All words / Animals / dog 犬
dog · 3 etymological groups
“dog” in 35 languages The old Indo-European word for dog, *ḱwṓ, lives on in German Hund and French chien. English kept it too, as hound, but everyday use went to dog, a word of unknown origin.
Indo-European19 languages Germanic
Englishnote dog German Hund Dutch hond Swedish hund Icelandic hundur
Italic
Latin canis Frenchnote chien Spanishnote perro Italian cane Portuguesenote cão Romanian câine
Slavic
Russiannote собака sobaka Polishnote pies
Celtic
Irishnote madra Welsh ci
Hellenic
Greeknote σκύλος skýlos
Indo-Iranian
Persiannote سگ sag Hindi कुत्ता kuttā
Uralic Finnish koira Estonian koer Hungarian kutya
Afroasiatic Arabic كلب kalb Hebrew כֶּלֶב kelev
Sino-Tibetan Mandarinnote 狗 gǒu
Austroasiatic Vietnamese chó
Austronesian Indonesian anjing Filipinonote aso Hawaiian ʻīlio
Language isolates Basque txakur
The words and etymologies here were compiled by an AI (Claude) from its trained knowledge and have not been reviewed by a specialist. Items with a source have been checked against that source; anything without one may contain errors.
Spotted a mistake? Let us know at ateliercat24@gmail.com .
Forms marked * (such as *ḱwṓ) are reconstructed: no record of them survives, and they are rebuilt by comparing their descendants. Dog, water, mother, moon and three are on the Swadesh list, the basic vocabulary used in comparative linguistics. Cat and tea are here as words that travelled along with the thing they name.
Sources are linked, not reproduced. Wiktionary content is available under CC BY-SA; WALS Online under CC BY.
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