# Etymology for Spanish word «perro»



## traductor.de.frances.2

For many years I have studied Romance languages. When I started to compare the etymology of certain words, I realized that many of them are similar.

I have an example of a word compared to some Romance languages:

Spanish: perro
Italian: cane
Portuguese: cão
Latin: cannis
French: chien

Why the root is concerved in the last four languages and this one gets lost? Which is the etymology for «perro»?

Thank you in advance.


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## AndrasBP

Hello traductor,

Welcome to the forum!

Here's an online etymological dictionary of Spanish. 
It says that "perro" was probably inherited from a pre-Roman language and that until the 16th century the word "can" was also used in Spanish.

As for the reasons why a word disappeared in a language or why a word was borrowed from another language, etymology rarely provides an answer.


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## danielstan

An interesting hypothesis here:
Palabras rivales - Curiosidario
(See "CAN y PERRO")


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## Circunflejo

I can't help with the etymology of _perro_ because it's unknown but I can say that _can_ is still in use in Spanish (and not just in poetry) although _perro_ is way more used.


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## Sardokan1.0

It's perhaps from some pre-IE language spoken in Iberia in ancient times. Sometimes we can find these surviving relics in various and geographically separated languages.

Let's take for example the Spanish "cachorro" (dog, little dog).

It's probably derived from the Basque "txakur" (dog, hunting dog), and we can find words related to this also in other European languages, perhaps this tells us that in remote times pre-IE languages related to each other were spoken in many places of Europe.

Basque : _txakur or zakur _(dog, hunting dog)
Spanish : _cachorro _(dog, little dog)
Corsican : _ghjàcaru _(dog)
Sardinian : _jàgaru _(hunting dog)
Albanian : _zagar _(hunting dog)
German : _jäger _(hunter)


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## fdb

Sardokan1.0 said:


> It's perhaps from some pre-IE language spoken in Iberia in ancient times. Sometimes we can find these surviving relics in various and geographically separated languages.
> 
> Let's take for example the Spanish "cachorro" (dog, little dog).
> 
> It's probably derived from the Basque "txakur" (dog, hunting dog), and we can find words related to this also in other European languages, perhaps this tells us that in remote times pre-IE languages related to each other were spoken in many places of Europe.
> 
> Basque : _txakur or zakur _(dog, hunting dog)
> Spanish : _cachorro _(dog, little dog)
> Corsican : _ghjàcaru _(dog)
> Sardinian : _jàgaru _(hunting dog)
> Albanian : _zagar _(hunting dog)
> German : _jäger _(hunter)



German jagen, Jagd, Jäger have recognised cognates only in Dutch and no plausible etymology. The comparison with Sardinian _jàgaru _(hunting dog) is very interesting. Can you give us a reference to a Sardinian dictionary?


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## Circunflejo

Sardokan1.0 said:


> It's perhaps from some pre-IE language spoken in Iberia in ancient times



I don't think so. As the info provided by @danielstan says, _perro_ appears in written documents way later than _can_ and it's unknown on the first millennium after Christ.


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## Sardokan1.0

fdb said:


> German jagen, Jagd, Jäger have recognised cognates only in Dutch and no plausible etymology. The comparison with Sardinian _jàgaru _(hunting dog) is very interesting. Can you give us a reference to a Sardinian dictionary?



Unfortunately the etymology of the word is unknown. Linguists suppose that it's paleo-Sardinian, a not-IE language of which we know few things, except hundreds not-IE toponyms and words scattered throughout the current Sardinian vocabulary (many of these are nearly identical to Basque words with the same meaning).

P.S.
In Sardinian language, from the word "jàgaru" has also been coined the verb "jagarare" (to hunt, to chase, to drive away)


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## TheCrociato91

It might be of Iberian origin, since, according to some linguists, the suffix _-rro_ and its variant _-rdo_ (as in words such as izquierdo, barro, perro, zorro, etc.) are characteristic of Spanish word of either Iberian or, more generally, pre-Latin origin.



List of Spanish words of Iberian origin - Wikipedia


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## danielstan

I was amazed by the Albanian _zagar _(hunting dog) as possible cognate with other words mentioned above, because Albanian was not in contact with the other languages mentioned above.

