Celtic *marko- 'horse' (updated)

According to Gamkrelidze-Ivanov¹, Celtic *marko- 'horse' (Old Irish marc, Middle Welsh march, Gaulish márkan [acc.])² and Germanic *márxa-/*margá- 'horse, mare' (Old Icelandic marr 'horse', merr 'mare', Old High German marah- 'horse', meriha 'mare') is an Asian Wanderwort related to horseback riding in the Eurasian steppes before the first millenium BC.

The closest forms would be North Caucasian *far-nē 'horse, mare', Sinitic *mrāʔ , Tibeto-Burman *mrāŋ 'horse', with Schwebeablaut. These words³ look as different formations from a lexeme found in Altaic *mórV 'horse' (Mongolian *mori, Tungusic *murin, Korean *màr). One of these derivations, with a nasal suffix (*mori-n), found in Mongol and Tungusic, would be the origin of the Tibeto-Burman and North Caucasian word. The other would be a diminutive *mor-qa reflected in the Sinitic and Celto-Germanic words.

 

However, Sanskrit mṛga 'deer, antelope' would point to a possible origin of this Wanderwort in the domestication of wild horses by the Botai culture of northern Kazakhstan (3,500-3,000 BCE). 

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¹ T. Gamkrelidze & V. Ivanov (1995): Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, p. 472-473.

² R. Matasović (2009): Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, p. 257.

³ For which Sergei Starostin reconstructs a Sino-Tibetan protoform *mrāH / *mrāŋ.

Greek parthénos 'virgin, unmarried girl' (updated)

Goddess Britomartis

Greek parthénos 'virgin, unmarried girl' is an interesting word with no clear Indo-European etymology, although the German Indo-Europeanist Gert Klingenschmitt¹ has proposed a derivation from *pr̥-sténos '(having) protunding breasts', a compound of *pr̥- 'before' and *sténos 'breast' (Avestan fštāna-) < IE *psten(o)- parallel to Avestan ərəduua-fšnī- 'having firm breasts'.

Despite being accepted by some specialists², to me this proposal is phonetical and semantically implausible, so I regard this word as a kinship term with parallels in Old Prussian mārtin, mārtan 'bride', Lithuanian martì ‘bride, daughter-in-law’, Latvian mā̀rša 'brother's wife', Crimean Gothic marzus ‘wedding’, apparently a Wanderwort found in Eteocretan *marti-/*marpi- 'virgin/maiden' (cfr. the Goddess Britomartis 'Sweet Virgin/Maiden'), Etruscan marθ 'bride' (in papac marθc svlisva 'the wills of the grandfather and the bride')³, and ultimately related to East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) *bHaddɮi (~ -ǝ-) 'young (of animals)'⁴, with cognates in Proto-Altaic *bāla 'child, young' and PIE *pelH- 'foal' (Greek pôlos 'foal', Armenian ul 'kid, young of deer or gazelle', Albanian pelë 'mare')⁷

In my opinion, this is the likely source of Sanskrit pr̥̥thuka- 'calf, young of an animal', Armenian ort^c 'young of cattle or deer' and Greek pórtis 'calf, young heifer', pórtaks 'calf'⁵, linked by Thomas Burrow⁶ to parthénos. The semantic shift from 'heifer' to 'virgin, unmarried girl' would be explained in the context of a pastoralist society like those of Kurgan people. Also related would be Germanic *farzá-, *farzḗn, *fársō(n) 'bull, ox' and Slavic *porsъ 'bull'.

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¹ G. Klingenschmitt (1974): 'Grieschisch παρθένος', in Antiquititae Indogermanicae. Gedenkschrift für Hermann Güntert, pp. 273-278. 
² R.S.P. Beekes (2010): Etymological Dictionary of Greek, p. 1153. See also X. Delamarre (2008): Gauloises Ardasina, Titiluxsa, Uxesina, grec parthénos, avestique ərəduuafšnī-. Une dénomination indo-européenne de la jeune femme: 'celle qui ha les seins hauts'.
³ A. Morandi (1987): La tomba degli Scudi di Tarquinia [Contributo epigrafico per l'esegesi dei soggetti], in Mélanges d'École française de Rome. Antiquité, p. 104.
⁴ Diakonoff-Starostin link to this Hurrian pōra-(m)mi, Urartian porā 'slave'. See I. Diakonoff & S. Starostin (1986): Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language, §2.
⁵ Also related are Old Church Slavonic za-prъtъkъ 'wind egg', Czech s-pratek 'premature calf' (Pokorný).
⁶ T. Burrow (1955): The Sanskrit Language, p. 71. 
⁷ J. Mallory & D. Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE world, p. 192.

Hair and wool

Basque bil(h)o 'hair, mane' is an interesting word. In compound with the verb utzi, itzi 'to leave' it gives biluz 'naked', biluzi 'to get naked' (with many variants: biloiz, bilaiz(i), bileiz(i), biluxi, buluzi, buluxi).

The etymology of this word has puzzled more than one Vascologist, specially given its similarity to Latin pilus '(a single) hair'. But a borrowing can be safely discarded due to phonetical reasons, because Latin -l- would have given -r- in Basque.

An alternative source from Latin villus 'tuft, lock of hair; hair' (probably an Italoid loanword parallel to Baltic *wil-na 'wool') was then proposed, but I find this unrealistic. My own view is that Basque bil(h)o and Latin pilus are one and the same Cantabrian word, ultimately related to PNC *p’VħVɫV 'feather; mane' (an etymology proposed by Bengtson).

Other 'hair' words found in IE languages come from this Vasco-Caucasian root. In particular, Greek púligges [pl.] 'hairs of the body' and Sanskrit pulakās [pl.] 'bristling hairs of the body' are similar to Nakh *pēla-k’ 'feather'.

The Tyrrhenian counterpart of bil(h)o is Basque ule 'hair', ile 'hair, wool', with several doublets in compounds. The meaning 'wool' suggested to some authors a possible borrowing from Gothic wulla < Proto-Germanic *wullō(n), but this rather makes me think PIE *w̥lH2neHa- 'wool' could be in fact a very old Vasco-Caucasian loanword: *p’VħVɫV > *bVlħV > *wVlħ-, with merging of b/w in PIE (where the voiced labial stop is very rare).