Author Archive for Emilia Liz

13
Mar

Languages of the Bible

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: History and Religion

A few years ago a broadcaster from Alberta, Canada was asking members of the public their opinion on the nation’s bilingual policy. According to one woman, Canada did not need any such policy. If English was good enough for Jesus, she said, surely it was good enough for Canadians.

Of course I had a huge laugh over this. In Jesus’ time the languages spoken in what we now call England were Celtic; the ancestor of modern-day English was introduced several centuries later when the Germanic Angle and Saxon tribes invaded the island, giving rise to the term “Anglo-Saxon.” But the Alberta woman’s statement raises the question: what language did Christ actually speak?

One can be forgiven for thinking that Jesus’ mother tongue was Hebrew. After all, Hebrew, in which the Old Testament was written, is considered the language of the Jews, and Christ himself was a Jew. In his daily life, though, he conversed in Aramaic, a closely related language that the Jews adopted during their exile in Babylonia and that more recently was used in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. Some words of Aramaic origin in English include the name Thomas (meaning “twin”) and “abbot” from “abba,” a term for father. Jesus might have known Greek as well. At the time of the New Testament, Greek had become a “lingua franca” in the Mediterranean area, and as Jesus had dealings with non-Jews, he may very well have used Greek on these occasions. It is unlikely, however, that he spoke Latin, which was known by few in Palestine other than the Roman administrators.

As stated earlier, Aramaic and Hebrew are very similar. They both belong to a group of tongues known as the Semitic languages, some familiar examples of which are Arabic, Phoenician, and Ethiopia’s Amharic. The Semitic languages are in turn part of a larger group known as the Afroasiatic family, which includes a number of tongues spoken in the Middle East and North and East Africa.

Many Semitic languages in the Bible, however, are today either extinct or used only by small groups of individuals. To a large extent, these languages were pushed to, or over, the brink by their sister tongue Arabic, which expanded following the rise of Islam. Among the now-dead languages are Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite, whose speakers are mentioned in various parts of the Old Testament. Ruth, to whom a book of the Bible is dedicated, was a Moabite woman. Aramaic is now spoken by about half a million people in Lebanon and Syria. Although it is under constant threat from the more dominant Arabic around it, efforts are being undertaken to preserve the language.

Not all the tongues in the Bible fall into the Semitic and Afroasiatic categories. Others belong to the Indo-European family, a group that encompasses most modern-day languages of Europe and several in Western Asia and Northern India. Greek and Latin are well-known examples of Indo-European languages that make their appearance in the New Testament, which in fact was originally written in Greek. The Persians, of whose empire the Biblical heroine Esther became queen, also spoke an Indo-European language.

A lesser-known Indo-European people described in the Bible were the Hittites. At one time rulers of a large empire in the Middle East, their most famous member was Uriah, an officer in the Israelite army whom David had killed after his (David’s) affair with the former’s wife Bathsheba. Unlike Persian, Greek, and Latin, though, which live on today in various forms – as Iranian, modern Greek, and the present-day Romance tongues respectively – the language of the Hittites died without leaving any descendants, so to speak.

The most extraordinary Biblical language concerns the Elamites, a people mentioned in Genesis and Acts of the Apostles. They originated from what is now Iran and later conquered Babylonia. Interestingly, their language belonged to a family known as Dravidian, the most familiar member of which (to Westerners at least) is Tamil. Though Dravidian languages are at present largely confined to Southern India and Sri Lanka, they were believed to have once been spoken over a much broader area, hence the presence of the Elamites in Biblical lands.

So if my friend from Alberta were to meet Jesus, she would be well advised to bring along a Greek or Aramaic interpreter!

17
Feb

The End of an Era: Weaning My Daughter

By Emilia Liz 4 Comments
Categories: family

December 11 2009 marked an important date in my life: it was the day I stopped breastfeeding my two-year-old daughter Gabriella Michelle. I hadn’t deliberately planned to wean her on that very day. But I was unexpectedly put on an anti-seizure medication that the doctors told me was incompatible with breastfeeding. So I stopped nursing her right then and there.

It wasn’t much of an adjustment for Gabriella herself. She had been eating solid foods since the age of six months, and by the time I weaned her she was basically on a three-meal-a-day schedule. At that point I only nursed her before bedtimes and nap-times. She was using the breast more as a pacifier than a source of nourishment.

