Etruscan φersu 'masked character (in games)' (updated)

Latin persōna 'theatre mask' is a loanword from Etruscan *φersu-na > φersu 'masked character (in games)'. This can be analized as a derivative from an unattested form *φers 'husk', an agricultural term with correspondences in Hittite paršdu 'leaf, foliage'¹, linked in turn by Alexei Kassian to Kartvelian *purtś 'husk, foliage' (Georgian purcel ’leaf, foliage', Megrel purča 'chaff, husk', Laz purča 'sweet corn ear', purčumale 'a k. of weed'), *prtś-wn- 'to husk, to scale'².

Presumably related to this etymology is the Greek theonym Perséphonē (Etruscan Φersipnei, Latin Proserpina), attested on several Attic vases from the 5th century BC as Persóphatta, P(h)erséphatta, Pherréphatta. Rudolf Wachter analyzes it as a compound whose second member would be derived from Indo-European *-gʷhn-t-jā < *gʷhen- 'to beat, to kill', and the first one related to Sanskrit parṣá- 'sheaf, bundle', Young Avestan parša- 'ear (of corn)', to which Michael Weiss -in a personal communication to Wachter- also adds Latin porrum and Greek práson 'leek', from a supposed Indo-European lexeme *pr̥s-o-'³. Thus the reconstructed meaning of the theonym would be 'sheaf-beater', i.e. 'threshing maiden'⁴. 

However, like most Indo-Iranian lexicon related to agriculture, *parš appears to be a substrate loanword from the language spoken by BMAC people⁵. On the other hand, for Slavic *proso- 'millet', Georg Holzer posited a loanword from a substrate language he called Temematic (Temematisch in German) after its proposed sound correspondences with PIE and where *r̥ > ro⁶. Although Holzer's theory has been discredited as a whole⁷ it could still explain the etymology of the Slavic word from IE *bhar(e)s 'a k. of cereal (millet, barley, spelt)' (Latin far, farris), a remnant of the languages spoken by the Neolithic farmers who colonized Europe from the Near East.

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¹ Wrongly translated by some authors as 'sprout, sprig'. See A. Kloekhorst (2008): Etymological Dictionary of Hittite, pp. 645-646. 

² A. Kassian (2009): Anatolian lexical isolates and their external Nostratic cognates, in Orientalia et Classica, §48.

³ M. De Vaan (2008): Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, pp. 481-482.

⁴ R. Wachter (2006): Persephone, the Threshing Maiden, in Die Sprache, vol. 47, no. 2 (2007-2008), pp.163-181.

⁵ M. Witzel (2003): Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia, in Sino-Platonic Papers 129, p. 33.

⁶ G. Holzer (1989): Entlehnungen aus einer bisher unbekannten indogermanischen Sprach in Urslavischen und Urbaltischen, §2. See also F. Kortland (2003): An Indo-European substratum in Slavic?, in Languages in Prehistoric Europe, pp. 183-184.

⁷ R. Matasović (2013): Substratum words in Balto-Slavic, in Filologija 60, pp. 75-102.

French bourbe 'sludge' (updated)

French bourbe 'sludge' (collective form bourbier) designates a kind of dark, thick mud deposited by stagnant or waste waters and surely derives from Gaulish *borwā (f.), whose supposed meaning 'hot, boiling spring' accroding to standard dictionaries, which link it to Welsh berwi, Breton bervi 'to boil'^1. 

However, in my opinion this etymology is semantically unsatisfactory, and I'd prefer a substrate loanword from Baltic *purwā > Lithuanian pũrva 'smudge, dregs', Latvian pùrvs, purve 'morass, swamp', a word with parallels in Indo-Aryan: Sanskrit púrīṣa- 'crumbling or loose earth, rubbish; feces, excrement, ordure', Sinhalese puraṇa 'fallow or waste land'. 
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¹ X. Delamarre (2008): Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, pp. 82-83.

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 North-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'.