Cattle names can provide us with a window into the past, and revolutionize linguistic research
“Onomastics” refers to the linguistic endeavor of studying names of all kinds, including animal names. Here is an onomastic attempt to explore the semantic contents of the names given to bulls, and the words derived from these names.
Animals have a significant influence on human language, primarily by providing a rich source of metaphors, idioms, and vocabulary to describe human behaviors, emotions, and the world around us.
The name given to an animal is often a description of a distinctive feature of its physical appearance, a specific behavior or a unique sound (onomatopoeia) of that animal. Less frequently, animals’ names may reflect their utility to humans or the landscape of their natural habitat.
The bull, was one of the earliest sources of semantic innovation and neologism. The etymologies of the names given to bulls are incredibly ancient and extremely fascination. More Importantly, words derived from these names preserve knowledge about lost cultures, particularly of prehistoric societies that make up over 99% of human existence. “Deciphering” these names and words offers a window into the past, and provides new interpretations for historical events, figures and narratives.
The bull as a powerful male bovine, caught the attention of various ancient cultures, for the following reasons:
01- Its crescent-shaped horns.
02- Its broad flat, squircle (square or circular) snout.
03- Its ring-shaped, Negroid-like nostrils.
04- Its weird looking hump & dewlap.
05- Bull snorting: blowing hot air through its nostrils.
06- The bellowing of the bull: a powerful sound, indicating strong emotions.
07- Bull pawing or “ground pawing”.
08- Its distinguished pizzle & sheath.
Examples from Modern English:
Bullnose: the term “bullnose” comes from its resemblance to a bull’s rounded nose (wikipedia). It refers to a rounded edge or corner, commonly seen on construction materials like bullnose tiles and stone countertops for a smooth, finished look, but it also describes a rounded exterior corner where walls meet, a type of stair tread, or even a small woodworking plane. In veterinary medicine, it’s a bacterial disease in pigs causing snout deformity. Essentially, anything with a rounded, convex profile or angle resembling a bull’s nose can be called bullnose.
Bullseye: a thick disc of glass forming a small window in a ship or the glass of a lamp. “a bullseye lantern”, “a bullseye window/Porthole”, Oculus (in architecture), a skylight at the top of a dome, Oeil-de-boeuf. A thick knob of glass at the centre of a blown glass sheet. The center of the target in sports such as archery, shooting, and darts (One theory suggests the name might come from a large, thick British coin called a “bull’s-eye”.).
Bull pizzle: a flogging instrument made from a bull’s penis. Bull’s pizzles are also used in the manufacture of walking sticks (Bull Pizzle Cane). They are reinforced with a metal rod down the center, cured by a taxidermist until fully dried. The use of pizzles as canes dates back as far as Ancient Egypt, and, more recently, personages such as Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, and Jack Dempsey owned pizzle canes.
In William Shakespeare’s play Henry IV, Part 1, the character Falstaff uses the term as an insult: “Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish!“
Bull sheath: a “bull sheath” refers to the protective fold of skin (prepuce) covering a bull’s penis. The bull’s foreskin somewhat resembles a leather canteen. It is probable that the first canteens were made from bulls’ sheaths.
Bullbaiting: a blood sport involving pitting a bull against dogs with the aim of subduing the bull by biting and holding onto its nose. Historically, English authors suggest that the circular shape of the Elizabethan theaters came about because they were first used as baiting arenas.
Common theme
The common theme, in all these names and descriptions, is: being circular (or semicircular).
Etymology of “bull”:
According to linguist Calvert Watkins, The word “bull” is ultimately from PIE root: *bhel– meaning: “to blow“. Obviously, a description of the “bull snorting“, (blowing hot air through bull’s nostrils).
The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *bhel- or its variant *bhle- carries the meaning “to blow, swell”. This root specifically refers to the act of moving air, inflation, or the resulting rounded shape.
Key Derivatives:
- To Blow/Move Air:
- Blow (v.): From Old English blawan, PIE *bhle-.
