Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 91. kötet (1990)
Tanulmányok - Larsson, Lars-Gunnar: The Origin of Mordvin M šaba, E žaba ’child’ and Cheremis šußo 147
THE ORIGIN OF MORDVIN M SÁBA, E ÉABA 'CHILD* AND CHEREMIS SUßO 151 latter word originally had the value of a vernacular or evén slang word but is nowadays becoming quite a normal word for 'girl'. It is also interesting to compare the Volgaic words to Swedish pojke 'boy' which has been borrowed from Finnish poika 'boy'. According to Molde (1984. 92) this could at first have been a kind of everyday or evén slang word, but later on it has become the normal word for 'boy' in Swedish. The semantic development can have been similar in the case of Romany tschawo in the Mordvin dialects. As to the closer circumstances of the alieged borrowing very little can be said with certainty without more detailed knowledge about the history of the Gypsies in the Volga region. Although Md saba, zaba and Cher. sußo generally have been treated of together when their etymology has been discussed, they should rather be considered two separate borrowings. Not only does this agree better with current théories about the earlier assumed "Proto-Volgaic" language (cf. e.g. Hajdú 1981.47), but it also pays due respect to the différences between Mordvin, where saba, zaba obviously are the common word for 'child', and Cheremis, where sußo mainly is part of a more or less opaque Compound, cf. iye-sußo (Paasonen-Siro 1948) and ikxsa (Kozmodemjansk). Mordvin M saba 'child', E zaba 'id'. and Cheremis sußo have been explained by Paasonen (1897) on rather uncertain grounds as a Mishar Tatar word. The same opinion is adopted also by Cygankin-Mosin (1977) in their Mordvin etymological dictionary. In this article I firstly compare it with Sanskrit säva- 'the young of any animal' to see whether it could be an Indo-Iranian loanword. Since the Indo-European basis of this word seems dubious and since there are phonetic diffîculties in regarding the Mordvin forms as an old Indo-Iranian loanword, the Volgaic word is secondly instead explained as a loanword from Romany, where forms like tschawo, tschavo and tschabo dénote 'boy'. LARS-GUNNAR LARSSON Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 91. 1990.
