# All Slavic languages: Etymology of slon/слон



## Tjahzi

Hello

According to Wiktionary, the etymology of slon/слон and its various other Slavic cognates goes through Proto-Slavic _*slonъ_ with the possible origin being a "medieval story of elephant [sic] sleeping leaned against a tree" or "According to some other sources, it's related to Turkish _aslan_ (“lion”)".

Does anyone have any sources that confirms (or disconfirms) that?

(By the way, for non-Slavic speakers, the word in question means _elephant_.)


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## francisgranada

Tjahzi said:


> Hello
> 
> According to Wiktionary, the etymology of slon/слон and its various other Slavic cognates goes through Proto-Slavic _*slonъ_ with the possible origin being a "medieval story of elephant [sic] sleeping leaned against a tree" or "According to some other sources, it's related to Turkish _aslan_ (“lion”)".
> 
> Does anyone have any sources that confirms (or disconfirms) that?
> 
> (By the way, for non-Slavic speakers, the word in question means _elephant_.)


 
According to my etymological dictionary of the Russian language, the common Slavic _слон_ is of Turkic origin (Turkish is only one of the Turkic languages). 

In various Turkic languages there are mainly two variants of this word: _aslan_ and _arslan_ (e.g. the Hungarian _oroszlán,_ meaning "lion", comes from the second variant).

Another question is, how did the _lion_ became _elephant_ for the Slavic people?


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## bibax

Machek's etymological dictionary:

slon: etymology is unclear, Protoslavic *slonъ perhaps a postverbale from the verb sloniti = acclinari (elephant reportedly cannot lie so he rests leant against the tree); the "Turkish" etymology (aslan = lion) is dubious; most probably slon < *slop-n < **solopont*, related to Greek *elephas* (elephantis);

--------------
Another word for elephant was _roch_ (in Czech the word hroch now means hippopotamos, artificially introduced in 19th cent.) from Persian rukh = rook (the chess piece was originally a war elephant).


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## Tjahzi

Thank you for your replies (dealing with the two explanations given by Wiktionary).

Wiktionary says that Turkish _aslan_ originates from Old Turkic/Proto-Turkic _arslan_ and as such the _arslan_ -> _aslan_ change seems to have occurred in other Turkic languages as well. Also, this obviously doesn't disconfirm the claim that it's related to Turkish _aslan_. 

The question is indeed _how_ the lion turned into an elephant. 

---

Do I understand you correctly, bibax, if I interpret it as that the dictionary presents both the "leaning/OCS _sloniti_"-theory and the  "slon < *slop-n < **solopont*"-theory? Also, does it say anything more concrete about the relationship between _*solopont _and _elephās_?

Hm, in what language is _roch_ another word for _elephant_? Also, do you know the original Persian meaning of _rukh_? That is, the chess piece whose name came to represent the animal. (For the record, I assume both _ro*ch* _and _ru*kh* _represent the voiceless velar fricative, right?)


Thank you both for the answers!


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## bibax

Machek's dictionary presents three theories: 1) the most common: postverbale from sloniti (to lean against), 2) dubious "Turkish": a(r)slan (lion), 3) the most probable: from *solopont.



> Also, does it say anything more concrete about the relationship between *solopont and elephās?


No, it only mentions in paretheses the similarity of the sequence s-l-p-nt-. Source for this theory: Oštir Slavia.



> Hm, in what language is roch another word for elephant? ... (I assume both ro*ch* and ru*kh* represent the voiceless velar fricative, right?)


In Old Czech both slon and roch (ch pronounced like in German Bach) meant elephant. Needless to add that in the medieval Bohemian Kingdom the elephant was an unknown animal, known only to some from literature and as a chess figure. In the 19th century the Czech biologist Presl used the word slon for elephant and the word hroch (with prothetic h-) for hippopotamos.



> Also, do you know the original Persian meaning of rukh?


No.


