# Somaro



## francisgranada

The word _somaro _in Italian means "donkey" and according to this dictionary it comes from the Latin _sagmarius _(< Greek _ságma_). Interestingly, the Hungarian equivalent of this word is _szamár_, supposedly an old loanword from some Northern Italian regional language/dialect. 

My questions are about the history of this word: Was it of "common" use in Latin? Is it documented in classical Latin texts? In which Romance (including regional) languages  does this word exist/survive? 

Thanks in advance


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## ancalimon

"Semer" in Turkish means "saddle". Official Turkish dictionary says that it's from Rum language. Another very similar word "Kemer" meaning "belt" is listed as a Persian word.


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## francisgranada

ancalimon said:


> ... it's from Rum language ...


 The Rum language is Latin?


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## Perseas

_σαμάρι_ /sa'mari/ in Greek means _saddle_. 
_σαμάρι < σαμάριον < σαγμάριον < σάγμα_

The French _sommier_ is related to it, according Babiniotis' dictionary.
_sommier < L. sagmariu(m) < sagma < Gr. σάγμα_


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## ancalimon

francisgranada said:


> The Rum language is Latin?



The Rum language is neither Greek nor Latin but I guess a language that was heavily influenced by both. It's what the language that was spoken in Anatolia was called, around the times Muslim Turks were first living in Anatolia. I guess it was an amalgam of Greek, Armenian, Arabic, Turkic, Persian and probably also Latin.


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## Perseas

ancalimon said:


> Official Turkish dictionary says that it's from Rum language.


Does this dictionary distinguish the "Rum" language from "Greek"?


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## ancalimon

Perseas said:


> Does this dictionary distinguish the "Rum" language from "Greek"?



I don't think it does. I guess any word that's related with Greek one way or another are seen as "entered to Turkish from Rum language".

People living in Anatolia were called Rum but people living in Greece were called Yunan. So I think Rum language strictly is the language of Eastern Roman Empire. I guess it was somewhat similar to what "Ottoman language" was; a language that is heavily influenced by numerous other languages.


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## Wolverine9

Are you sure "Rum" isn't an abbreviation for Rumanian (Romanian)?


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## ancalimon

Wolverine9 said:


> Are you sure "Rum" isn't an abbreviation for Rumanian (Romanian)?



No it is not.

Rum was the word used by Muslim people for the people living in Anatolia.

For the word "semer" meaning "saddle", my guess is that its origins should be discussed with Etruscan in mind since their first known homeland is Anatolia.


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## Angelo di fuoco

francisgranada said:


> The word _somaro _in Italian means "donkey" and according to this dictionary it comes from the Latin _sagmarius _(< Greek _ságma_). Interestingly, the Hungarian equivalent of this word is _szamár_, supposedly an old loanword from some Northern Italian regional language/dialect.
> 
> My questions are about the history of this word: Was it of "common" use in Latin? Is it documented in classical Latin texts? In which Romance (including regional) languages  does this word exist/survive?
> 
> Thanks in advance



http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/somaro/ - some nuances on the usages. "Asino" is the neutral word for "donkey", a "somaro" is rather stupid, wheras a "ciuco" is rather cute.
In some dialects of Catalan, there's "somer" (the final r usually isn't pronounced, the unstressed vowel "o" is pronounced like "u" in Eastern Catalan dialects) as synonim of "ase", which is the Standard Catalan word for "donkey". I think I came across the word in "El mar" by the Majorcan writer Blai Bonet.

Besides, etimo.it often gives cognates from other Romance languages, but so far I haven't discovered Catalan among them.
The article from etimo.it you cite gives cognates from Provençal (which could stand for Occitan) and French: saumiers, saumiera and sommier, respectively.
I'm not an expert in regional Romance languages of Italy so I cannot tell for sure, but I'm quite sure "somaro" has no cognates in either Spanish or Portuguese.


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## Angelo di fuoco

ancalimon said:


> For the word "semer" meaning "saddle", my guess is that its origins should be discussed with Etruscan in mind since their first known homeland is Anatolia.