For me, though, the transition was more difficult. I must admit that in a way I felt “freer” once I had weaned her. No longer did I have to worry about wearing “lactation-friendly” (i.e. where I could easily expose a breast) nightgowns and pyjamas for the rare occasions she woke up at 1:00 a.m. demanding a midnight snack. The side effects of medicines that could pass through the milk, like aspirin and Tylenol, ceased to be a concern. Perhaps most importantly, a large weight seemed to have been lifted off my chest (pardon the pun!) at the thought that I need not be at her beck and call by providing milk for her whenever and wherever she wanted. While she had for the most part confined her “milk attacks” to just before she went to sleep, I still had to be on the alert for them in places like church, other people’s houses, and so on.

On a humorous note, I could now answer back to those people who had badgered me about never getting my daughter off the breast. A year earlier, for example, my brother asked me when I planned to stop nursing her. “I’m going to let her self-wean,” I replied confidently. “When she’s fourteen?” my brother remarked sarcastically. A (male) colleague teased me that in a few years I would be breastfeeding Gabriella through the schoolyard gate.

Yet with weaning came a certain sadness. I had enjoyed our breastfeeding relationship for over two and a half years. It hadn’t always been smooth sailing – I’d experienced everything from minor nuisances such as leaking milk (best remedy: breast pads) to potentially serious issues, like a foiled-at-the-last-minute bout of mastitis – but overall I hadn’t had any major problems. Breastfeeding, I believe, helped contribute to a special closeness with my little girl.

The sadness stemmed as well from the realization that I’ll in all probability never breastfeed again. My chances of having any more biological children are fairly remote, both for lack of interest and, at 41, of ability. And in the somewhat more likely scenario I adopted a child (as I’ve mentioned in other essays, adoptive mothers can breastfeed, though they usually have to supplement their milk with formula), I doubt I’d get a newborn, and the anti-seizure medication I’m taking would also present a barrier to nursing. So my breasts, like my reproductive organs, may be taking a well-deserved retirement.

Seeing my milk dwindle to almost nothing has also given rise to mixed feelings. Again, a certain sense of relief: once the milk supply completely dries up, I’ll be able to perform the breast self-examination my doctor has suggested I do regularly at my age. But the fact that my milk was once the sole source of food for my daughter and that it helped create such a close tie between us has triggered an instinctive urge in me to “hang on” to the few drops I still have.

But all in all, I must say that my memories of breastfeeding my daughter give me feelings not of nostalgia or sadness but happiness at the thought that I have crafted a wonderful relationship with her, a closeness that’s not going to go away just because I’m no longer nursing her.

01
Jan

Lower than a Dog?

By Emilia Liz 3 Comments
Categories: Life and Times

As a great lover of Canis lupus (scientific Latin name for dog), being called lower than a dog isn’t necessarily an insult to me, but this story bears telling. My aunt lives on a farm with a number of animals, including several dogs. Two of them are a “couple,” a male and female dog whom I’ll call Sam (boy) and Sandy (girl). Apparently when my aunt fills the dogs’ bowl with their food, Sam always waits patiently until Sandy has had her share before he starts eating himself.

I was mentioning this to a co-worker, a very nice Black woman who knitted a sweater for my daughter when I became pregnant. “What a gentleman!” my colleague exclaimed about Sam.

So I felt compelled to tell her this story. I recounted how once when I went to dinner at the apartment of a Lebanese man I was dating I made the main meal (Italian pasta with homemade tomato sauce, I remember). Afterward, he told me with a smile to wash the dishes, which I proceeded to do.

Now I brought up the story first of all to illustrate how primitive and uncultured such behaviour was (inviting someone else to your home and having them do the dishes, especially when THEY have made the effort to prepare the meal) but mostly for the laughs, to show how a dog could actually be more of a gentleman than a human male. Well, she didn’t laugh; she got enraged. “I hope you didn’t do the dishes!” she said angrily. I looked a little sheepish and said yes, I did, which made her even more upset. At this point I started laughing, not at the story but at her and the fact she got so angry.

So all in all, going back to the Sam-Sandy story, is it fair to say this “gentleman” I was seeing was lower than a dog?

