break down the compound into its separate elements. Next week, I will try one more time and then I will give it a rest but in the meanwhile I found some other information.

In a book called Old Names - New Growth: Proceedings of the 2nd Aspens Conference (lovely title) there is this entry by Hans Sauer and Ulrike Krischke on quercus, oak, eiche : acweorna 'squirrel', 'eichhörnchen' should probably be placed here, too: according to Pokorny (p. 13F) its etymological root is not *aig- 'oak', 'Eiche' but *aig - 'swinging (violently)', '(sich heftig) bewegen, schwingen.' Still, secondary motivation in OE might have ben ac. Cf. Kluge s.v. 'Eichhörnchen' who connects the word to germ. *aik-'oak'".

Plus, Anatoly Liberman, who is a professor of Humanities at the University of Michigan, writes a word origin blog for the Oxford University Press and has a book out for laymen that is probably worth buying if you are interested in this sort of topic. Word Origins.... And How We Know Them. He wrote that the first German name for the squirrel was eihhurno and the first part of the word, the 'eih', meant 'oak' or was just 'eih'. In other words, it perhaps had two meanings and associating it with 'oak' does not "militate against good sense". The second part of the compound, he wrote was 'hurn' "coinciding with the word for 'horn' by chance." So the modern German word for squirrel would be 'little oak-horn'. He also pointed out that, although it sounds like an odd name for the wee beastie, the Russian name for squirrel is belka, which the first syllable 'bel' meaning white. I have not seen a lot of white squirrels.

If Liberman is correct, then the comment by Cleasby and Vigfusson is questionable. We shall have to wait until I get a chance to see what the entry in the DOE is. Meanwhile, here is a link to Liberman's blog. There are some choice words discussed in the recent past.

Squirrel

Squirrel the word is just as interesting as the little beastie that wears it for a species name. The Greeks had the honour of naming the squirrel and they called it (without using the actual Greek lettering) skia+oura or 'shade tail'. It made its way into Latin as sciurus and from there into Old French as esquireul and, after the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Norman as esquirel.

It is interesting to me that the German and Old Icelandic names for squirrel are eichhorn and ikorni which seems like the Germanic peoples developed an entirely different name for the species but the Cleasby-Vigfusson Icelandic-English Dictionary states that it is a corruption of the Greek name which all European languages borrowed. They list acvern as the Anglo-Saxon version but 'ac' is 'oak' and eiche in Modern High German is 'oak'. Maybe 'oak' equals 'shade'? Cleasby and Vigfusson speculated that 'ikorni' in the heathen poem Grimnismal 32 was a later addition and spoiled the meter. As well, that Rata-tösker might have not just been the squirrel's name but also the species name for rati (the climber?( sic.)) and tösker for 'tusk' or 'sharp teeth'. Then the squirrel's name was "Climber the squirrel" but this is speculation on their part.

So, if few Normans came over with the Conquest and England remained essentially Anglo-Saxon, why did acvern not survive? It seems like we kept much of the old Anglo-Saxon words but really we kept only a few hundred common nouns. Most words were replaced by the French terms and squirrel was one of them but it is interesting that the Greeks got to name them because I do not imagine forests when I think of Greece nor do I imagine they have squirrels. Goats, lots of goats, but no squirrels.