I think one just should bear in mind that the meaning of words may shift to similar or related meanings, sometimes even to opposite (French "tuer" means "to kill", but originally it meant "to protect").


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## ancalimon

Angelo di fuoco said:


> I think one just should bear in mind that the meaning of words may shift to similar or related meanings, sometimes even to opposite (French "tuer" means "to kill", but originally it meant "to protect").



Yes. It's possible that both words are related.


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## killerbee256

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Rum A helpful link for those unfamiliar with the history of the area.


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## Quiviscumque

See Meyer-Lübke under "sagmarius":

https://archive.org/details/romanischesetymo00meyeuoft

Also Ducange under "sagma":

http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr/sagma


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## Perseas

killerbee256 said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Rum A helpful link for those unfamiliar with the history of the area.


Also, this one. Especially the first bullet : 
Rûm: _ethnocultural minorities such as the various formerly Koine-Greek-speaking Christian diasporas and Greeks living in the Middle East and their descendants ... _


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## berndf

It is quite clear the in the context of Turkish etymology the tern "Rum language" refers to the vernacular language of the Rum empire in contrast to Persian the language of literature an administration. There is no point in looking for other possible meanings.


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## Wolverine9

berndf said:


> It is quite clear the in the context of Turkish etymology the tern "Rum language" refers to the vernacular language of the Rum empire



Which seems to be a form of Turkish rather than Greek.


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## francisgranada

Whatever be the exact meaning of "Rum langage" the following 


ancalimon said:


> "Semer" in Turkish means "saddle". Official Turkish dictionary says that it's from Rum language.





Perseas said:


> _σαμάρι_ /sa'mari/ in Greek means _saddle_.
> _σαμάρι < σαμάριον < σαγμάριον < σάγμα _


suggest that the Turkish _semer _is etymologically related to the Italian _somaro _and finally originates from Greek.


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## ancalimon

So does any language has some cognates of this word? I wonder whether it's related with the animal or some of its characteristics or something that shares the same characteristics with a saddle.


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## francisgranada

According to both the Italian and Hungarian etymology diccionaries I have consulted, _sagmarius _was used in the sense of an animal carrying some kind of pack/burden on it's back (equipped with _saddle_, I suppose). Typically it was a _donkey _(at least in Italy and for consequence also in Hungary), but I understand that not necessarily. Perhaps a _camel _could also be a _sagmarius _in other geographical places ...


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## CapnPrep

Angelo di fuoco said:


> I'm quite sure "somaro" has no cognates in either Spanish or Portuguese.


Are you _quite_ sure? There are at least three in Spanish:


_somero/somera_
_salmer_
_somier_ (via French)


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## Angelo di fuoco

Busqué mal...


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## apmoy70

PIE *tuenk, _to press together_ cf OHG dwingen > Ger. zwingen, _to compress, coerce_.
The Classical Greek verb is *«σάττω» sáttō* --> _to stuff, compress, pack, load_ > fem. noun *«σαγὴ» sagḕ* --> _pack, equipment_ & neut. noun *«σάγμα» ságmă* --> _packsaddle_, its diminutive *«σαγμάριον» săgmáriŏn* --> _saddle_ appears for the first time in the LXX Bible > Byz. and Modern Gr. *«σα(γ)μάρι(ον)» sa(g)mári(on)*. 
*«Σαγματάς»* [saɣma'tas] --> _saddler_, is a fairly common Modern Greek surname.


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## Yuzer

Wolverine9 said:


> Which seems to be a form of Turkish rather than Greek.


Actually Rum tended to refer to the European part which had a lot of Greeks, Slavs, etc.


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## berndf

Yuzer said:


> Actually Rum tended to refer to the European part which had a lot of Greeks, Slavs, etc.


You must be thinking of a different usage of the name _Rum_. The Rum sultanate was in Anatolia and never reached to the Bosporus let alone across it.


