All words / Body / head 頭
head · 9 etymological groups
“head” in 35 languages English head and Latin caput both go back to Proto-Indo-European *káput. French tête comes from Latin testa, “earthen pot”, and German Kopf from a word for a drinking vessel; in both cases a word for a container came to mean the head. Vietnamese đầu was borrowed from Chinese 頭 and replaced the native word.
Indo-European19 languages Germanic
English head Germannote Kopf Dutch hoofd Swedish huvud Icelandic höfuð
Italic
Latin caput French tête Spanish cabeza Italian testa also capo (from caput) Portuguese cabeça Romanian cap
Slavic
Russian голова golova Polish głowa
Celtic
Irish ceann Welsh pen
Hellenic
Greeknote κεφάλι kefáli
Indo-Iranian
Persian سر sar Hindinote सिर sir
Uralic Finnish pää Estonian pea Hungarian fej
Afroasiatic Arabic رَأْس raʾs Hebrew רֹאשׁ rosh
Sino-Tibetan Mandarin 头 tóu Traditional 頭
Austroasiatic Vietnamese đầu
Austronesian Indonesiannote kepala Filipino ulo Hawaiian poʻo
Niger–Congo Swahili kichwa
Language isolates Basque buru
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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