Etymological dictionaries of
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) such as Mallory-Adams1 reconstruct two
words for 'head', namely *ɣeβōl- (Tocharian,
Greek, Germanic2) and *kapōl-o- (Old
English hafola,
Sanskrit kapá:la-),
which show an alternation between voiced (traditional voiced
aspirated) and voiceless stops3.
I consider these words to be
loanwords from Semitic *gVbVl- 'mountain;
boundary, border' (e.g. Arabic ʒabal 'mountain'), with a straightforward semantic shift.
The Semitic word is in turn derived from Afrasian *gVbVl- 'bank, side' (Militarev), also reflected in Egyptian
and Western Chadic and possibly related to *gab- 'side, bank; beach'
(HSED 856).
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1 J.P. Mallory & Q.D. Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to
PIE and the PIE world, p. 174.
2 Although the Germanic meaning is 'gable'.
3 Although pairs like this (e.g. *gab- ~ *kap-
'to take') are by no way uncommon, they aren't explained in the framework of
mainstream IE studies.
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