- Blast (n./v.): From Proto-Germanic *bles-, from PIE *bhle-, meaning “a blowing”.
- Bladder: From Proto-Germanic *blodram (“something inflated”), from PIE *bhle-, referencing a “swollen” bag.
- Flavor/Flatus: Derived from Latin flare (“to blow”), originating from PIE *bhle-. Flatus refers to a blowing/breathing, and flavor originally referred to odor as a “blowing”.
- To Swell/Round Objects:
- Ball/Balloon/Ballot: From Italian palla (ball), rooted in the PIE concept of something that swells.
- Belly/Bellows: From an extended form of the root, *bhelgh-, meaning “to swell”.
- Bowl/Bold: Relating to rounded, swollen, or protruding forms.
- Phallus: From Greek phallos, referencing a “swollen” state.
Extended Forms:
*bhleu-: “To swell, well up, overflow” (forms fluid, flow, flush, bloat).
*bhelgh-: “To swell” (forms bellows, belly, bulge, billow).
Clearly, the original sense of this PIE word is: “circular” or “spherical”.
Akkadian: “būlu”
The word “bull” is likely to be a cognate of the Akkadian word: “būlu”. The Akkadian is an ancient Semitic written language, predates Latin and ancient Greek.
“būlu” has a range of meanings (group, collection, herd.. etc), but its main denotation is: “cattle”.
From the Akkadian: “Epic of Erra“: The cattle, who will fear Erra, will later be cursed by him and return to clay, the material from which they were formed, by disease, fire, or wildbeasts:
I 74 būlu līrurma litūr ana ṭiṭṭi
The cattle will tremble and turn into clay.
IV 150 būla īrurma utīr ana ṭiṭṭi
He (Erra) cursed the cattle and turned them into clay.
This is one of the allusions in the poem to traditional mythological ideas about the world before the lood or at its creation, because it is out of the clay that the demiurge forms mankind.
“The Poetics, Genre, and Form of Tablet I, Lines 109–18 in the Poem of Erra” (Yoram Cohen, 2013)
In Semitic Languages
The Semitic root word [s-r] is used a name for the bull. It is Akkadian: “šuru” (bull), Hebrew: “שׁוֹר/šor” (bull), Arabic: “صور/ṣūr” (cattle) and “ثور/θawr” (bull).
The original meaning of this root word is: “bow-shaped” or “circular“. It is Arabic “صور/ṣūr” (surrounding wall) and Hebrew: “שׁוּר/šūr” (wall/fortress).
In addition, Hebrew: “עֵגֶל/egel” and Arabic: “عجل/’ejl” (meaning: calf) are cognates, and their original seme is: “wheel“! Also Arabic: “بقر/baqar” (cattle), “بقرة/baqarah” (cow) and “بكرة/bakrah” (= pulley or spool) are doublets.
Little Known Facts
01- Bulls’ Nose Ring
Etymologically, Germanic “bull” & Semitic “עֵגֶל” share the semantic property of being rounded or ring-shaped.
Associating bulls with rounded shapes, inspired the ancients to use “Bulls’ Nose Rings”.
The use of nose rings for bulls dates back thousands of years; archaeological evidence from ancient Mesopotamia shows depictions of oxen being led by ropes through their noses as early as 4,000 BCE. It is probable that the first animal nose rings were used for bulls.
This practice spread throughout Europe and Asia during Roman times when farmers relied on them for managing draft animals during plowing and transportation tasks.
01- The Blowing Horn:
According to Wikipedia: “The blowing horn is a sound device that is usually made of or shaped like an animal horn, arranged to blow from a hole in the pointed end of it. This rudimentary device had a variety of functions in many cultures, in most cases reducing its scope to exhibiting, celebratory or group identification purposes (signal instrument). On the other hand, it has kept its function and profile in many cattle raising, agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies.”
As mentioned earlier, the words: “bull” and “blow” are related, they stem from the same PIE root (*bhel- or its variant *bhle- ).
[Contributed article]
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