Eels - Etymology

Etymology

The English name "eel" descends from Old English ǽl, Common Germanic *ǣlaz. Also from the common Germanic are German Aal, Middle Dutch ael, Old High German âl, and Old Norse áll. Katz (1998) identifies a number of Indo-European cognates, among them the second part of the Latin name of the eels, anguilla, which is attested in its simplex form illa in a glossary only, and likewise the Greek word for "eel", egkhelys, the second part being attested in Hesychius as elyes. The first compound member, anguis "snake", is cognate to other Indo-European words for "snake", cf. Old Irish escung "eel", Old High German unc "snake", Lithuanian angìs, Greek ophis, okhis, Vedic Sanskrit áhi, Avestan aži, Armenian auj, iž, Old Church Slavonic *ǫžь, all from Proto-Indo-European *oguhis, ēguhis. The word also appears in Old English igil "hedgehog" (named as the "snake eater"), and perhaps in the egi- of Old High German egidehsa "wall lizard". The name of Bellerophon (Βελλεροφόντης, attested in a variant Ἐλλεροφόντης in Eustathius of Thessalonica) according to this theory is also related, translating to "the slayer of the serpent" (ahihán), the ελλερο- being an adjective for a lost ελλυ- "snake", directly comparable to Hittite ellu-essar- "snake pit". This myth likely came to Greece via Anatolia, and in the Hittite version, the dragon is called Illuyanka, the illuy- part being cognate to the illa word, and the -anka part being cognate to the angu word for "snake". As designations for "snake" (and similarly shaped animals) are often liable to taboo in many Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages, no unambiguous Proto-Indo-European form for the eel word can thus be reconstructed, it could have been *ēl(l)-u-, *ēl(l)-o-, or similar.