{"id":18409,"date":"2019-10-15T19:45:48","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T19:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18409"},"modified":"2019-10-17T12:11:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T12:11:20","slug":"elephants-camels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18409","title":{"rendered":"Elephants &#038; Camels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/elephants.gif\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 15px 15px;\" alt=\"Elephants and camels\" width=\"208\" height=\"208\"><\/p>\n<p>What do elephants and camels have in common?<\/p>\n<p>Well, words for <strong>camel<\/strong> in Slavic languages like Czech and Russian possibly come from an Ancient Greek word meaning <strong>elephant<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In Czech the word for camel is <strong>velbloud<\/strong> [\u02c8v\u025blblou\u032ft], which comes from the Proto-Slavic <em>*vel\u044cb(l)\u01ebd\u044a \/ v\u044al\u044cb(l)\u01ebd\u044a<\/em> (camel), from the Gothic <em>\ud800\udf3f\ud800\udf3b\ud800\udf31\ud800\udf30\ud800\udf3d\ud800\udf33\ud800\udf3f\ud800\udf43<\/em> (ulbandus &#8211; camel), from the Latin <em>elephantus<\/em> (elephant), from the Ancient Greek <em>\u1f10\u03bb\u03ad\u03c6\u03b1\u03c2<\/em> (el\u00e9phas &#8211; elephant) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/velbloud\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Words from camel in other Slavic languages come from the same root: <strong>\u0432\u0435\u0440\u0431\u043b\u044e\u0434<\/strong> (verblj\u00fad) in Russian and Ukrainian, <strong>\u0432\u044f\u0440\u0431\u043b\u044e\u0434<\/strong> (vjarblj\u00fad) in Belarusian, <strong>wielb\u0142\u0105d<\/strong> in Polish, and so on  [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic\/vel%D1%8Cb(l)%C7%ABd%D1%8A\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>These all come from the Gothic <strong>\ud800\udf3f\ud800\udf3b\ud800\udf31\ud800\udf30\ud800\udf3d\ud800\udf33\ud800\udf3f\ud800\udf43<\/strong> (ulbandus), but from there the etmological trial gets a bit hazy, as they quite often do. Traditionally this word is thought to derive from the Greek <em>\u1f10\u03bb\u03ad\u03c6\u03b1\u03c2<\/em>, via the Latin <em>elephantus<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Another theory is that the Gothic word comes from the Proto-Germanic <em>*elpanduz<\/em> (elephant, camel), which possibly comes from the Hittite word <em>hu(wa)lpant<\/em> (humpback), or from another ancient language of Anatolian such as Luwian [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/%F0%90%8C%BF%F0%90%8C%BB%F0%90%8C%B1%F0%90%8C%B0%F0%90%8C%BD%F0%90%8C%B3%F0%90%8C%BF%F0%90%8D%83#Gothic\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The word for elephant in Czech (and also in Slovak, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian) is <strong>slon<\/strong> [slon], which comes from the Proto-Slavic <em>*slon\u044a<\/em> (elephant) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/slon#Czech\">source<\/a>], which comes either from the Turkish <em>aslan<\/em> (lion), or from <em>*sloniti<\/em> (to lean against), relating to the medieval story of an elephant sleeping leaning on a tree [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic\/slon%D1%8A\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>So now we know where the name of the lion in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Lion,_the_Witch_and_the_Wardrobe\"><em>The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe<\/em><\/a> probably comes from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do elephants and camels have in common? Well, words for camel in Slavic languages like Czech and Russian possibly come from an Ancient Greek word meaning elephant. In Czech the word for camel is velbloud [\u02c8v\u025blblou\u032ft], which comes from the Proto-Slavic *vel\u044cb(l)\u01ebd\u044a \/ v\u044al\u044cb(l)\u01ebd\u044a (camel), from the Gothic \ud800\udf3f\ud800\udf3b\ud800\udf31\ud800\udf30\ud800\udf3d\ud800\udf33\ud800\udf3f\ud800\udf43 (ulbandus &#8211; camel), from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,98,99,104,107,153,118,154,10,15,155,39,44,52,57,60,61,74,75,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belarusian","category-croatian","category-czech","category-english","category-etymology","category-gothic-gutiska","category-greek","category-hittite","category-language","category-latin","category-luwian","category-polish","category-proto-germanic","category-russian","category-serbian","category-slovak","category-slovenian","category-turkish","category-ukrainian","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18409"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18422,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18409\/revisions\/18422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}