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Finnish word "Norsu" means elephant but there are no nor have there been since at least after last ice-age Elephants in those northern latitudes. So whence the

Finnish word "Norsu" means elephant but there are no nor have there been since at least after last ice-age Elephants in those northern latitudes. So whence the word "Norsu", which does not seem to be a word in any other language? Well it is explained below. Turns out that Finns had another word "Marsu" for walrus, which also have tusks. So therefore they started using a similar word for a (somewhat) similar animal. https://www.wordsense.eu/norsu/ https://www.wordsense.eu/norsu/

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
No, it's not as simple as that. Finnish and the Slavic languages are the only ones in Europe that have a native word for "elephant". (Everyone else uses variants of the Greek "elephas" or Arabic "fil".) The question is, why those two languages and only those two? What's worse, the Slavic word dates to proto-Slavic times, it's one of the basic animal words like "deer", "rabbit", "cow", etc.!
- StavrosK 5y ago
  > Finnish and the Slavic languages are the only ones in Europe that have a native word for "elephant". (Everyone else uses variants of the Greek "elephas" or Arabic "fil".) So the only languages in Europe except the other language in Europe? :)
  - namenotrequired 5y ago
    He means "indigenous" words that evolved along with the rest of the language rather than being adopted from another language.
    - StavrosK 5y ago
      Right, but Greek fits that description. Three languages in Europe have a native word for elephant.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Depends; etymonline says this: > from Greek elephas (genitive elephantos) "elephant; ivory," probably from a non-Indo-European language, likely via Phoenician (compare Hamitic elu "elephant," source of the word for it in many Semitic languages, or possibly from Sanskrit ibhah "elephant"). So the Greek word is not necessarily native to Greek.
- milansm 5y ago
  Just wanted to mention that! In Serbian (and most other south Slavic languages) we use a word слон (slon) for elephant. I was always wondering why is that, how can we have native word for the animal we could hardly had chance to see. However, there’s some evidence that (south) Slavic people lived somewhere near India. And India is mentioned a lot in some of the tradional folk poems. There’s even a town in Serbia called Inđija. Really interesting stuff, but not sure how credible that theory is.
Contexti 5y ago
The Finnish word for walrus, mursu, was borrowed into Finnish from Sámi, as mentioned in the WordSense article. The Northern Sámi word morša is likely a loanword from some Palaeo-Laplandic language, borrowed when the Proto-Sámi language spread to Lapland during the Iron Age.[1] As there are no walruses in Finland, it was nearly as mysterious a creature as an elephant to Finns, who mostly encountered only walrus tusks and walrus hides through trading.[2] Russian borrowed the word for walrus морж from some Sámi or some Finnic language, as the Russian expansion to the Arctic Ocean is historically much later than the Sámi and Finnic settlement in the area. [2] From Russian, the word got borrowed into French as morse. Btw, you had a typo in the name of the animal. marsu means "a guinea pig" in Finnish, borrowed from Swedish marsvin (literally "a sea pig"), which in turn comes from German. [1](https://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust266/sust266_aikio.pdf https://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust266/sust266_aikio.pdf) [2](https://journal.fi/virittaja/article/view/40611 https://journal.fi/virittaja/article/view/40611)

otabdeveloper4 5y ago

No, it's not as simple as that. Finnish and the Slavic languages are the only ones in Europe that have a native word for "elephant". (Everyone else uses variants of the Greek "elephas" or Arabic "fil".) The question is, why those two languages and only those two? What's worse, the Slavic word dates to proto-Slavic times, it's one of the basic animal words like "deer", "rabbit", "cow", etc.!

StavrosK 5y ago
> Finnish and the Slavic languages are the only ones in Europe that have a native word for "elephant". (Everyone else uses variants of the Greek "elephas" or Arabic "fil".) So the only languages in Europe except the other language in Europe? :)
- namenotrequired 5y ago
  He means "indigenous" words that evolved along with the rest of the language rather than being adopted from another language.
  - StavrosK 5y ago
    Right, but Greek fits that description. Three languages in Europe have a native word for elephant.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      Depends; etymonline says this: > from Greek elephas (genitive elephantos) "elephant; ivory," probably from a non-Indo-European language, likely via Phoenician (compare Hamitic elu "elephant," source of the word for it in many Semitic languages, or possibly from Sanskrit ibhah "elephant"). So the Greek word is not necessarily native to Greek.
milansm 5y ago
Just wanted to mention that! In Serbian (and most other south Slavic languages) we use a word слон (slon) for elephant. I was always wondering why is that, how can we have native word for the animal we could hardly had chance to see. However, there’s some evidence that (south) Slavic people lived somewhere near India. And India is mentioned a lot in some of the tradional folk poems. There’s even a town in Serbia called Inđija. Really interesting stuff, but not sure how credible that theory is.

Contexti 5y ago

The Finnish word for walrus, mursu, was borrowed into Finnish from Sámi, as mentioned in the WordSense article. The Northern Sámi word morša is likely a loanword from some Palaeo-Laplandic language, borrowed when the Proto-Sámi language spread to Lapland during the Iron Age.[1] As there are no walruses in Finland, it was nearly as mysterious a creature as an elephant to Finns, who mostly encountered only walrus tusks and walrus hides through trading.[2] Russian borrowed the word for walrus морж from some Sámi or some Finnic language, as the Russian expansion to the Arctic Ocean is historically much later than the Sámi and Finnic settlement in the area. [2] From Russian, the word got borrowed into French as morse. Btw, you had a typo in the name of the animal. marsu means "a guinea pig" in Finnish, borrowed from Swedish marsvin (literally "a sea pig"), which in turn comes from German. [1](https://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust266/sust266_aikio.pdf https://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust266/sust266_aikio.pdf) [2](https://journal.fi/virittaja/article/view/40611 https://journal.fi/virittaja/article/view/40611)