Greek párdos, párdalos 'leopard' (updated)

Greek párdos, párdalos 'leopard' was borrowed into Latin pardus, later used with leo 'lion' in the compound form leo pardus, and it was semantically reanalyzed in Romance as an adjective 'blackish; brown', firstly referring to the spots of leopards and later generalized to other things¹.

The Greek word has cognates in Indo-Iranian (Sogdian prwδnk, Pashto pr̥āng 'panther', Sanskrit pr̥dāku- 'tiger, panther'). A similar word can be found in Hittite parš-ana- 'leopard', corresponding to the Hattic genitive ha-prašš-un 'of leopard' and Persian pārs ~ fārs 'panther', in turn borrowed into Western Mongolian p^hars, bars 'snow leopard; tiger' and Old Turkic bārs 'tiger' (although some Turkic languages preserve the meaning 'panther'). This is also the probable source of Russian bars 'leopard'².

Probably also related is Mongolian beltereg 'young of wolf' < *berteleg (EDAL 175). The form börtü (berte) činua is translated as 'multicolored wolf (name of the legendary ancestor of Chinggis Khan)' and börtü is glossed as 'mottled, speckled, grey', in a similar way to Latin pardus.

Gamkrelidze-Ivanov consider this to be a substrate loanword from some language of Asia Minor, whose alternation d ~ s would reflect a dental fricative³. In my opinion, the source would be related to East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) *bħertsˀi(~ -e) 'wolf, jackal'⁴, linked by Starostin to Sinitic *prāts 'a k. of mythical predator'.

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¹ J. Coromines (1973, 2008): Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, p. 414.

² T.V. Gamkrelidze & V.V. Ivanov (1995): Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, p. 421.

³ T.V. Gamkrelidze & V.V. Ivanov, op.cit., p. 425-426.
⁴ Also related is the isolated Lezghian (Tabarasan) form barči 'tracking dog, bloodhound'.