I did a little research on Albanian _zagar_:
- could not find it in Orel's _Albanian Etymological Dictionary_ (Orel - Albanian Etymological Dictionary.pdf)
- found it as descendant of Turkish _zağar_: زغر - Wiktionary

The Turkish origin seems plausible as this word has descendants in some Balkan languages.


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## Sardokan1.0

TheCrociato91 said:


> It might be of Iberian origin, since, according to some linguists, the suffix _-rro_ and its variant _-rdo_ (as in words such as izquierdo, barro, perro, zorro, etc.) are characteristic of Spanish word of either Iberian or, more generally, pre-Latin origin.
> 
> List of Spanish words of Iberian origin - Wikipedia



Pre-IE languages were widely spoken throughout Europe before the IE arrival. Many linguists suppose the existence of a family of Basque-related languages spoken in western Europe up to Sardinia and Corsica. In Sardinia for example in the central areas about 35-40% of toponyms are not-IE, they make no sense in Latin or in current Sardinian, but some linguists noticed that they make sense if translated using a Basque etymological dictionary. Some not-IE vocabulary is also present in current Sardinian language, and the resemblance with Basque is puzzling.

Few Examples :


Spoiler



*Basque - Sardinian*

kukurusta - cogorosta (rooster's comb)
kukur / kukurru - cùccuru (top of the mountain, top of the head)
tuturru (summit, upper part) - istuturrada (slap given to the back top of the head )
arratz (bush) - arrasone (tangle of bushes) | arratz / arras + Latin augmentative suffix "one". Arras+One = big bush
txintxirri (rattle, rattling sound) - cincirriòlu (bat) | txintxirri / cincirri (identical pronunciation) + Latin diminutive suffix "olus" | cincirri + olus (little rattling thing)
zurrumba (suppuration, bloating) - zurumba (hump) zurumbone (bump) | zurumba + one (latin augmentative suffix)
Orro (shout, bellow, moo) - òrriu (donkey’s bray)
lantar - (hoarfrost, dew) - lentore (hoarfrost, dew)

etc.etc.


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## Penyafort

I wouldn't rule out any possible onomatopoeic origin, just as with _*gozque *_and _*chucho*_. (Or _cuccio _in Italian, or _gos _in Catalan, which has also become standard despite _ca _being used in some varieties)



> se debió en buena parte *a la falta de un femenino y un diminutivo correspondientes a can*». No había efectivamente diminutivo de _can _en español y, en cuanto al femenino, considerando que el latín vulgar *CANIA habría dado en nuestro idioma la voz _*caña_, no llegó a realizarse tal paso porque ello habría producido una intolerable homonimia con _caña _‘planta gramínea’.



My respect for Coromines is high, but I cannot support that statement. In Aragonese, _*caña *_can be both the graminoid and the female _*can*_.


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## Zi.

traductor.de.frances.2 said:


> For many years I have studied Romance languages. When I started to compare the etymology of certain words, I realized that many of them are similar.
> 
> I have an example of a word compared to some Romance languages:
> 
> Spanish: perro
> Italian: cane
> Portuguese: cão
> Latin: cannis
> French: chien
> 
> Why the root is concerved in the last four languages and this one gets lost? Which is the etymology for «perro»?
> 
> Thank you in advance.



Better try to understand, what can relate with words perro , and the feather (rus. pero). 
 I think this word could be transformed in the "dog" because the human's domesticated dog's, so they were something like our kin, one member of family, may be that's why Estonian word perre mean family, like word parents mean father and mother.


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## Circunflejo

TheCrociato91 said:


> It might be of Iberian origin,



I don't think so because if that was true, it should have been in use before than _can_ and it wasn't.



Penyafort said:


> I wouldn't rule out any possible onomatopoeic origin



I wouldn't either.


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## AndrasBP

Circunflejo said:


> _perro_ appears in written documents way later than _can_





Circunflejo said:


> it should have been in use before than _can_ and it wasn't.


Do you have any information about when "perro" first appeared in writing?