28
Dec

Dreaming of the Queen – Republic vs Commonwealth

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: Canadian Politics and Politics

In the summer of 2010 Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to come to Canada .  Her visit follows that earlier this year of her son Charles and his wife Camilla.  I suspect that the Queen’s visit will garner some coverage in the press but not much attention among the general public.  Unlike her glamorous late daughter-in-law Diana, Elizabeth II doesn’t pique the curiosity of the average person.  Canadians appear to like but not revere the Queen, as exemplified in the attitude of an old Portuguese doctor who in the Toronto weekly Voice wrote that he considered Elizabeth II a genuinely good person yet laughed at the fact she wore hats similar to those his grandmother used to wear.

Though most Canadians don’t seem to have anything particularly against the Queen as an individual, she has increasingly found herself at the centre of a controversy over the institution she represents: the British monarchy.  Some people believe Canada should throw off the final yoke of British colonialism, scrap the monarchy, and become a republic.  Others by contrast feel equally strongly that Canada should remain part of the British Commonwealth – so strongly that they have formed groups such as the Monarchist League of Canada to ensure our country remains under the royal wing.

I myself am fairly agnostic on the issue..  My sense is that if we embraced republicanism tomorrow, life wouldn’t change much, either for better or for worse, in this country.  However, while I’m hardly demanding that Canada go (small “r”) republican, nor would I necessarily fight to keep Queen Elizabeth on as our head of state if there were any serious movement to literally dethrone her.  So I’d like to present the “pro” and “con” arguments, with their relevant counterpoints, for making Canada a completely independent nation or not.

Pro-Republican Arguments

#1 It is wrong that a person holds the position of head of a state simply for having been born into a particular family

From a purely rationalistic standpoint, it does seem both absurd and unjust that due to an accident of birth an individual can have their image placed on a nation’s currency, their initial in court cases (the “R” in “R. v. [name of defendant]” stands for “Regina,” meaning “Queen” in Latin) and their photograph in government buildings.  This absurdity/injustice strikes us as even more untenable if we think that the royals are only human.   A reader of a Montreal-based Italian-language publication put it even more succinctly: the royals obviously have no morality (this was just after the Camillagate tapes and pictures of the Duchess of York topless at the side of a pool came out), so why should they be more exalted than any of us common mortals?

Counterargument: This argument would be more convincing if the royals had any real power.  But several generations now the British monarchs have been mere figureheads.  If the Queen decided she was a pro-lifer, for instance, she would essentially be forced to go about trying to ban abortion the same way the head of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children would: by first swaying the opinion of the general public and from there that of the elected officials.  So the ability of the Queen or whoever succeeds her to influence our everyday lives is fairly limited.

#2 The British monarchy has no place in a multicultural society like Canada today

This argument was made by the above-mentioned Portuguese doctor in Voice. While he personally likes the Queen, he claims that having a member of a British family as Canada ’s head of state makes no sense in a nation where the Governor-General is a Black woman of Haitian descent and where some of our most prominent citizens boast names like Medeiros, Silva, Patel and Suzuki. Canada is a different country from that forty years ago when the majority of Canadians still hailed from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock.  So it is time our form of government reflected that change.

Counterargument: Canada ’s demography has indeed changed in the past half-century.  However, other than the special case of Quebec Canada is basically an Anglo-Saxon country culturally speaking.  In the words of Lawrence E. Harrison in his book The Pan-American dream, “anglophone Canada is not really multicultural.  Its bedrock is the same Anglo-Protestant system of values and attitudes that is the cultural foundation of the United States , and it is to this system that successful immigrants to Canada … acculturate.”  This does not mean Canada should remain under the Queen –after all, the United States ditched the British monarchy over two centuries ago without losing its Anglo-Saxon character.  But becoming a republic would not automatically make non-WASPs feel any more at home here.
Continue reading ‘Dreaming of the Queen – Republic vs Commonwealth’

10
Dec

Should the West Ban the Minaret?

By Emilia Liz 7 Comments
Categories: Religion and World Politics

Some years ago I was driving around Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, with the editor of a magazine to which I sometimes contribute. On one block stood a Catholic church, a synagogue, and a mosque. My editor exclaimed that in his city, followers of the three great monotheistic religions were able to live in harmony with one another.

I understood his pride. Toronto boasts a similar religious diversity. A small Lutheran church I occasionally attend on College Street, for example, is in walking distance of a Buddhist temple, two synagogues (in Kensington Market, a traditional Jewish enclave) as well as several Christian churches of other denominations. Though Canada and Venezuela are for the most part at least nominally Christian nations, both have received immigrants from other religious traditions who have left their mark on their host societies. Thus a mosque like Toronto’s Masjid-El-Noor, complete with minaret (the tall slender tower attached to the mosque), does not look out-of-place in a major urban centre in a neo-Europe.

