Contents

Claire Le Feuvre
Gr. τρυγών ‘1. turtledove; 2. stingray (fish)’: one word or two words?
SEC 16 (2011), 23–31

of volume 16

Abstract
The stingray, τρυγών, is not named after the turtledove τρυγών (from τρύζω ‘to coo’), as is usually assumed: the fish is not a ‘sea turtledove’. It should rather be analyzed as *ptrug-on- ‘the winged one’, with the zero grade of πτέρυξ, -υγος ‘wing’: the ray’s fins are similar to wings, and their slow flapping movement gives the impres­sion that the ray flies rather than it swims. A zero-grade form of the name of the wing is attested in Iranian (Av. fraptərəjāt ‘bird’), but is probably not to be sought in Slavic *astrębъ ‘hawk’. The etymological form, then, should be reconstructed *(π)τρῠγών; the attested form is τρῡγών, with long [u:] warranted in metrical occurrences, and analogical after that of the bird name τρῡγών ‘turtledove’, because of the synchronic system in which many bird names were transferred to fish, the bird name behaving as the model. Thus two originally distinct words, τρῡγών ‘turtledove’ and *τρῠγών ‘stingray’ merged into one single word.

BibTeX

@article{LeFeuvre11,
	author	= {Le Feuvre, Claire},
	title	= {Gr. \textit{τρυγών} ‘1. turtledove; 2. stingray (fish)’: one word or two words?},
	journal	= {Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia},
	volume	= {16},
	year	= {2011},
	pages	= {23–31}
}