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## Yuzer

berndf said:


> You must be thinking of a different usage of the name _Rum_. The Rum sultanate was in Anatolia and never reached to the Bosporus let alone across it.


I'm talking about the exonym Rum. It was applied to the Greco-Romans. The Rumelia millet was the name for Christians. The plural name of the group was Rumlar (lar=plural suffix). Most were Greeks, who were the only ones to call themselves so, Romioi. Till this day the Greek-speaking Jews who lived separately from Spanish-speaking ones are called Romaniotes.

The Ottomans recognised only religions as distinct communities, so Judeospanish was called Yahudice, even though not all Jews spoke it but the majority. The same for Christians and Greeks speakers.


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## berndf

Yuzer said:


> I'm talking about the exonym Rum. It was applied to the Greco-Romans.


That is not the relevant context here. When we are talking about _Rum language _in the context of Turkish etymology we mean the the vernecular of the Sultanate of Rum, a successor state to the Seljuk Empire. The official language of the Sultanate of Rum was Persian and a pre-cursor of modern Turkish existed as a popular language.


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## Yuzer

berndf said:


> That is not the relevant context here. When we are talking about _Rum language _in the context of Turkish etymology we mean the the vernecular of the Sultanate of Rum, a successor state to the Seljuk Empire. The official language of the Sultanate of Rum was Persian and a pre-cursor of modern Turkish existed as a popular language.


Are you sure about it? Turks "purified" their language in the 1920s from Persian and Arabic influence and claimed they're reverting to Turkish words. They used Turkic characteristics. If you say Rum is that pre-Ottoman Turkish, than they would not call it a different language as far as I know them.

Take in account that as I said for some time language names were according to the millet, not the region or history. Rum were the Christians and continued to be the modern Greeks for centuries, and much more recently.

I wonder when is the dictionary from.


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## bo-marco

In emilian it's *sumèr*.


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## ancalimon

Yuzer said:


> I'm talking about the exonym Rum. It was applied to the Greco-Romans.



This is very recent. We also call the people from Southern Cyprus as "Rum" today. But back in the day everybody including Turks and Arabs were called Rum in Anatolia. For example even Mevlana was called a "Rum" depite being a Indo-Turkic person.


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## Yuzer

ancalimon said:


> This is very recent. We also call the people from Southern Cyprus as "Rum" today. But back in the day everybody including Turks and Arabs were called Rum in Anatolia. For example even Mevlana was called a "Rum" depite being a Indo-Turkic person.


They were listed as Rum in demographic surveys though, weren't they?

Wasn't there a division between Anatolia and Rumelia? I do know that Turkish nationalism in its current form developed about a century ago. Perhaps I differentiate for cultural reasons (my family is from Thrace and as a minority we always saw ourselves as close to Turks there but not so much in Anatolia).


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## berndf

Yuzer said:


> Are you sure about it?


Yes, Seljuk, Rum and Ottoman are the main development stages of Pre-Modern Turkish. This classification is quite well established.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> When we are talking about _Rum language _in the context of Turkish etymology we mean the the vernecular of the Sultanate of Rum, a successor state to the Seljuk Empire.


It may be a useful as a chronological indication, but for etymology, it is unclear and incomplete. Recall what ancalimon wrote above:


ancalimon said:


> Perseas said:
> 
> 
> 
> Does this dictionary distinguish the "Rum" language from "Greek"?
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think it does. I guess any word that's  related with Greek one way or another are seen as "entered to Turkish  from Rum language".
Click to expand...




Yuzer said:


> I wonder when is the dictionary from.


I think you have to ask the question directly: ancalimon, what do you mean by "Official Turkish dictionary"?


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## ancalimon

CapnPrep said:


> I think you have to ask the question directly: ancalimon, what do you mean by "Official Turkish dictionary"?



www.tdk.gov.tr

http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_bts&view=bts

Keep in mind that there are many words whose origin is disputed.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

*Somaro*, from spoken Latin _saumariu(m)_ — for _sagmarius_ "bestia da soma" — from _sagma_, basto.

GS


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