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this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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According to Wiktionary, this is the path the word took (from Latin into Polish at least):
elephantus (Latin, "elephant")
*ulbanduz (Proto-Germanic, "camel")
𐌿𐌻𐌱𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌿𐍃 (Gothic, "camel")
*velьb(l)ǫdъ (Proto-Slavic)
Wielbłąd (Polish)
Oh god oh fuck. Shit.
This applies to Czech (velbloud) as well. The thing is, we already call hippos elephants. The Czech word "hroch" is related to the chess piece "rook" in English. What about the Czech name for elephant then? It's "slon" and it means lion.
The polish word for elephant is słoń, it's very similar
Poles got a germanic word when German didnt lol
East-Germanic languages, as e.g. the Gothic language, were spoken in todays Poland between the rivers Oder and Vistula and are a different (and extinct) branch of the Germanic languages than West-Germanic (German, Dutch, Frisian, English) or North-Germanic (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese).