> I don't have my references handy for this, but I believe that the
> term 'cat-gut' grew out of
> a commercial marque in Germany. 'Kaet' was a trade name,
> apparently a successful one,
> and the term 'cat gut' derives from this in the same way as
> 'kleenex' has.
>
> Damian
>
Damian
That is entirely possible, although I had the impression that
strings were known by region rather than maker (Munich, Lyon, Pistoy
etc), so it would be nice to have the details, and in particular the
date.
If this etymology is correct, it would mean that by the time of
Burwell this origin for "cat" had been forgotten, as the author says
"sheepes and cats gutte" and this structure in which "sheepes gut"
and "cats gut" are collapsed with a single complement (gut) usually
imply some sort of common category in the head nouns of the collapsed
structure (i.e. both having intestines, or similar). You do
sometimes get a collapsing for comical effect where the two terms
have nothing in common, although I can't think of an example right now.
Again, we still have to explain the French expression, "boyau de
chat". In central French, the /k/ of the initial consonant of the
Latinized root "cat" was "palatalized to (tsh), and then simplified
to (sh). For example, "cantare" gave "chanter" (around 980), but
remained in competition with the form "canere". So the process was
obvioulsy still active around the 11th century. Modern French, has
the simplified pronunciation (shanter), but English still has
"chant" (tsh) borrowed from early central French, as well as
"cantata" .
The question is whether names were equally effected by thie process.
It does seem that Carolus Magnus was transformed to give modern
French Charlemagne (sha), but would a Germanic surname be so
effected. I notice that the name "Capet", as in Hugues Capet (11th
century) has remained with initial /k/.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugues_Capet
On the other hand, the nickname, for Charles the Bald (840-877) is
Charles le Chauve, "chauve" (about 1160) derived from the root we
have in "calvitie" (Lat Calvus), and no doubt with the same meaning
in the name "Calvin" (next to modern French Chauvin) both mean
"bald", although "chauvin" (1843) from a Nicolas Chauvin (a sort of
cartoon character), has had a change of meaning, as in "chauvinist"
which has also reached modern English.
However, this /ka/ to (tsha) palatalization process (in one dialect
of French, Anjou) may have begun well before 800 inthat area of
France, the problem is that there is no writen French from before the
Serment de Strasbourg (842). Nevertheless, in this text (possibly
strongly influenced by Latin) notice that "Charles" is still written
"Karlo".
OF
"si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adjudha et in cadhuna
cosa"
MF
"ainsi secourrai-je ce mien frère Charles, et en aide en chacune chose"
English
" as much as God shall give me knowledge and power, I will protect my
brother Charles, here present, and will aid him in everything"
http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/French/Texts/Period_02/0842-
Le_Serment_de_Strasbourg.htm
The manuscript (see its translation in my PS)
http://www.orbilat.com/Images/French/Texts/Serment_de_Strasbourg.gif
I notice that "cat" itself may have been transformed to "chat" fairly
late from latin "cattus" (around 1100). So perhaps if we want to
derive boyau de chat the name Kaet, we need to suppose that at a very
early point, around the 11th century, the two words "kaet" and "chat"
were confused.
Or that French people knowing the English pronunciation "cat-gut",
jokingly played on this changing "Kaet" to "chat" to mock the sound
often produced by bad musicians.
Regards
Anthony
Le Serment de Strasbourg (842)
Old French
Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro comun salvament, d'ist
di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo
cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adjudha et in cadhuna cosa si cum om
per dreit son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il mi altresi fazet; et
ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui meon vol cist meon fradre
Karlo in damno sit.
Modern French translation:
Pour l'amour de Dieu et pour le chrétien peuple et notre commun
salut, de ce jour en avant, en tant que Dieu savoir et pouvoir me
donne, ainsi secourrai-je ce mien frère Charles, et en aide en
chacune chose si comme homme par droit son frère sauver doit, en ce
(à condition) qu'il me fasse autant; et de Lothair nul accord jamais
ne prendrai, qui par ma volonté, à ce mien frère Charles à dam soit.
English translation:
For the love of God and Christendom, and for our common safety, from
this day forth, as much as God shall give me knowledge and power, I
will protect my brother Charles, here present, and will aid him in
everything, as a man in justice has to protect his brother, in which
he would do the same for me; and I will make with Lothaire no
compact, which of my own free will can injure my brother Charles,
here present.
Le 2 avr. 09 à 07:25, damian dlugolecki a écrit :
>
> I don't have my references handy for this, but I believe that the
> term 'cat-gut' grew out of
> a commercial marque in Germany. 'Kaet' was a trade name,
> apparently a successful one,
> and the term 'cat gut' derives from this in the same way as
> 'kleenex' has.
>
> Damian
>
>
> Dear Alexander and all
>
> As I have not quite had time to write up a description of
> Charles Besnainou's "Spiramid" strings (I should be able to do so
> soon). I would just like to return briefly to the etymology question,
> and explain what I mean by safer or unsafe etymology:
>
> I must insist that I was not saying that the 'caterpillar-gut"
> etymology was necessarily any worse than any of the others that have
> been cited recently. However, there are many chance similarities
> between words that are not in fact related in any way, and sometimes
> they just happe to have some meaning in common, without in fact being
> related. Such cases, cannot be used as evidence in favour of a string
> hypothesis, they must be considered anecdotal (although again that in
> no way disproves the hypothesis).
>
> A famous case of ideological etymology was the imagined relation
> between the name Brutus and the name Britain and British.