But perhaps not in Old Europe. At least that is what 57% OF Swiss citizens thought when in a referendum last month they voted in favour of a constitutional amendment that would ban the further construction of minarets in their country. The minaret, as mentioned above, is the tower attached to the mosque from which, in Islamic countries, the faithful are called to prayer.* Switzerland currently has four minarets. The amendment would not see them destroyed but would prohibit others to be built in future.

The amendment itself was spearheaded by the Swiss People’s Party, a right-wing group that made news a year ago by proposing that the families of immigrants who commit crimes be deported along with their offending member. The Party’s rationale for banning the minaret is that the structure symbolizes “political Islam and sharia law.” They emphasize the importance of guarding Switzerland against the alleged growing threat of Islamicization in Europe. In addition, they say, Muslims in the country would still be allowed to practise their religion and even to build new mosques (minus the minaret, of course).

The result of the referendum received widespread attention. On the one hand, it was praised by many conservatives, including several who openly stated “God bless the Swiss” (a somewhat ironic remark in that the Swiss aren’t especially religious). Some saw the decision as a kind of “tit for tat,” as the construction of churches is legally forbidden in a number of Islamic nations, such as Saudi Arabia. On the other side, the proposed ban was condemned as discriminatory and even racist. This criticism came not only from Muslims themselves but even from some Christian church leaders who viewed the ban as an infringement on religious freedom. Some Muslims furthermore pointed out what they believed was the injustice of the decision, noting that Serbian Orthodox churches and Sikh temples (called gurdwaras) are now being built on Swiss soil. Another frequent observation is that most of the Muslims in Switzerland do not hail from Islamic theocracies but from relatively secular places like Bosnia and thus hardly appear to be involved in any scheme to “Islamicize” their host country.

On a purely aesthetic level I can understand the ban. A minaret does seem somewhat incongruous in a landscape of chalets and church steeples. The Swiss may not be particularly observant judging by measures like church attendance, but they may hold a certain attachment to the religious traditions that form part of their history. And while neo-Europes like Canada and Venezuela have enjoyed their present-day Western culture for 500 years at most (the oldest Western city in the Americas, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, was founded in 1498), Switzerland’s roots go back centuries. So the Swiss may regard the minaret as a sort of intrusion on those traditions.

On the other hand, I can’t help seeing the Swiss People’s Party’s spectre of Islamicization as a cheap ploy for votes. The fact that most Muslims in Switzerland aren’t radicals and aren’t even native to countries where militant Islam holds sway confirms my feeling, as does the Party’s ad for the ban, a picture of missile-like minarets sprouting up from a Swiss flag fronted by a woman in a black veil Also, logically it strikes me a bit puzzling that if the Swiss People’s Party is so concerned about an Islamic takeover why don’t they ban mosques themselves, in which after all the dreaded Muslim teaching supposedly goes on, rather than just the minarets? I fail to understand what is so dangerous about the minaret per se.

Throughout this debate the issue of religious freedom frequently arises. It is true that Muslims will not be forbidden to practise their faith or even build new mosques. Yet the ban on the minaret, without any justification other than it supposedly represents Islamic power, does come across as arbitrary and authoritarian. Similarly, the argument that what Switzerland decided was right because Islamic nations do the same or worse isn’t very convincing. Call me ethnocentric, but I like to think that we in the West are above fighting intolerance with more intolerance. (It’s moreover doubtful whether the Muslims affected by the minaret ban are the same people who would proscribe the construction of Christian houses of worship in their own countries.) The West should in my view show a good example of religious tolerance to the rest of the world.

We should now address the question of Serbian Orthodox churches and Sikh temples being permitted on Swiss territory. To put it simply, these faiths don’t have the same implications in the West that Islam does. While there are few if any “native” Orthodox Christians in Switzerland, Eastern Orthodoxy is not much different from Catholicism or Protestantism (the main religions in Switzerland). More importantly, the Orthodox do not seem to harbour any particular animosity towards the West. Nor do most Sikhs. Despite its doctrinal distance from Christianity, Sikhism as a faith and Sikhs as individuals are not perceived as a threat to the West or Western culture. Islam, and by extension all Muslims, are. Undoubtedly the members of the Swiss People’s Party know this, hence their silence on gurdwaras and Orthodox churches.

