Etymology of the English word 'lion'

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

4 April 2010

Etymology is the study of the origin of roots and their meaning attached. We say attached, since roots may sometimes have the same form in a language or in other languages, but it has a different meaning. What we did here, is to take the meaning of 'lion' as a base and then to trace it in Ancient languages to see if there is any correlation. It appears there are correlations. This is our result so far.

In Greek and Latin there is the drop of the /b/ in the root. With the absence of the /b/ in these languages, English also do not read the /b/ thus do not read 'libon' which would be a much more ancient form, however reconstructed.

We know it is a /b/ since the German /w/ displays very interesting interchanges in the Semitic Language family. In that family, /w/ and /b/ are sometimes interchanged in phonetics. One see a /b/ but you say a /w/. Form and sound differs and are interchanged at times in the Semitic family group. The German /w/ can thus be such a case.

In Akkadian of all its forms, one find the central /b/.

In the Amarna letters and at Ugarit one finds it as libbu as we have indicated below. The Amarna letters date to the last days of Thutmosis IV ca. 1410 BCE and in 1405 BCE Amenhotep III took over. Moses died ca. 1411 BCE.

What we find in Late Egyptian dating after the time of Merneptah, thus the time of Ramesses II 1304 BCE and later, the influence of Akkadian can be seen so that the central /b/ is added. It was the Kassite and Hittite period with strong influences over the Levant from the times 1304-1150 BCE. That is why the Late Egyptian form is rby or a variant form rw-3bw. We say that the /b/ came from Akkadian since the Middle Egyptian form before and during the days of Moses and Joshua did not have a central /b/. It read ri. Unless lioness was also read with a /b/ like the case is in Late Egyptian.

In Egyptian they do not have an /l/ and thus imitate or use an /r/ for an /l/. Similar /l/ and /r/ interchanges one can find in Modern times in the transliteration of Korean names into English.                         

English

l     i           o     n

German

l     ö    w     e

Latin

l     e           o

Greek

l     e           ō     n

Semitic languages: Hebrew, Canaanite dialects, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic

l     i     b  i  ya

Akkadian (Old, Middle, Neo-Babylonian; Old, Middle, Neo-Assyrian, Amarna, Ugarit)

l     i    bb     u

Late Egyptian

r          b     y

Late Egyptian variation

r    w- 3b     w

Middle Egyptian from the time of Moses

r     i