Re: -o-poulos (was: WHATL calendar for next year (2013))

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 20:59, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:49:39 +0000, R A Brown wrote:
>
>> The use of the suffix -poulos appears to be of Peloponnesian origin and
>> was a diminutive ending. It came to be used to denote 'son of', 'young of.'
>>
>> But the ultimate origin is from colloquial Latin _pullus_ which was
>> originally a noun denoting the young of a animal and, in particular,
>> 'foal' and 'chick.' But even in the Classical language we find it
>> applied to persons as a term of endearment 'darling, chick, duck, dove',
>>   (US) 'baby' etc. It easy to see how a colloquial term of endearment,
>> presumable heard among soldiers and merchants, came to get itself
>> attached to nouns as a diminutive suffix.
>
> Which means that such names do not exist in the WHAT where,
> if I recall correctly, Latin went extinct just like all the
> other Italic languages.
Well, there's AG πῶλος "foal", which might have produced something similar...

(Note that MG -ου- often comes from an AG -ω-.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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