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## ancalimon

Tjahzi said:


> Hello
> 
> According to Wiktionary, the etymology of slon/слон and its various other Slavic cognates goes through Proto-Slavic _*slonъ_ with the possible origin being a "medieval story of elephant [sic] sleeping leaned against a tree" or "According to some other sources, it's related to Turkish _aslan_ (“lion”)".
> 
> Does anyone have any sources that confirms (or disconfirms) that?
> 
> (By the way, for non-Slavic speakers, the word in question means _elephant_.)



I don't know if it is related but:

aslan: "lion" in Turkic
yaslan: "to lean against", "mourn", "rest", "rely on" in Turkic
yaslandı: "it leaned against" in Turkish
fil: "elephant" in Turkish. It's also what we call instead of "bishop" in Chess.

the Hungarian "_oroszlán" which means lion sounds the same as the Turkish word "horozlan" which means: strut, swagger, threat in Turkish.  horoz (Turkish): rooster, cock    horozlan (Turkish):  to act like a rooster
_


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## Maroseika

The version about elephants sleeping leaned against a tree is nothing more than folk etymology, though quite ancient. This version cannot be true just because it presumes that the word has appeared on Slavic language basis, but Slavs had no chances to notice any habits of the elephants.
The version Slavic slon < Turcic arslan is not completely proved, but is at least reckoned to be phonetically and historically possible.

And it's not a surprise that Slavs could confuse lions and elephants, for both were quite exotic for them and never seen by them.
Another example of such confusion (though not in Slavic) is a camel, which Russian name _верблюд _ < *_velьbǫdъ _originates from Gothic _ulbandus_ < ἐλέφας (elephant). By the way, the latter is a complex of 2 words meaning the same thing: Hamitic _elu _+ Egyptian _abu_ (i.e. literally "elephant of type elephant).


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## DenisBiH

Maroseika said:


> The version about elephants sleeping leaned against a tree is nothing  more than folk etymology, though quite ancient. This version cannot be  true just because it presumes that the word has appeared on Slavic  language basis, but Slavs had no chances to notice any habits of the  elephants.



I don't really think that this holds. Slavs could have both seen elephants and had elephants described to them.

Even if we ignore every possibility of Proto-Slavic speakers ever serving in the Roman Empire prior to  Slavic migrations or having contact with the Romans (which we can't as far as I know), with Slavic migrations to the South happening in 5-7th centuries and some sort of Slavic linguistic unity (Common Slavic) existing until 10th-12th centuries, and with OCS and its influence etc, there is plenty of time for some Slavs to get acquainted with this concept/animal and spread it to the rest.

According to the quote from the Croatian Wikipedia article "Arabs and Croats" below, South Slavs are in 677 AD maintaining political relations with the Caliphate and coordinating their military operations against the Byzantine Empire with the Arabs, including the siege of Constantinople. They could have learned the concept from the Arabs and then spread it northwards. Unfortunately, there is only a list of sources supposedly used for writing that article, no proper citations. 



> Politička i vjerska oporba protiv Carigrada  bila je živa u Siriji i u Dalmaciji, a k tome dolazi, da su političke  veze između Arapa i Slavena bile i uspješne, kako se to vidi iz  zajedničkog ratovanja i carigradske blokade 677. i iz izdašne pomoći,  koju su pružali Arapi Slavenima iz Peloponeza prilikom njihova ustanka  protiv Bizanta 802.—811.


Rough translation:


> Political and religious opposition to Constantinople was alive in both  Syria and Dalmatia, and to that one needs to add that the political  relations between Arabs and Slavs were successful, as can be seen from  joint warfare and the blockade of Constantinople  in 677, and from the  generous aid that Arabs were giving to Slavs from the Peloponnese  during their rebellion against Byzantium in 802-811


Also, in the same 7th century, according to the quote below (_Michal Warczakowski, "Slavs of Muslim Spain"_), a number of Slavs settled in Asia Minor are actually crossing over to the Caliphate.


