The Bird name Kasanderion by Krzysztof Witczak
ABSTRACT:
The full PDF is available on "Academia.org" for free here:
ABSTRACT:
The gloss κασανδήριον. ίκτϊνος registered in the Hesychian glossary remains with no explanation. It was even suggested that the gloss is corrupt (Schmidt in his edition; Thompson 1936) and that it refers to a fish, not to a bird (Desfayes 1998: 41). The doubts should be abandoned, as ίκτϊνος denotes 'red kite, Milvus milvus L.', the well known European bird of prey. The name appears to be a compound containing the element -δήριον (= Gk. -θήριον) as the second part, cf. the Greek bird names κωνωπο - θήρας (orig. 'fly-catcher'), λαγο - θήρας or λαγω - φόνος 'a kind of hawk, Hieraaetus fasciatus' (orig. 'hunting / killing hares')' νηττο - κτόνος or νηττο - φόνος 'hawk' (orig. 'killing ducks'), περδικο - θήρας 'hawk'(orig. 'hunting partridges'), φασσο - φόνος or φασσο - φόντης 'hawk' (orig. 'killing pigeons'). As the Palaeo-Macedonian language presents the close relationship with Ancient Greek and demonstrates the correspondence δ vs. θ (e.g. Mac. δάνος 'death'vs. Gk. θάνατος m. 'id.'), it may be suggested that the gloss belonged to the vocabulary of the Ancient Macedonians. The first part of the compound κασαν- is compared with the IE. name for 'hare', *k^ason- m' (n-stem), cf. German 'Hase', English "hare" (< Gmc' *hasan- l *hazón-). The original semantics 'hare-hunter; hunting the hares' fits very well with a bird of prey, cf. λαγο - θήρας or λαγω - φόνος 'a kind of hawk, Hieraaetus fasciatus' (orig.'hunting / killing hares'), Sanskrit śaśada- m. or śaśa-ghni- 'hawk-eagle, Spizaetus cirrhatus or S. nipalensis' (orig. 'eating / killing hares'), śaśadana-'a kind of falcon', Marathi sasana- 'falcon' (orig. 'eating / killing hares').
Comment