ogy.’ Yet unless some version of the French hy- pothesis again wins the day, it makes sense to recognize boy as an early semantic blend of
*boi(a) ‘(little) brother’ and *bo ‘evil spirit’ on
Germanic soil. The concept of ablaut is vacuous in
dealing with such a word, so that babe and baby are better kept out of the present discussion. Bube and boef are not akin to boy, for boy has no cognates more or less by definition, but they belong to the same stock, and their development should be taken into account in the reconstruction of the English word (Liberman [2001a:201-13]).
A Note on the Eurasian Background of the Old English Name Boi ~ Boia
Many names sound like Boi(a). One of them is Ostrogothic Boio. Schönfeld shares the common opinion that Boio is a contracted form correspond- ing to OE Be¤awa and OS Bôio. His reconstruction is acceptable but not necessary. A name like Boio, a baby word, could arise in many places indepen- dently and lack cognates in the sense in which Zeus or father have them. In citing Bojo, Schönfeld refers to Förstemann, but Förstemann (1900:324-25) lists
Boy Brain
Boia, Baia, Beia, Beio, Peio, Beya, and so on, including some names that end in a velar (Beic and Boiko), exactly as they have been recorded: vowel length (ô) is the product of Schönfeld’s view of the name’s origin. OS Be¤owa is not a perfect fit for *Bauja be- cause the expected form is OE *Be¤awa. Old English had be¤ow ‘barley’ and be¤aw ‘gadfly.’ Be¤aw is akin to LG bau and L fu¤cus ‘drone’ (WP II:164; AeEW). The etymology of be¤ow is less clear. AEW traces OI bygg ‘barley’ to *bewwu. The history of the mytho- logical name Be¤aw, which, for some reason, alter- nates with Be¤o(w), is lost (see the details in Klaeber [1950:xxiv-xxviii]). This name could have been understood as meaning ‘barley,’ whereupon it aligned itself with Sce¤af ‘sheaf’ and thus formed the ‘nature mythological’ genealogy of the Danish kings that has been preserved in the opening sec- tion of Beowulf. Be¤owulf, contrary to what is usu- ally believed, is probably an expansion of Be¤ow(a).
The Celtic proper name Boio has also been re- corded. In its Latinized form it is extant in the place name Bavaria (G Bayern). Schönfeld says that Celtic Boio is undoubtedly different from Gmc Boio. Here he refers to Holder, but this reference, like his previous one, is misleading. At the beginning of the entry, Holder (1896: 463-71) quotes his prede- cessors who think that og in L Bogii does not repre- sent the diphthong [oi] and that Boio is related pre- cisely to the Slavic and other words usually given in connection with Russ boi- in boiat’sia ‘be afraid.’ This opinion (which Holder seems to share), far from separating the Celtic and the Germanic names, connects them.
Words (roots) like E boy, bug, Puck ~ Russ boi-, buka, pug- and names like Boia ~ Boiko are spread over the same areas. Among Slavic proper names, ORuss Boian is of special interest, because its bearer is mentioned several times in the poem The Lay of Igor’s Host as a singer who followed a different manner of composition from that adopted in the Lay. The prevalent trend in the discussion of Boian is that its meaning reflects the man’s profession or character. If Boian was the singer’s given name (Bojan is still current among the southern Slavic people), it cannot shed light on his later occupation or temperament, for the boy’s parents had no way of knowing what would become of him. If, how- ever, Boian is a nickname, it can mean ‘singer’ or ‘narrator’ (Russ baiat means ‘narrate’). At present, most students of The Lay of Igor’s Host believe that the name Boian in it is of Eastern origin (see Mik- losich’s glossary, Korsch [1886:487-88], Melioran- skii [1902:282-83], Menges [1951:16-18], and Baska- kov [1985:143-46]), but disagreement remains over
its place of origin and meaning: ‘warlock,’ ‘rich man,’ or ‘singer.’ Only Vasmer I:203 traces Boian to the noun boi ‘battle,’ but he adduces no proof that his conjecture is better than any other.
The history of proper names of the Boi(o) type is similar to that of the common names homony- mous with them. Their original meaning was ‘make a noise, frighten,’ and a brave man could bear it with satisfaction. In different languages they evoked different associations: in some places with barley, in others with battles and impetuosity (which is what their etymology must have sug- gested in the first place, as seen in Russ boi ‘battle’ and bui ‘hero’) or performing skills, in still others with wealth (so in the Turkic languages) or with dwellers (farmers).
The last possibility offered itself to those who had the verb búa ‘to live, dwell; cultivate land’ (OI) and its cognates. Dictionaries explain the Scandi- navian name Bo as ‘dweller, inhabitant.’ Dietz (1981a:384-85) interprets Ostrogothic Boio in a simi- lar way, but Roelandts, as already stated, may be right that not only Boio but also Bo belongs with the words related to E boy. Nor should borrowing be excluded. The Lay of Igor’s Host shows familiarity with skaldic poetry. Of the two singers, Boian is particularly reminiscent of a Scandinavian skald; see Sharypkin (1973; 1976). Consequently, the name Boian could be of Germanic origin. When one is confronted with such names, the direction of borrowing (from Scandinavian? from the East?) and the fact of borrowing cannot be demonstrated with desired persuasiveness.
BRAIN (1000)
Brain has established cognates only in West Germanic.
Despite the support of many authoritative dictionaries it is probably not connected with the Greek word for ‘top of the head,’ and there is no need to trace initial br- in it to *mr-. OE
brego ‘ruler’ and OI bragr ‘first, foremost’ should also better
be left out of the picture. The evidence of place names is incon- clusive; in any case, OE brægen must have been a different word from *brægen ‘hill.’ It is suggested below that OE
brægen and Ir bran ‘chaff, bran’ go back to the same etymon
meaning ‘refuse.’ Apparently, those who coined the noun
brægen associated brain with ‘gray matter,’ that is, slush.
They gave no thought to its function in the organism or the role of the head as the seat of the brain.
The sections are devoted to 1) the earliest and fanciful at- tempts to explain the origin of brain, 2) Graßmann and Jo- hansson’s hypotheses (which have been reproduced with minor modifications by all later dictionaries insofar as they venture any etymology of E brain and G Brägen), 3) the idea defended in this entry (brain and bran), and 4) other words for ‘brain’
Brain Brain
that can be understood as ‘refuse, waste, gray matter.’
1. Brain (OE brægen), first recorded in 1000, has cognates in Frisian, Dutch, Low German, and Rhenish Franconian (see brain, Brägen ~ Bregen, and brein in etymological dictionaries of English, Ger- man, and Dutch and also Ten Doornkaat Koolman [1879-84: Brägen]; Stapelkamp [1950a], and Lerchner [1965:48]). The hypotheses on the origin of those words are not many. Minsheu compared
brain with Gk ffrøn, a noun used predominantly
in the plural and having several meanings: ‘dia- phragm; chest; heart’ and ‘mind; thought.’ Brain and frøn sound alike, so that the gloss ‘mind’ in Greek dictionaries may have suggested to Minsheu a link between them. His idea irritated Junius (who called its author vir minime indoctus), yet as late as 1839, Kaltschmidt mentioned frøn in the entry Brägen.
Helvigius was evidently the first to relate G
Brägen, which he knew in the form breeam (=
[bre:\m]?) to Gk bbrûgma ‘top of the head; fon- tanel.’ He wrote: “breeam / cerebrum, ab humidi-
tate sortitum nomen. Brûgw enim est humenectare, irrigare. Hinc brûgma synciput vocatur.” His idea goes back to antiquity. The Greeks thought that
brûgma and its doublet bregm’j were akin to brûgma
‘wet, moisten’ because in infants the fontanel is wet or moist (the association is due to folk etymology: see Frisk and Chantraine). Skinner, possibly inde- pendent of Helvigius, also traced brain to brûgma. Many influential philologists, Junius, Wachter (Bregen), Diefenbach (1851:325), Webster, Kaltschmidt (Brägen), and Richardson among them, supported Skinner or shared his view.
However, a few other conjectures have been offered from time to time. Schwenck (Bregen) pon-
dered the derivation of G Bregen from G Brei ‘mush, paste; porridge’ (not a bad idea, consider-
ing what the brain looks like), though he stressed the tentative character of his derivation. Kaltschmidt rejected the Bregen ~ Brei connection; however, Mueller found it worthy of note.
Richardson, inspired by the Greek etymology of
brûgma, put forward the hypothesis that brain is a
development of *be-rægn, with ber- being pro- nounced br- and -rægn standing for OE regn ‘rain.’ MacKay, who believed that most English
words are traceable to Gaelic, offered Gael breith
‘judgment, wit, imagination, decision’ as the etymon of brain (only Stormonth copied his ety-
mology). May (Brägen) cited OI bry''nn, which he
mistranslated as ‘forehead’ (bry'nn is an adjective;
the Icelandic for ‘forehead’ is brún) and OI
brovvgóttr ‘cunning’ (it would have been easier to
refer to brag ‘deceit’) and wondered whether G
(sich) einprägen ‘impress’ could be a variant of *(sich) einbrägen from Brägen. The last conjecture
is ingenious but indefensible despite the obscurity that envelops the origin of prägen. Mueller, who gave Brei and brûgma as uncertain cognates of brain,
added G Broden ‘foul-smelling vapor’ to his short list of possibly related words (Broden is akin to E
breath). Those suggestions are now forgotten.
More recently, Makovskii (1986:47-48 and
1999a) has offered a string of fantasies regarding the etymology of brain. He begins by saying that
in the anthropomorphic picture of the universe the brain is a symbol of the World Reason, which is related to the concept of a rising flame. He cites the roots *bhreg- ‘burn, shine’ and *bha¤- ‘to burn’ and obtains OE brægen ‘brain’ from the sum *bha- (<
*bhu¤- ‘to be’) + *arg-, *areg- ‘burn, shine’ (so in the
1999a work). In 1986, he gave *bhreu- ‘boil; ferment (v); violent, passionate’ as the etymon of brain. Both entries contain E brag, brochan ‘gruel, thin por- ridge,’ bragget ‘honey and ale fermented together,’ and many other words from Sanskrit, Greek, and Lithuanian among others, as related to brain. Ac- cording to Makovskii (1986), E marrow (< OE mearg) has the same root as brain (his sole sup- porter in this respect appears to be Jay Jasanoff; see Katz [1998: 211, note 77]). Partridge’s hypothesis (1958) is at a comparable level: “IE r[oot] ?*breg(h)-; r[oot] * bherg(h) would also account for G (Ge)hirn, OI hiarni [Patridge means OI hjarni], brain, for hirn, etc., may well be metathetic for *hrin-.”