> The first wave of the Slavic settlement among the Arabs started in 664,  but more was to come; in 692 another group of Slavic soldiers-settlers  in Byzantine service, under their Prince Nevulos, voluntarily went-over  to the Arabs; when the Arabs raided Asia Minor, the local Slavic  soldiers-settlers whom the Byzantines intended to use against their  enemies, joined the Arabs. Most of these were the Macedonian Slavs, but  also apperently included some Serbs, who were originally resettled in  large numbers from Macedonia to Bithynia in 686 by the Byzantines,  during the reign of Emperor Justinian II (reigned 685-695 and 705-711).  This second groups of Slavs was also settled within the borders of the  Caliphate: in northern Syria (near the cities of Antioch and Kyrrhos).  Since the 8th century new groups of Slavs appear on the territory of the  Caliphate...


 It is conceivable that some of these "Caliphate Slavs" could have  maintained some sort of contact with Slavs remaining in the Byzantine Empire and from there in the Balkans and further north (quote below from the same article as above),  which means a channel for the spreading of this word/concept. 


> But there were also still some Slavs left on the Byzantine side of the  border; Arabic writers mention a certain Hisn as-Saqaliba (Fortress of  the Slavs) located on the road leading from Tarsus to the "Cilician  Gates".


One would of  course need to find more serious/scholarly sources with proper  citations, but this should be enough to suggest that some Slavs actually  seeing elephants, or at least having elephants described to them, and  there still being time for the word/concept to spread to other Slavs, is  not far-fetched.


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## Maroseika

To give an animal a name reflexing his habits it is necessary either to observe him in nature or just to use some alien story. Since Slavs have never dealed with the elephants directly, only the second variant remains. But who could tel them this story about sleeping elephants and why exactly this feature wondered them so strong that resulted in the special name for the animal? I suspect his trunk and size was much more wonderfull.
Just to make sure how alient elephants were not onlyfor Slavs, but even for other Europeans here is a picture dated 14 century: http://pics.livejournal.com/katgift12/pic/000w08c2/
This bull furnished with a trunk is described there as follows:
"Their legs have no knees, that's why once having felt down, they can never stand up. For the same reason they are sleeping leaned against a tree".

We see now this legend about sleep of elephants is not pure Slavic, but came to them along with the idea of elephants. I cannot imagine that the only fact about an unknown and unseen animal that it use to sleep leaned against a tree could cause its Slavic name, the more so that Slavs could know about it only from the language already having the name for the elephant.
Just imagine: someone translating the text with elephant or retelling a news about it, and instead of transliteration of the foreign he is constructing the very new word based on one of his, not the most wonderfull, features.
.


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## DenisBiH

> To give an animal a name reflexing his habits it is necessary either to observe him in nature or just to use some alien story. Since Slavs have never dealed with the elephants directly


Once more, that does not necessarily hold.



> But who could tel them this story about sleeping elephants


Arabs, possibly also Byzantines.

The rest of your reasoning is based on one type of borrowing/neologism being more logical than another. I've seen some weird word-meaning developments in my life, but I'm not an expert in the field.



> and why  exactly this feature wondered them so strong that resulted in the  special name for the animal? I suspect his trunk and size was much more  wonderfull.


But just a few sentences later you yourself are quoting a European source finding exactly that sleeping-while-leaning worth mentioning.  Btw, do they really sleep leaning against a tree?

According to this, some three decades prior to those joint Arab-Slavic operations in 677, Arabs themselves were experiencing elephants in battle in 630s-640s, supposedly for the first time.



> The Arabs had no experience fighting elephant-mounted troops. In the  ensuing battle, Abu Obaid was trampled under one of the elephants and  the Arab forces were sent reeling back across the Euphrates.


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## origumi

According to the stories Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant to Charlemagne at year 798. If accurate, and if there was Slavic presence in the western empire, Slavs had a chance to see in their own eyes that elephant and lion are somehow different.


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## DenisBiH

origumi said:


> According to the stories Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant to Charlemagne at year 798. If accurate, and if there was Slavic presence in the western empire, Slavs had a chance to see in their own eyes that elephant and lion are somehow different.




Ok, but why rely on the Franks if Slavs were actually much closer than Franks, geographically and politically, to where elephants were to be seen and heard of?

Btw, at least South Slavic languages do have Arabisms some assume to originate from the Avar age, i.e. the time we're talking about, so this would not be the only case of such Slavic-Arab interaction. Such are e.g. medieval terms _kaznac_ and _mogoriš_. Not that I'm claiming that _slon_ necessarily came this way to the Slavs, just that it is possible.


