Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

A probable connection to Latin puer “boy, lad, child, slave, servant” (cf. the
typologically similar semantic connection of names for “slave” and “child” in Slavic and
other languages) has been discussed on the basis of compound names like Nae-
por/Nei-pur/Naei-purs. 102 The word puer 103 does not have a good Indo-European
etymology; it is often included in a group of words probably cognate with Sanskrit pu-
tra- “son”, Oscan puklum, Paelignian puclois “to the sons”, Mars. pucle[s, but this
material may be derived from a root of onomatopoetic (Kindersprache) character which
might have been spread universally and cannot be studied by the normal comparative
method. 104
According to Latin grammarians puer et in feminino sensu antiqui dicebant… quod est
antiquissimum carmen: mea puer…. 105 Starting with Mommsen this remark was used to
explain the expression of sacred language puer Iouis “the child (= daughter!) of
Juppiter” (Fortuna Primigenia) equivalent to the designation of the same goddess as
Diovo.filea = Iouis filiae in a Praenestine inscription. 106 The expression seems close to
such Urartian nominal phrases given above as “slave = servant of the God Haldi”. For
the first time in Vergil, the Latin noun puer appears as a prominent part of the usage in
poetic vocabulary 107 comparable to Hurrian-Hittite epic: puer is used as a sign of the
102 Ernout and Meillet 1994.
103 II declension stem in short -Ø: pur-Ø-s > *pu‡rs > puer, Ernout 1945, §26; cf. an archaic Vocative puere,
Pl. Pseud. 241; Merc. 930, Asin. 382. If such a segmentation is deceptive, as Brent Vine suggests to me,
from a purely descriptive point of view, the word is built with the *-ro- suffix. As the latter is nonproductive
in Latin, in this derivation an argument can be made for the relative antiquity of the term.
But if the word had been an old borrowing it might have entered the group of archaic nouns in -ro- due
to later morphological reanalysis. On the reconstruction *puH2-ero- for the Latin word and on the other
cognate Italic forms supposed to rely on put-lo-, cf. Hajnal 1995, 130-131, n.24.
104 Cf. the similar case of Yagnobi pul(l)a- “child, boy” supposed to be either a result of the
development of *puEra- or a “baby” word (Xromov 1972, 127-128), the onomatopoetic character of the
word’s function being stressed in pulla-mulla (pulla-mulla ast? “has he got children at all?”, ib., 93).
105 OLD s.v. puer, 4b.
106 Ernout 1947, n.14; Dumézil 1966, 68, 411; 1956, 3 essay, 71-98. For the reading Diovo-filea (not fileia,
Ernout et al.) see Wachter 1987, 216.
107 The use of the word in the language of lyric poetry can be exemplified by some citations from
Catullus. A grotesque usage of the word in earlier archaizing poetic style can be seen in nec sapit pueri
instar “he has not as much sense as the child”, Catullus XVII.12, Fordyce 1978, 143. In LXIV.95 the
Vocative sancte puer “O sacred boy” is used in a prayer–like appeal to Amor (Fordyce, ib., 175; 291).
The normal meaning is referred to in the description of the four states/ages of Attis in descending order
at LXIII.63: ego mulier, ego ado(= u)lescens, ego ephebus, ego puer “I [am] a woman = castrated, I [was]