On etymology of Proto-Slavic *soja 'jay'

Abstract

This paper represents a new attempt at determining the origin of the Proto-Slavic *soja 'jay'. Given the jay's habit of sowing acorns and other large seeds, and, consequently, the abundance of words denoting jay originating from words meaning acorn, oak, nut in various European languages, in this paper a new hypothesis on the origin of the Proto-Slavic name for jay has been postulated, namely of its origin from the verb *sěti/*sějati 'o sow'. In this article, it was shown that the ablaut ě : oj required by such etymology could have been both inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language and appear by analogy with other similar pairs of verb : deverbal noun during the Proto-Slavic period.

Keywords

• Slavic languages
• etymology
• ornitonyms
• jay
• sow
• birds