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> But just a few sentences later you yourself are quoting a European source finding exactly that sleeping-while-leaning worth mentioning.  Btw, do they really sleep leaning against a tree?
> 
> 
> 
> As far as I managed to know - not. They are sleeping crowding together and I stronly doubt they are leaning to each other - too unstable construction, you know.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> According to this, some three decades prior to those joint Arab-Slavic operations in 677, Arabs themselves were experiencing elephants in battle in 630s-640s, supposedly for the first time.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> If we cannot find a "leaning" parallel in some other language-mediator (so that to assume a calque), we have at least to find another example of such a word formation: an unknown and never seen animal is named after one of his legendary feature. Legendary - because those who could observe real elephants would never invent such a legend, because they knew how they really slept.
> 
> Especially strange this "leaning" version looks in comparison with each and every other European languages just borrowing the name for the elephant. Why such an exception for Slavs?
Click to expand...


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## Maroseika

origumi said:


> According to the stories Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant to Charlemagne at year 798. If accurate, and if there was Slavic presence in the western empire, Slavs had a chance to see in their own eyes that elephant and lion are somehow different.



One elephant is far not enough in those pre-Google times...


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## DenisBiH

> As far as I managed to know - not. They are sleeping crowding together and I stronly doubt they are leaning to each other - too unstable construction, you know.


How about this?



> _Elephants_ usually _sleep_ after midnight for several hours, sometimes standing but *leaning heavily against one another* *or against a tree* or else lying on their side.





> If we cannot find a "leaning" parallel in some other language-mediator (so that to assume a calque), we have at least to find another example of such a word formation:


Why exactly? Do we do this with every neologism? Are we going to go looking for another language that uses "honey-eater" as the term for "bear" to prove that the Slavic word really has that etymology? I agree that it would be nice to find such a thing, but I don't see it as a conditio sine qua non.




> Especially strange this "leaning" version looks in comparison with each and every other European languages just borrowing the name for the elephant. Why such an exception for Slavs?


Because Slavs are more romantic and imaginative?


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> Btw, at least South Slavic languages do have Arabisms some assume to originate from the Avar age, i.e. the time we're talking about, so this would not be the only case of such Slavic-Arab interaction. Such are e.g. medieval terms _kaznac_ and _mogoriš_.



If you mean _kaznac _- supreme financial officer, it came from Arabic _hazina _ (treasure house) thru Turcic (χаznаčу - treasurer). (Rusian казначей).

Though _Mogoriš _is also from Arabic _maḫāriǰ _(expenses) but also thru Turcic.

I think it's not so easy to find direct loans from Arabic to Slavic for that distant epoch.


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## DenisBiH

Maroseika said:


> If you mean _kaznac _- supreme financial officer, it came from Arabic _hazina _ (treasure house) thru Turcic (χаznаčу - treasurer). (Rusian казначей).
> 
> Though _Mogoriš _is also from Arabic _maḫāriǰ _(expenses) but also thru Turcic.
> 
> I think it's not so easy to find direct loans from Arabic to Slavic for that distant epoch.




Which Turkic exactly? Avar perhaps? 

Turkic does not necessarily equate to "from Central Asia" in this case. Avars were happy to participate along with Slavs in warfare against Byzantium, in fact I guess they would have lead some of those operations.

Oh, and btw, we don't even need Arabs for elephants. Here are Persians themselves, who we know did use elephants in their army (Arabs found that out the hard way)



> The Siege of Constantinople in 626 by the Avars, aided by large numbers of allied Slavs and the Sassanid Persians,


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> Elephants usually sleep after midnight for several hours, sometimes standing but leaning heavily against one another or against a tree or *else lying on their side*.


As we see, nothing extraordinary. 



> Why exactly? Do we do this with every neologism?


I think we should do this each time we encounter some strange, unusual way of word formation. Etymology doesn't like singleness.



> Are we going to go looking for another language that uses "honey-eater" as the term for "bear" to prove that the Slavic word really has that etymology?


