"Horse" in Nubian and other African languages
« previous post | next post »
One does not usually associate horses with premodern Africa, yet we have words for "horse" in many African languages:
When I saw this long list of words for horse in African languages, particularly these words, I was dumbfounded. So I asked Don Ringe what he made of it.
He replied:
Outside my area of expertise. But since horses are not native to Africa, it would be no surprise if a word for 'horse' were widely borrowed from language to language, which is what the pattern of attestation suggests (multiple languages belonging to multiple families).
That is what I was hoping he'd say.
Beverley Davis*:
Since the horse was introduced to Africa, it only makes sense it would use the language of the ones to introduced it. It's like the Berber word for horse is related to the Persian word for horse aspa. I cannot find the Berber word on line.
*author of "Timeline of the Development of the Horse", Sino-Platonic Papers", 177 (August, 2007), 1-186, viewed by millions of readers
Selected readings
- "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe" (1/6/09)
- "Horse and wheel in the early history of Indo-European" (1/10/09)
- "The linguistic history of horses, gods, and wheeled vehicles" (1/13/09)
- "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
- "Mare, mǎ ("horse"), etc." (11/17/19)
- "Early evidence for mounted horseback riding in northwest China"
Yue Li, Chengrui Zhang, William Timothy Treal Taylor, Liang Chen, Rowan K. Flad, Nicole Boivin, Huan Liu, Yue You, Jianxin Wang, Meng Ren, Tongyuan Xi, Yifu Han, Rui Wen, and Jian Ma
PNAS first published November 2, 2020; - "Once more on Sinitic *mraɣ and Celtic and Germanic *marko for 'horse'" (4/28/20)
- "A Record of Horseback Riding, Written in Bone and Teeth: Close examination of horse remains has clarified the timeline of when equestrianism helped transform ancient Chinese civilization", NYT, by Katherine Kornei (11/13/20)
- "Horse culture comes east" (11/15/20)
- Victor H. Mair. "The Horse in Late Prehistoric China: Wresting Culture and Control from the 'Barbarians'." In Marsha Levine, Colin Renfrew and Katie Boyle, ed. Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse, McDonald Institute Monographs (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003), pp. 163-187.
- "Evolution of the sinograph and the word for horse" (2/16/26)
[h.t. Carl Masthay]
Martin Schwartz said,
March 4, 2026 @ 10:46 pm
Both Ancient Egyptian words listed above are late and borrowings from
Canaanite or the like. ssmt is comparablew to Heb. sûs-îm
horses' (Eg. -t indicates fem. gender), and ibr (with diacritical
indicating a glottal stop) is comparable with Heb. :abbîr
(where my : indicates aleph as glottal stop) means 'strong one, stallion';
both words occur as parallel plurals in Jeremiah 8:16.
@Beverley Davis: ??? For 'horse' across Berber languages I see
online ayis and agmar vel. sim. The present Persian word for 'horse'
is asb; Middle Persian had asp, from Median *aspa-; Old Persian had
asa-; Proto-Iranian *aswa-, which, with OLd Indic aśva-,
goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h1ek'wo-, whence Latin equus, etc. As for Berber agmar, the a- is masc. sing. prefix,
but since -g- is not prefixal , it seems hard to relate the word
to the non-Afro-Asiatic African words from supposed*mur-ti etc.I suggest very tentavtively that agmar is from *agbar, to
Proto-Semitic √g-b-r 'to be strong, massive', which gets us back to Heb :abbîr. On the other hand, Proto-Semitic H-m-r (where my H represents the pharyngeal conventionally written as underdotted h) = 'donkey';
perhaps the H became voiced in pre-Berber before *m, yielding
gamma and g in Berber agmar (I see an onlind for aymar; is the y really a gamma?). Is there an Afro-Asiatic specialist out there?
And while I'm riding in darkness into what was called (out of racist
snobbery or robust shrubbery) the "dark continent'. I note that
H disappears in Akkadian and Ethiopic, so just maybe but I
don't know, could *HmVr have made its way southward to yield those
Nubian etc. horse-words with mVr- ?????? Just sayin'.
Finally, I note, without personal opinion, that Heb. sûs 'horse'
has been derived by some from an Indo-Iranian from like *aśwas nom.
Yea or neigh, I know not.
Martin Schwartz
S Frankel said,
March 5, 2026 @ 12:33 am
I wonder if there's any relationship to the Mongolian 'morin' and, if so, how
David Marjanović said,
March 5, 2026 @ 10:45 am
That would not surprise me.
Carl Masthay said,
March 5, 2026 @ 7:28 pm
The Berber (dialect Tashlhiyt of Sousse [Susa, Soûs; Hadrumetum], NE Tunisia, E. Destaing 1928) word for ‘male horse’ is agumär (annexation form: uagumär), plural: agumären (uagumären), also ayyis; ‘female horse, mare’ is tágumart (ta), plural tagumarin (ta). Akkadian ‘horse’ is sesû (loanword) [A. Ungnad 1949]. Supplied by Carl Masthay, St. Louis. (Notice that the u in Destaing's work is a superscript for weak vowel, not available in this site, including italic font.)
Chris Button said,
March 6, 2026 @ 7:28 am
All very interesting.
Incidentally, Tashlhiyt Berber is also very interesting in terms of syllable structure.
David Marjanović said,
March 6, 2026 @ 6:40 pm
ˢᵘᵖᵉʳˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗ ⁱˢⁿ'ᵗ, ᵇᵘᵗ ᶠⁱˣᵉᵈ⁻ˢᵘᵖᵉʳˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗ ᵁⁿⁱᶜᵒᵈᵉ ᵍˡʸᵖʰˢ ᵃʳᵉ· (A comma is not among them… Generated here.)