The Bird Name Kasandērion: Problems of Semantics, Etymology and Attribution

Abstract

The gloss kasand»rion : „kt‹noj registered in the Hesychian glossary remains with no explanation. It was even suggested that the gloss is corrupt (Schmidt in his edition; Thompson 1936) and that it refers to a fish, not to a bird (Desfayes 1998: 41). The doubts should be abandoned, as „kt‹noj denotes ‘red kite, Milvus milvus L.’, the well known European bird of prey. The name appears to be a compound containing the element -d»rion (= Gk. -q»rion) as the second part, cf. the Greek bird names kwnwpo-q»rᾱj (orig. ‘fly-catcher’), lago-q»rᾱj or lagw-fÒnoj ‘a kind of hawk, Hieraaetus fasciatus’ (orig. ‘hunting / killing hares’), nhtto-ktÒnoj or nhtto-fÒnoj ‘hawk’ (orig. ‘killing ducks’), perdiko-q»rᾱj ‘hawk’ (orig. ‘hunting partridges’), fasso-fÒnoj or fasso-fÒnthj ‘hawk’ (orig. ‘killing pidgeons’). As the Palaeo-Macedonian language presents the close relationship with Ancient Greek and demonstrates the correspondence d vs. q (e.g. Mac. d£noj ‘death’ vs. Gk. q£natoj m. ‘id.’), it may be suggested that the gloss belonged to the vocabulary of the Ancient Macedonians. The first part of the compound kasanis compared with the IE. name for ‘hare’, *kˆasonm. (n-stem), cf. German Hase, English hare (< Gmc. *hásan- / *hazán-). The original semantics ‘hare-hunter; hunting the hares’ fits very well with a bird of prey, cf. lago-q»rᾱj or lagwfÒnoj ‘a kind of hawk, Hieraaetus fasciatus’ (orig. ‘hunting / killing hares’), Sanskrit śaśādam. or śaśa-ghnī- ‘hawk-eagle, Spizaetus cirrhatus or S. nipalensis’ (orig. ‘eating / killing hares’), śaśādana- ‘a kind of falcon’, Marathi sasāna- ‘falcon’ (orig. ‘eating / killing hares’).