ETYMOLOGY OF NAMES OF MUSTELID^. 29 



NoRZ [Putoriiis lutreola]. — This auimal is at once proclaimed 

 to be East European by its name; for the word, first used iu 

 Germany by the 8axou mineralogist Agricola, in 1546, is Scla- 

 vonic ; the Russian is norlm^ the South Russian nortschilc, the 

 Polish nurek^ from the verb mirlxci, to dive. The Swedes alone, 

 in whose country the animal also appears, have a particular 

 name for it, mdnk^ which is the source of the mink or minx ap- 

 plied to the different North American species [P. viso7i\. 



Otter [Lutra vulgaris]. — To the comparative philologist this 

 word offers a field as broad as it is difficult, for the names of 

 the animal in various European languages are enough alike to 

 be compared, yet sufficiently dissimilar to be questioned as the 

 same word; the initial particularly differs in a suspicious 

 manner: otter^ lutra^ hodptq. In Sanskrit and Zend,* we find 

 for an aquatic animal, of what kind is not known with cer- 

 tainty, but which may easily have been the Fish -otter, the name 

 udra-Sf derived from the root ucl^ water (Latin udus, Greek udcup). 

 With this agrees perfectly the Lithuanian tidra, the Curlandic 

 and Livonian uderis, and, with slight change of the initial, 

 tvydrei^ which obtains throughout the Sclavonic tongues, the 

 Roumanian vidre — all of which are actual names of the Otter. 

 In the Germanic languages, the u becomes o; otr in the old 

 Northern sagas, ottar in old mediaeval German, otter in the 

 present German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, though in the 

 latter the early initial u sometimes reappears, giving utter. 

 The change of d into t is the rule in the rendering of the sound 

 of Sanskrit, Greek, Lithuanian, and Sclavonic in the Germanic 

 languages, although in pure German this consonant properly 

 changes into sharp s {vdwpj water — ^^ ivasser^^)^ as is not, how- 

 ever, the case with the name of the animal. 



In Greek, we find, as the name of the Otter, k'vuSptc;^ Herod. 2, 

 72, and 4, 109, ^vo(5/>k, Arist. Hist. An. 1, 1, and 8, 5, or hodpoq^ 

 Aelian Hist. An. 11, 37, nearly always mentioned in connection 

 with the Beaver; also the forms, agreeing better with the San- 

 skrit, odpoq^ udpa, the former for an actual serpent (Ilias, 2, 723, 

 Arist. Hist. An. 2, 17, 83), the latter for a fabulous serpent like 

 monster (Hesiod, Theogon. 413, &c.). 



In Latin, we find only lutra, Plin. 8, 30, 47, which differs not 

 only in the initial, but also in the t, though the Latin should 

 agree with the Greek and Sanskrit and differ from the Ger- 



*Zend : the language of the Avesta, or ancient sacred writings of the Per- 

 sians. The people who used it were a branch of the Asiatic Aryans. — Tr. 