> "Brute of Troy is a legendary descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas,
> was known in medieval British legend as the eponymous founder and
> first king of Britain."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutus_of_Troy
>
> If one simply relies on a similarity between words, there is a risk
> of circularity: you find what you look for. As to "catgut" and
> "catline", there are at least three hypotheses that are not soundly
> based on linguistic arguments: "caterpillar-gut", "cattle-gut",
> "catapult-gut", alongside simple "cat-gut" (I will suggest another
> one later). Both caterpillar-gut and catapult-gut are an attempt to
> support a theory of an original string type. Can we be sure that
> either is safer than the "Brute" = "British" hypothesis.
> (note that the cat in caterpillar (= feline), the cat in cattle
> (derived from capital) and the cat in catapult (Greek Kata 'against')
> are all of different origin, and have a chance first syllable in
> common. This shows exactly how careful you need to be).
> It is notoriously difficult to prove or disprove such analyses,
> unless you can find some intermediary from, or an interesting variant
> in some dialect.
>
> For example, "cater" is in fact a "tom-cat", if we found an
> intermediary form that was "cater-gut" the theory would be home and
> dry. In French there is another form for caterpillar which is
> chenille (or little dog), now if in some dialect of French we found
> the expression, "boyau de chenille", again we could be pretty happy
> for that hypothesis. Don't forget that the French expression is
> "boyau de chat".
>
> In English, the word for caterpillar could also have been
> "catkin" (that is quite plausible, as a "catkin" is very much like a
> hairy caterpillar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> File:Ament_inflorescence.jpg
>
> Now it would be easy to derive the English "cat-gut" from "cat-kin
> gut", as in English very generally the unstressed element of such
> forms can drop, so we might lose the intermediary "kin".
> Nevertheless, if we could find just one example of "cat-kin gut" the
> analysis would be safer.
>
> Furthermore, how do we get the French form "boyau de chat".? Let us
> suppose that in French, we also had the from "chaton" (small cat),
> for caterpillar, so we would have "boyau de chaton". There is no
> obvious reason why the last syllable would be lost, unless of course,
> the caterpillar origin was forgotten, and French people just couldn't
> believe that the gut came from a small cat, and so they just called
> it "boyau de chat" (but we would prefer it to have been a typical
> French phonetic process, loss of the final unstressed syllable. That
> is common in English, but not quite so in French, although we do have
> "chef" derived from "caput" so it remains a possibility).
>
> I agree with Alexander that "cattle-gut" is no safer (remember that
> cattle comes from "capital"). It is easy to obtain "cat-gut" by the
> loss of the weak syllable in English, but it is a pity we have no
> example of the full item, "cattle-gut".
>
> Now how do we get "boyau de chat" from this. In Modern French the
> equivalent word is "cheptel", but through English we know that there
> was also an old form "chattel" (which we still have with a slightly
> different meaning in English"). So now how do we get "boyau de chat"
> from ""boyau de chattel"?, Why don't we have a variant that is "boyau
> de cheptel"?
>
> One might just as well suppose that "catgut" and "boyau de chat" were
> ironical remarks about the way most musicians played on the things,
> "catawailing". I don't actually, think this is so.
>
> Now I am not saying that any of the above etymologies are mistaken,
> they are just not sound. Perhaps, new discoveries may make them sound.
>
> Just to mention two safer etymologies, relating to strings:
> "Minikin" is now believed to mean from Munich. This is not just
> because Mace mentions Minikin alongside Venice and Pistoy, and that
> "minikin" vaguely resembles Munchen. There are two other almost
> identical forms in English but of completely diferent orin, one from
> Latin Mini+kin, and one from Dutch. This is the more interesting :
> mini·kin noun, 1. Obsolete a darling, 2. Rare anything very small
> and delicate Etymology: MDu minneken, dim. of minne, love: see
> minnesinger
>
> Of course, one could easily suppose a minikin string meant "something
> small and delicate" and so from the Dutch origin.
> However, fortunately, Dowland's use of the from "monikin" , allows us
> to see how this form could have been derived from "monachen" (the
> origin of Munchen, meaning monastery, and related to the word
> monachus, "monk"). It is due to the "o" vowel that the analysis is
> fairly safe.
> Note that we do have an old process in English of umlaut: monastery,
> is the origin of Minster.
>
> However, it may be that the two words "sort of merged" and that by
> the time of Mace the string could have been from Munchen, but also
> "small and delicate". Yet Mace himself says this was not so. They are
> so strong they cut into your hand, so we can be fairly sure of the
> munchen origin.
>
> Nevertheless, we should beware even here about taking the etymology
> too literally. The origin is form Munich, but does that mean the
> string was actually from Munich. It could be that all samll strings
> were called Munichs, just as at one time all vacuum cleaners were
> called hoovers.
> Just notice what Americans call a robbin. The origin is clearly the
> word we find in UK English:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turdus-migratorius-002.jpg
>
> So we must not read too much even into a "safe etymology".
>
> While talking about strings and rope, for a layman deriving English
> "Hemp" and French "chanvre" from a Greek form for Cannabis, must seem
> much more exotic than the caterpilar-gut hypothesis, but not so for a
> linguist. This is considered a very safe etymology, just because of
> the number of phonetic processes involved, all backed up by similar
> changes in other words: For the English, Kanabis > hemp, we see the
> regular "First Germanic consonant shift" : kanabis > hanapis (just
> like Kardia > heart), hanapis > henep through Anglo-saxo i/j-umlaut
> (just like manniz gives men), henep: giving "henep", and unstressed
> vowel dropping gives "hemp" (just like OE emmet gave ant). French in
> the south of France we have the older form Canebière which gives
> central French "Chanvre " by regular palatalization of K before /a/
> (just as in chateau, etc.)
>
> An excellent text book relating to this, is Historical Linguistics
> and Language Change by Roger Lass, CUP.
>
> Regards
> Anthony
>
>
>
>
>
>
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