Not so narrow. This is quite one of the examples of euphemisms, the more so Slavs new quite well that bears do eat honey.
It is typical by the way, that this euphemism was based on the well known and evident fact, so that "honey-eater" automatically meant "bear" for everybody. Was "leaning" legend also so well-known among Slavs?



> Because Slavs are more romantic and imaginative?


Yes, this is the only explanation, though not too PC...


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## DenisBiH

> As we see, nothing extraordinary.


You're forcing it now and you know it yourself. 




> I think we should do this each time we encounter some strange, unusual way of word formation. Etymology doesn't like singleness.


We should of course analyze everything, yes.



> It is typical by the way, that this euphemism was based on the well known and evident fact, so that "honey-eater" automatically meant "bear" for everybody. Was "leaning" legend also so well-known among Slavs?


I don't know, what I do know however is that not all Slavs in the 7th century were enjoying themselves chasing honey-eaters over the meadows of Eastern Europe. There was a siege of Constantinople, or two, going on here in the sunny south, and who knows perhaps involving an elephant or a hundred.


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> Which Turkic exactly? Avar perhaps?


Well, according to my sources, Turkish or Crimean-Tatar ( at least for Russian).




> Oh, and btw, we don't even need Arabs for elephants. Here are Persians themselves, who we know did use elephants in their army (Arabs found that out the hard way)


The only problem is that Slavic word doesn't look like Persian.
Cf. Ossetian пыл (pyl) < Persian pil. Same Persian word engendered the names for elephant in many Caucasian (non-IE) languages, in Armenian, Georgean, also in Tajik and even many Turkic (Turkish, Kumyk, Nogai, Tatar, Kazakh, Bashkir, Usbek, Kyrgyz...) - but not in any Slavic!


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## DenisBiH

> Well, according to my sources, Turkish or Crimean-Tatar ( at least for Russian).


According to my sources, it's either via Avar or a direct Arabic loanword into Slavic, so our sources obviously disagree.




> The only problem is that Slavic word doesn't look like Persian.
> Cf. Ossetian пыл (pyl) < Persian pil. Same Persian word engendered the names for elephant in many Caucasian (non-IE) languages, in Armenian, Georgean, also in Tajik and even many Turkic (Turkish, Kumyk, Nogai, Tatar, Kazakh, Bashkir, Usbek, Kyrgyz...) - but not in any Slavic!


That would have been a problem if I had claimed that Slavs borrowed the Persian word for elephant itself. Rather, I was claiming that it was perfectly possible for Slavs to see an elephant if they were engaged in joint military operations with the Persians, which it seems they were in 626, and if Persians used elephants in their army in those days, which it seems they did. .


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> I don't know, what I do know however is that not all Slavs in the 7th century were enjoying themselves chasing honey-eaters over the meadows of Eastern Europe. There was a siege of Constantinople, or two, going on here in the sunny south, and who knows perhaps involving an elephant or a hundred.



Maybe, maybe. But due to your kind link we both know now that elephants can sleep in different ways, and sleeping leaning against a wall is not wonderfull even for a horse. 
If some Slavs could see elephants live in Constantinople or elsehwere, they could not be too much astonished to the animal sleeping like that - epsecially, if this animal is obtaining at least two other, really astonishing features that those Slavs have never seen before - trunk and size.
And after that they call it basing on leaning?...


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## DenisBiH

Maroseika said:


> Maybe, maybe. But due to your kind link we both know now that elephants can sleep in different ways, and sleeping leaning against a wall is not wonderfull even for a horse.
> If some Slavs could see elephants live in Constantinople or elsehwere, they could not be too much astonished to the animal sleeping like that - epsecially, if this animal is obtaining at least two other, really astonishing features that those Slavs have never seen before - trunk and size.
> And after that they call it basing on leaning?...




Now you're just projecting your  21st century cultural etc. values into the 7th century. I'm not sure how wise that is. We have seen that this leaning was something that had been impressive to Europeans later on.

Why didn't Slavs call bear "the big one" based on its size? Or "the menacing one"?


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## origumi

Maroseika said:


> If you mean _kaznac _- supreme financial officer, it came from Arabic _hazina _(treasure house) thru Turcic (χаznаčу - treasurer). (Rusian казначей).


