Considerations of the origin of the Armenian term gom ‘stable, stall, pigsty
Abstract
The author pursues an argument that the Armenian word gom (‘stable, stall, pigsty’)
cannot be related to Old Norse gammi (‘Saami hut, dug-out’) for both phonological and
semantic reasons. Rather, the former noun represents an ancient borrowing from an
Anatolian source (cf. Hittite ḫūmmaš c. ‘stable, stall, sty’, Luwian ḫūmmaš c. ‘pigsty’
< PIE. *h2óu̯mos), whereas the latter one seems to be a Finno-Ugric loanword (via the
Northern Saami appellative gammi, which derives from the Finno-Permic archetype *kȣmɜ
‘granary, pantry’). Furthermore, the modern Caucasian languages attest lexical data with
two different (and easily separable) meanings: ‘stable, stall, sty’ vs. ‘granary, pantry’.
The former group, documented e.g. by Georgian gomi ‘pigsty’, is evidently of Anatolian
origin (via Armenian gom). On the other hand, the Caucasian terms for ‘granary, pantry’
(e.g. Svan gwem ‘cupboard, pantry, larder’, Kabardian gwän ‘chest for corn, grain-store’,
Ad. kon ‘upward widening woven granary, covered on the outside with clay and covered
with straw’, Ingush ḳe, obl. ḳeno ‘granary’, Chechen čọ̈̄ , obl. čọ̈̄ na- ‘store for grain, granary’
etc.), wrongly linked to the aforementioned words for ‘stable, stall, pigsty’ by some
linguists, should be treated as borrowings of Finno-Ugric origin (via Ossetic gom, gon,
gondan ‘box for grain, granary’ ← Ostyak kȯ̆m ‘granary, pantry’ vel sim. < Finno-Permic
*kȣmɜ ‘id.’).
Keywords:
borrowings, Caucasian languages, etymology, Indo-European languages, language contacts, pastoral vocabulary, Uralic languagesReferences
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