I am sure that if a similar referendum had been held in Canada I would have voted to allow the minarets, even though I’m not Muslim myself and even though I’m uncomfortable with some of the ways Islam is practised today. I like to believe that if I lived in Switzerland I would do the same. But I’m not Swiss. I’m not part of a country with ingrained traditions going back at least a millennium, not mere generations.

However, in the end the Swiss are masters of their own nation, and I won’t challenge the decisions they make in democratically held referenda. The best way to reverse the results of this decision is by internal dialogue, not by rulings made from on high. Further discussions on the matter promise to be interesting.

* The “adhan,” or call to prayer, was not an issue here, as it was in Britain, given that in Switzerland the call only takes place within the confines of the mosque itself.

21
Oct

Should the Burqa be Banned?

By Emilia Liz 8 Comments
Categories: Society

If the Taliban has accomplished anything, it has been to make “burqa” a household word. The burqa of course refers to the full-body covering donned by some Muslim women, which does not allow the woman to be viewed by others but includes a gauze net at the eye level to permit her to see outside. The burqa is similar to the niqab, which also covers the head and body but leaves the woman’s eyes exposed.

Under the Taliban Afghan women were legally forced to wear the burqa if they ventured from their homes. Now a Muslim group in Canada is taking the opposite tactic. The Muslim Canadian Congress is urging the Canadian federal government to forbid the wearing of the burqa, and the niqab, in public.* According to the Congress, as an instrument of women’s oppression the burqa has no place in a country like Canada that prides itself on its gender equality. Furthermore, the burqa poses a security risk, as an individual – male or female – could put it on to rob a bank or other establishment without fear of being identified. Finally, the Muslim Canadian Congress says the burqa is not mandated by Islam or even mentioned in the Koran. It is instead a Middle Eastern cultural tradition that was co-opted by Muslims in the region.

Not everyone concurs with the Muslim Canadian Congress’ demand. The Canadian Islamic Congress for instance believes that banning the burqa would violate the freedom of religion and conscience of Muslim women who chose to wear it. To that the Muslim Canadian Congress replies that for many, even most, women the burqa is not a choice but something imposed on them by their husbands and other family members. The group’s president Farzana Hassan stated as well in an interview on CBC Radio that religious freedom is not absolute.

The question of whether or not to ban the burqa presents a dilemma for many Canadians regardless of their religion. In Canada , women’s rights and freedom of religion are two principles most of us take seriously. But what happens when they appear to collide?

I believe the idea of the burqa as a security threat deserves to be discussed. The Muslim Canadian Congress’ Tarek Fatah described at least one incident in Canada in which an individual – a man, actually – robbed a bank while wearing a burqa. Is this a reason to prohibit the burqa in public? Perhaps – though one could argue that in that case ski masks, which have probably been used for more robberies than the burqa has, should be banned as well. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to require that women show their faces in situations where identification is advisable in order to prevent fraud, when voting or taking out money at a bank, for instance. But I suspect the burqa’s potential as a robbery facilitator may be a bit exaggerated by its opponents.

I’m also somewhat wary of the notion that the burqa should be forbidden in order to prevent women from being forced to wear it. This is one of the Muslim Canadian Congress’ main arguments for banning the garment. However, over the years a plethora of restrictive legislation of dubious benefit has been passed for the purpose of “protecting” women. For instance, when Ireland was debating whether to permit divorce (which it ultimately did in 1995) some people claimed that doing so would hurt women by freeing up men to abandon their wives and children. One Irish politician, Alice Glenn, made the now-famous comparison of a woman voting to legalize divorce to a “turkey voting for Christmas.” (Of course we in North America might say a turkey voting for Thanksgiving.) Glenn never mentioned that over half of divorces today are filed by wives rather than husbands. While most of these women do so not because of abuse and/or alcoholism on their spouses’ part but because of dissatisfaction with the marriage in general, it’s not hard to imagine that forbidding divorce does make it more difficult for a woman to be free of a man like Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather. Thus here we have an example of a law (the ban on divorce) ostensibly aimed at helping women which ends up potentially hurting them.