Hebrew borrowed _ganzak_ = _treasure house_ from Persian during the Achaemenid period. Sounds very similar to _kaznac_ - are you sure it's from Arabic through Turkic? I'd guess Persian.


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> According to my sources, it's either via Avar or a direct Arabic loanword into Slavic, so our sources obviously disagree.


And how your sources explain actor's suffix presenting in Turkish and Slavic and absenting in Arab?



> That would have been a problem if I had claimed that Slavs borrowed the Persian word for elephant itself. Rather, I was claiming that it was perfectly possible for Slavs to see an elephant if they were engaged in joint military operations with the Persians, which it seems they were in 626, and if Persians used elephants in their army in those days, which it seems they did. .


I can only repeat my previous argument: if they saw Persian elephants live, they would never call them basing on the legendary or not extraordinary feature. 
"Leaning" version can work only if basing on calling an animal they have never seen, i.e. basing on the legends rather than visible facts.


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## Maroseika

origumi said:


> Hebrew borrowed _ganzak_ = _treasure house_ from Persian during the Achaemenid period. Sounds very similar to _kaznac_ - are you sure it's from Arabic through Turkic? I'd guess Persian.



Regarding Russian word I'm sure, or better say all my sources are sure. As for the Persian word, my dictionary is agree with you, saying that Persian *ganza = *gazna and this supposedly Midian word (of unknown origina) is a source of Semitic, Greek and Indian words meaning 'treasure', and even Hungarian _gazda_ (maybe from Ossetian gazdug). From Hungarian are Serbian and Czeck gazda (owner).
It also says that in many Iranian languages Arabized form _hazina_ substituted primordial cognates.

However let's not mix up treasure and treasurer. Slavic word for treasure is казна (without suffix -k) which correspond to the Turkish _hasine_.


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## DenisBiH

, 





> And how your sources explain actor's suffix presenting in Turkish and Slavic and absenting in Arab?


The medieval BCS form is explained as being a form derived by using the suffix -ъс (Petar Skok *1). That particular suffix, now -ac, is still productive here, e.g. _mitraljezac_ (machine gunner) < _mitraljez_, from French mitrailleuse. In BCS both yers give -a- in the strong position.

_*1 This is what it says in my copy of Skok's etymological dictionary. I presume he is referring to -ьcь*, *and that -ъс is either a later stage in BCS or Skok's error, or printing/OCR-ing error. Be that as it may, he calls kaznac an "acting/active derivative" (radna izvedenica)._




> I can only repeat my previous argument: if they saw Persian elephants live, they would never call them basing on the legendary or not extraordinary feature.


An attempt at mind reading 14 centuries into the past.




> "Leaning" version can work only if basing on calling an animal they have never seen, i.e. basing on the legends rather than visible facts.


Which visible facts? The fact that elephants do seem to sleep like that?


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> ,
> Which visible facts? The fact that elephants do seem to sleep like that?



The fact they they use to sleep in various ways - sometimes leaning, sometimes standing, sometimes lying, exactly like many other wild and domestic animals.


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## DenisBiH

Maroseika said:


> The fact they they use to sleep in various ways - sometimes leaning, sometimes standing, sometimes lying, exactly like many other wild and domestic animals.



Yes, and bears eat grass, leaves, flowers, mushrooms, ants, insects, small animals...


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## Maroseika

DenisBiH said:


> Yes, and bears eat grass, leaves, flowers, mushrooms, ants, insects, small animals...



Right. Not too many animals eat honey, just because they need special skills to get it. Maybe only bears, actually.
Besides, not too many animals need to be called euphimistically, so honey-eater was not ambigous. After all, "bear' is also euphemism, but quite transparent, because the only brown animal to be tabooed was him.


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## francisgranada

Maroseika said:


> Right. Not too many animals eat honey, just because they need special skills to get it. Maybe only bears, actually....


 
And even more, people also eat honey.


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## apmoy70

Maroseika said:


> ... By the way, the latter is a complex of 2 words meaning the same thing: Hamitic _elu _+ Egyptian _abu_ (i.e. literally "elephant of type elephant).


