East Caucasian Perspectives on the Origin of the Word 'Camel' and Some Notes on European Substrate Lexemes

Abstract

The English word camel, like its relatives in most western European languages, originates in Latin, which borrowed it from Greek (κάμηλος), which in turn borrowed it from a language in or close to the Near East. A Semitic origin is usually assumed but this is not without its problems. The ultimate origin of the word is likely to be connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin and domestication process of either of the two animals to which the word refers: the dromedary, which was probably native to the south of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Bactrian camel, which is native to the dry deserts of Central Asia. Against this background it is relevant that the word has probable relatives (by inheritance or borrowing) in two of the three native language families of the Caucasus: Kartvelian (Georgian aklemi) and East Caucasian (e.g. Chechen emkal). On the one hand, the form of these words is difficult to explain on the basis of a Semitic origin of the word (the 'dromedary' route), while on the other hand they open up the possibility to bolster the case for a Central Asian origin (the 'Bactrian camel' route). The East Caucasian forms are investigated and reconstructed in detail. They attract notice because they give a strong impression of being native East Caucasian forms and because they relate to the Greek and Semitic relatives in a way that is strongly reminiscent of a layer of words whose spread across European languages has been connected to the language of Europe’s first farmers (the type *mesal- ~ *amsl- ‘blackbird’ in Latin merula and German Amsel).