I don’t doubt the Muslim Canadian Congress’ call for a burqa ban stems from a genuine concern for women (though I suspect it’s also an attempt on the group’s part to spruce up Islam’s image in the eyes of non-Muslim Canadians, many of whom associate the religion with the subjugation of women). And the question of whether even in Canada women freely decide to wear the burqa deserves to be examined. Yet the idea of forbidding something that we personally might find oppressive strikes me as paternalistic at best and authoritarian at worst. An analogy might lie in the case of Michelle Duggar, the Arkansas woman with at last count eighteen children and one more on the way. (See my earlier essay about her at Cynics Unlimited) I’ve embarked on a completely different course in my reproductive life: I’ve chosen to give birth to only one child. Just as the Muslim Canadian Congress says the burqa is not part of the Islamic religion, my interpretation of Psalm 127:3-5, “happy is he who has his quiver full of (children),” does not tell me that I should necessarily have as many kids as my body can pump out. One commentator on my quiverfull essay claimed that the Duggars were “brainwashed.” Which may be true, but who am I or anyone else to tell Ms. Duggar that she should not have as many children as she can produce because it’s not something that I would ever do myself or that I consider a religious obligation?

Which brings up the role of religion in society. I agree with Farzana Hassan that freedom of religion is not absolute. For example, courts have – rightly – ordered medical treatment for the children of Christian Scientists. On the other hand, in the same way that political leaders shouldn’t be allowed to impose their religious beliefs about abortion, homosexuality, etcetera, on people who do not share them, perhaps other than in extreme situations it is not the government’s job to decide how citizens should practise their religion. Rather than resort to the law, the Muslim Canadian Congress might consider trying to educate the Muslim community on why the burqa and niqab are not religious requirements.

Though in the end I don’t have any definite answer on whether or not the burqa should be legally forbidden in Canada , I tend to lean against a ban. The occasional conflict between women’s rights and religious freedom isn’t always easily resolved. In attempting to do so, we should be careful to strike a balance between the needs of individuals and the needs of the greater society.

* The Muslim Canadian Congress is not on the other hand calling for a ban on the hijab, or headscarf, which covers only the woman’s hair.

22
Sep

A Dog’s World: The Word Behind Man’s Best Friend

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: History and Language

Nowadays it seems there are as many if not more lists of dogs’ as of babies’ names. Few potential pet owners, however, show much interest in the name “dog” itself. Which is a pity, because this hoary old noun, to paraphrase The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt in an article about motherhood, has a history stretching back across time and place.

“Dog” hails from the Old English word “dogca,” which actually referred to a specific kind of dog, a mastiff. “Dogca” in this sense was borrowed by several other European languages. In French it became “dogue” as in the breed the dogue de Bordeaux, the best-known example of which is the character Hooch in the Tom Hanks movie Turner and Hooch. The previous term for dog in Old English was “hound.” Ironically, while “hound” eventually took on a more restricted meaning – that is, of a hunting dog – “dog” came to signify the animal in general.

“Hound” is noticeably similar to the word for dog in the other Germanic languages. These include the Dutch “hond” (as in the breed the Keeshond) and “hund” in German and the Scandinavian languages. More distantly, it is related to the Latin “canis,” which gave us “canine” and “kennel” among other words. Even the Ancient Greek name for dog, “kyon,” has left its mark on the English language. “Kyon”’s most famous contribution to our vocabulary is “cynic,” which originally meant “dog-like” – and which would therefore have made the phrase “Garfield the Cynical Cat” a literal oxymoron. The Greek philosopher Diogenes, founder of the school of thought known as Cynicism, was called “The Dog” during his lifetime. He was alleged to have stated: “I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy and bite scoundrels.” Thus he and his followers were termed the Cynics, or dog-like ones.

Words for dog related – albeit more distantly – to “hound” can be found in other branches of the Indo-European language family.* Latvian has “suns,” Armenian “shun,” and even the classical Sanskrit of ancient India boasts “svan.” Linguists believe that the root word for “dog” in the original tongue spoken by the Indo-European people, who are believed to have lived in the Russian steppes 3,000 years before Christ, was something like “kwon.” The “k” then became an “h” in the Germanic languages and an “s” in Eastern Europe and some parts of Asia. The fact that such a wide range of languages use a derivative of “kwon” suggests that the earliest Indo-Europeans possessed domestic dogs, along with animals like cows, pigs, sheep and horses that also have similar names in these languages. On the other hand cats, who were only introduced to Europe in Greek and Roman times, lack an Indo-European root word; “cat” appears to be a borrowing from a Semitic language similar to the Arabic “qett.”

So the next time you pat your furry canine friend, think of the history behind his or her name!

* “Indo-European” refers to a group of languages spoken in most of Europe and a number of places in Western Asia and India. Well-known examples are English, Russian and Hindi.

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