Actually what is accepted by far today is that «ἐλέφας» is one of the oldest loan words attested in Greek, and more specifically it passed via Hittite (an Anatolian IE language) into Mycenean Greek: Laḫpaš (Hit.)>*erepa (Myc.)>ἐλέφας.


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## er targyn

> Laḫpaš (Hit.)>*erepa


How is this possible phonetically?


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## apmoy70

er targyn said:


> How is this possible phonetically?


The Mycenaean Linear B syllabary did not had dinstinct signs for the _-la-, -le-, -li-, -lo-, -lu-_  phonemes, the _-ra-, -re, -ri-, -ro-, -ru-_ were used instead.


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## er targyn

What's the etymology of Laḫpaš (Hit.)?


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## Maroseika

francisgranada said:


> And even more, people also eat honey.



Yes, some of them do, I heard... And so what?


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## francisgranada

Maroseika said:


> Yes, some of them do, I heard... And so what?


 
The fact that the bears eat something that people do eat as well and other amimals tipically do not, may afforce the reason, why to call them honey-eater. With other words, people could "typically" meet the bears when looking for wild honey ... (it's an idea of mine, not an attested theory...)


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## francisgranada

Maroseika said:


> Maybe, maybe. But due to your kind link we both know now that elephants can sleep in different ways, and sleeping leaning against a wall is not wonderfull even for a horse.
> If some Slavs could see elephants live in Constantinople or elsehwere, they could not be too much astonished to the animal sleeping like that - epsecially, if this animal is obtaining at least two other, really astonishing features that those Slavs have never seen before - trunk and size.
> And after that they call it basing on leaning?...


 
I agree. Plus, supposing, that the verb *_sloniti_ was used in the sense of "to lean", then the noun *_slonъ_ shoul have meant "leaning, lean.." or generally something that is "leaned". I think, it is not enough for a name of an animal, because of the generic and abstract meaning of the noun *_slonъ _itself, derived from an existing verb (in those times). See for example the words _sklon_ and _odklon_ (bias, declension, lean ....) in the modern Slovak, derived form the verb _*kloniť*_. 

In case of bear, *_medojedъ_ (or *_medъjedъ_) we have a perfect construction: _honey-eater_. According to this logic, for the elephant, we would expect something like *_slonъsypъ  (leaned-sleeper),_ and not only_ *slonъ. _


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## OBrasilo

francisgranada said:
			
		

> we would expect something like *_slonъsypъ  (leaned-sleeper),_ and not only_ *slonъ._


Well, maybe that was the original word, and it was then abbreviated into _slonŭ_, maybe initially as a diminutive, similar to how _medved_ gets abbreviated to _medo_ in Slovenian as a diminutive (though of course another diminutive, _medvedek_, also exists). And since the elephant, unlike the bear, was fairly unfamiliar, the original, full-length word wasn't passed around that much, and ended up being lost while the diminutive survived. This could happen especially if noone found teaching children about elephants important (remember, back then, most teaching was done from parent to child), while still telling them fairy tales involving elephants. Fairy tales often use diminutives for animals, especially for animals portrayed as the good ones.


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## Christo Tamarin

Most probably, the Slavic word слон/slon is a very old loanword from a Turkic language, Avar (or Bulgarian, if different).

That word meant an unknown terrific animal. The slavophone population at that time has never seen neither elephants nor lions. However, slavophones did see ivory. Slavophones knew somehow that ivory is the teeth of some big animal. That animal was then called слон/slon in Slavic, and the ivory itself was called слонова кость (slonova kostь).


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## apmoy70

er targyn said:


> What's the etymology of Laḫpaš (Hit.)?


Both Babiniotis and Beeks give it a "Middle-Eastern loan word"; more specifically Beekes suggests that the beginning of the word recurs in Afroasiatic (Hamitic) el̩u, _elephant_ > (through Egyptian mediation) Modern Persian فیل / Arabic فيل (fīl), but the details remain unclear. The second part resembles the Egyptian āb(u), Coptic εβυ, _elephant, ivory_.


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