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## fdb

Circunflejo said:


> I don't think so. As the info provided by @danielstan says, _perro_ appears in written documents way later than _can_ and it's unknown on the first millennium after Christ.



But that is exactly what happens with substrate words. They live on in the spoken language and only much later are they adopted by the official written language.


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## Circunflejo

AndrasBP said:


> Do you have any information about when "perro" first appeared in writing?



The info provided by danielstan in post number 3 quotes a Leonese document dated in 1136 as the first writting appearence. The CORDE (Real Academia Española - CORDE) provides 3 results for documents dated in XIIth Century as the oldest ones so it seems clear that at XIIth Century it was in (written) use but I don't know about any earlier written document using it.


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## fdb

According to what I have found, Sardinian _jàgaru _is a breed of dogs employed to herd sheep, not a hunting dog. Is that right?


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## Sardokan1.0

fdb said:


> According to what I have found, Sardinian _jàgaru _is a breed of dogs employed to herd sheep, not a hunting dog. Is that right?



It's not the meaning that we have here (north Sardinia). In the northern half of Sardinia (don't know in the south) it's an hunting dog; hence the verb "jagarare" (to hunt, to chase, to drive away). While in southern Corsica with the word "Ghjàcaru" they simply mean "dog".

P.S.
It's also worth to mention that the pronunciation changes in the different areas of the island.

Central / north western Sardinia : jàgaru ("J" pronounced like in German)
North eastern Sardinia : giàgaru ("Gi" pronounced like in Italian)
Central eastern Sardinia : zàgaru, zàcaru
Southern Sardinia : giàgaru


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## Wandering JJ

According to the Breve Diccionario Etimológico de la lengua Castellana - Joan Corominas - 1973, the word_ perro_ would be the onomatopoeia of the sound that the animal makes when it growls, ‘perr, perr.’ That is also the sound that shepherds made to incite their herd dogs. [Voz usada por los pastores para incitar al perro.] The word appears for the first time in 1136 in a document of a monastery.


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## traductor.de.frances.2

traductor.de.frances.2 said:


> For many years I have studied Romance languages. When I started to compare the etymology of certain words, I realized that many of them are similar.
> 
> I have an example of a word compared to some Romance languages:
> 
> Spanish: perro
> Italian: cane
> Portuguese: cão
> Latin: cannis
> French: chien
> 
> Why the root is concerved in the last four languages and this one gets lost? Which is the etymology for «perro»?
> 
> Thank you in advance.



Why did you erase that explanation in Spanish that mentioned feminin of _can _is _caña_?


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## traductor.de.frances.2

Penyafort said:


> I wouldn't rule out any possible onomatopoeic origin, just as with _*gozque *_and _*chucho*_. (Or _cuccio _in Italian, or _gos _in Catalan, which has also become standard despite _ca _being used in some varieties)
> 
> 
> 
> My respect for Coromines is high, but I cannot support that statement. In Aragonese, _*caña *_can be both the graminoid and the female _*can*_.



I mean this one. This is *really the best*. Why did you erase it?


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## francisgranada

I'd like to add that this question has already been discussed in an other thread, from a more general point of view. Namely, there are more modern languages that use a different term for "dog", instead of the historically/etymologically expected word.  Examples:

Spanish _perro_, instead of _can _of common Romace origin
Hungarian _kutya _instead of _eb _of common Finno-Ugric origin
Russian _sobaka_, instead of _pes _of common Slavic origin
English _dog_, instead of _hound _of common  Germanic origin

It's important to notice that like "can" still exists in Spanish, so do "eb, pes, hound" exist in the respective languages.

The question is, if it is only a coincidence, or there exists some other reason for the replacement of the term for "dog" with another word independently in various languages?


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## JILumamba

Some of the Filipino words are originated from Spain. It is due to the Spanish colonial era hundreds of years ago that changes and affected some of maybe Filipino ancient literature. For instance, word like perro but it is spelled to us with single "r" and amazingly have the same meaning. At the present, spanish words still do exist in our language but there are certain words that is spelled in our native use of letters to be able to read it. *just sharing


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