E 0499          KID ,  GOAT

The words " kid" and " goat " are of Germanic origin .

H 0351            י ד ג

Concept of root : goat

Hebrew word

pronunciation

English meanings

י ד ג

gәdì

young goat

Related English words

goat, kid

Comparison between European words and Hebrew

Languages

Words

Pronunciation

English meanings

Similarity in roots

Hebrew

י ד ג <

* ד ג

gәdì

*ged, gad

young goat

g . d (i) <

*g . d

New Greek

γιδα , κατσικα ;

γιδι , κατσικι ;

γιδια

yida, katsika; yidi,

katsiki;

yidia

goat ;

young goat;

herd (goats ,kids and billy-goats

g . d

k . t (s)

English

goat,

kid

goat;

young goat

g . t;

k . d

Old English

gāt

goat

g . t

Old Norwegian

geit;

kidh

yeit;

 kidh

goat; young goat

g . t;

k . dh

Danish

ged

ged

goat

g . d

German

Geiss; Ziege ;

Kitz

-

-

 Geiss;

tsiege ;

kits

-

-

goat;

goat;

kid , young of roe and chamois

g . s

ts . g

k . ts

-

-

Dutch

geit

gh(ei)t

goat

g . t

Russian

коза

kozà

goat

k . z

 

 

Proto-Semitic *GEDI --- *GĒD- Indo-European

 

 

The similarity is the most clear in comparison between Danish and Hebrew in this case, though it should be noted that Old Danish had a final T in " get ".

 

 

Note:
  • Proto-Semitic and Hebrew. Proto-Semitic is supposed to have had the same root as Hebrew, though it also may have been pronounced with a different vowel. Aramaic and Syriac have "ג ד י א, gadi'à". Phoenician like Old Aramaic have "ג ד א, G D Aleph". Ugaritic has "gdy" and Arabic with a common change from "G" to "J" "jady". Akkadian with "gadu" might often be suspected of having kept an older vowel based on the "waw" or "W", bu in fact the final "U" is a suffix.

     

    Proto-Semitic probably had "*ג ד י, G D Y". Both Proto-Semitic and Hebrew had or have another word for " goat" : ע ז, ‛ez, perhaps with some difference in pronunciation of the vowel .
Note:
  • English and Norwegian have diversified, in our view on the basis of one root, between words for "goat" and "young goat", an interesting exercise. Probably in this case English has followed the trail set by Norwegian . The English word for "young goat" has as we know, also acquired the meaning of human children.

     

    The development of this word for just the young goat is especially North Germanic , but not exclusively so, as some want to claim. It lives indeed on in Swedish and Danish " kid " where it is not used to indicate human children . The same goes for Icelandic " kið ". In Norwegian it has become " killing ( from "*kidling"?)" and has the alternative " kje" . But besides that cognates with the meaning of young goat are found in Old High German " kizzi(n)" and in fact also in German "Kitz".

     

    Some see the word "kid" and its sisters as based on sounds meant to call the little animal near . This seems very improbable .

 

Note:
  • Geit is common to Old Norse ( Norrøn ) and modern Norwegian , Icelandic, and Frisian as well as Dutch and Faeroese .

 

Note:
  • German. The words "Geiss" and " Ziege " both have their predecessors in Old High German : " geiz " and " ziga " . Ziga had a diminutive " zikkin " and a cognate for " Ziege " is found in Old English " ticcin " for " kid, young goat ".

     

    No etymological explanation has been found for this group of words . It should not be excluded that some are metathesized forms of the other group of words for " goat ".

     

    There is still another hypothesis , based on the Armenian word "tik", that stands for "wineskin", a bag usually made of goatskin . This Armenian word is very interesting, because there is in Hebrew an identical word for "bag" : " ת י ק , tiq ". We have no indication though that this word " tiq " might have anything to do with a word for goat .

 

Note:
  • Kids in modern English have become first of all " children " . German , Old Saxon and Dutch call a child a "Kind " or "kind " . One might ask if that is a nasalized version of "kid ", but it is not . The word is related to English " kind" that is also found in Old Icelandic "kind = family, lineage " and " kundr = son, relative ".

 

Note:
  • Proto-Germanic . The combination of the consonants "G . T" with a vowel in between, is present in most Germanic languages, with two common exceptions. Danish "gjed" has a final D and German changed the final T into a dubbel "S", via an intermediate phase in Old and Middle High German "geiz". The vowel "E" or its development "EI " leave room for only a few exceptions: Gothic "gait-", Old English "gat" and English "goat". Proto-Germanic probably had "*G E T -". though it may have been "*G EI T.

 

Note:
  • Classic Greek had another word for " goat ", that was "αιξ , aix = goat " . The genitive form was " αιγος , aigos " This word covered goats and bucks ( billy-goats ) , both wild and tame . Etymologically " aix " indicates wild movement, like of waves and storms. The animal " aix " would be " jumping one ". New Greek or Modern Greek has a choice of words for "goat" and " kid " . The odd thing is that the first couple, gida and gidi , pronounced today yida and yidi , though very similar to the words in other languages , are said to have been derived from Classic Greek, "αιγιδιον , aigidion = goat , kid " . This is a diminutive of "aix". The supposition means that the first double vowel would have been abandoned, together with the suffix . There is something not convincing in this. "Gida" is not found in dictionaries of Classic Greek and must have been out of use.

     

    It is indeed probable that the old word " aigidion" was a combination of " aix" and "gidi ", thus in fact meaning " jump-goat " . Later this was abandoned and the original word " gida " returned . There can not be much doubt about this, as the similarity with other languages is considerable . On the other hand " Aix " had a cognate in Armenian " ayc ". A rather curious point is that the word " aix " had led to "αιγις , aigis " that is seen as meaning a special shield for Gods, made of goat-skin. This word has lived on in modern English " aegis " . Various doubts remain.

     

    Remains to explain the other couple of words in Modern Greek : "katsika" and katsiki ". Greek scholars say it comes from either Albanian " kats " or Turkish " keçi " . Albanian is an Indo-European language and the similarity is no surprise . Turkish is of a different group, and yet the similarity seems to be there. Well, if the theory about one original language is right, this should not surprise us either. It may happen now and then that a similarity continues .

 

Note:
  • Indo-European. There is a hypothesis of "*g(')aid" for "goat". This we should like to amend : "*G Ē D-". The initial "H" in Latin "haedus" is isolated and can be seen as a local development, with "-us" being a suffix. The final "T" in Germanic is a not uncommon development out of a "D". Russian "koza" , a word also found in other Slavic languages, shows how the famous "satem-centum"-rule is not always there. The second consonant "Z" is a development out of an earlier " D ". Finally we mention the hypothesis for Baltic, that is "*kid-nā-" for "kid". It is quite possible that for that meaning "kid" the omni-present vowel " I " was there already in Indo-European : "*K Ĭ D-".

     

    Old Indian has a group of words of which the relation with ""goat" is unclear : "chāga-, chaga- = he-goat" and "chāgā, chāgī = she-goat". Oddly, a cognate of these words may be present in Middle Dutch "hoekijn, houkin, hoecsijn = kid".

 

 

 

 

 
Created: Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 22.30.54 Updated: 18/10/2012 at 15.19.14