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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Animal names?
In-Reply-To: oerjan@nvg.unit.no's message of 25 Apr 1995 17:33:24 GMT
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Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 19:27:58 GMT
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In article <3njbp4$bc5@due.unit.no> oerjan@nvg.unit.no (Orjan Johansen) writes:

>In article <D7LAuM.JG@news.cern.ch>, Pal Hidas <hidas@dxcern.cern.ch> wrote:

>>The lion in Hungarian is "oroszlan" which comes from old Turkish, probably
>>from the time when our ancestors lived in Central Asia together with Turkish
>>peoples (and we were mixed up with them). Lions lived in Iran and Central
>>Asia that time. I guess the name "oroszlan" is in connection with the Turkish
>>names Ruslan,Arslan (?).

>Any connection with the name "Aslan" in C.S.Lewis's Narnia books?
>Is "Aslan" the word for lion anywhere?

The name "Aslan" is taken from the *Persian* word for lion, _arslan_.  Given
Lewis' RP speech pattern, it's easy to see why the <r> got dropped.

The Turkish word is a direct borrowing from Persian; I don't know whether the
Hungarian word should be considered a borrowing from Turkish or directly from
Persian.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
