Over the course of the project, I collected and examined over 60 zoonyms that are reconstructible for PIE. The criteria for being included were that they need to be attested in at least two genetically and geographically not very closely connected branches, that they must exhibit the exact same form (e.g. root + suffix), and that they are not potentially onomatopoetic in origin. In a next step, I evaluated the etymologies of the collected words, analyzed their derivational structure, and interpreted the semantic constituents and concepts of the animal names in view of their derivational meaning.
Words for mammals dominated the corpus (32 in total), followed by birds (10), insects (7), amphibians (5), fish (5), arachnids (2), and molluscs (1). As expected, the study showed that PIE had a more variegated lexicon for domesticated than for wild animals. For example, there is just one generic term for most species of the latter group (e.g. *h2ŕ̥tkos ‘bear’, *u̯ĺ̥kʷos ‘wolf’, *bʰebʰrús ‘beaver’, *údros ‘otter’, *múhₓs ‘mouse’, etc.), while we can reconstruct several different words for certain species of domesticated livestock (e.g. for cattle: *gʷóu̯s ‘cow’, *táu̯ros ‘bull’, *h2uksṓ ‘young bull’, *u̯etsós ‘calf’). In terms of etymology, some zoonyms are perspicuous and refer to either color (e.g. *bʰebʰrús ‘beaver’, literally ‘the brown one’), habitat (e.g. *údros ‘otter’, lit. ‘the one in/at the water’), age (e.g. *u̯etsós ‘calf’, lit. ‘of this year/one year old’), physical characteristics (e.g. *h2uksṓ ‘young bull’, lit. ‘the strong one’), or typical verbal actions (e.g. *múhₓs ‘mouse’, lit. ‘the stealer’), others are helplessly unanalyzable (e.g. *h2ŕ̥tkos ‘bear’) and/or belong to a very old and thus formally opaque stratum of words (e.g. *gʷóu̯s ‘cow’). A couple of these etymologies provide an insight into the minds and the every-day life of our linguistic ancestors. For example, if the interpretation of *múhₓs ‘mouse’ as ‘the stealer’ is correct, this suggests that already the Proto-Indo-Europeans had problems with rodent-infested pantries. The etymology of *u̯ĺ̥kʷos ‘wolf’ (lit. ‘the dangerous one’), on the other hand, confirms the intuitive assumption that this animal was considered a substantial threat to life and well-being of the community. It is very likely that *u̯ĺ̥kʷos ‘the dangerous one’ replaced an older word for ‘wolf’ that had been put under a taboo for fear of summoning the animal by pronouncing its real name.
