The word "heart"

[Basque Seeker]

Pitifully, the article has copyright so I can not translate it and put it here, I just can post the link (pitifully again it's only available in Spanish, sorry!) 

There is an exception of copyright law called "fair use". See _http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 . According to this, using content for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. A translation would still be copyrighted by the original author. Since this is a research forum, I think it's okay to copy/translate excerpts of the content here.

Ok Data, I will translate the interesting parts. Thank you!

And thank you dant, too!!

[Basque Seeker]

Spanish Cardiology Review.
2004;57:327-30. - Vol.57 Núm 04 DOI: 10.1157/13059725

Author: Javier Botella de Maglia

HEART ETIMOLOGY:

Heart is one of the most important concepts in medicine. It is worthwhile, therefore, devote a few lines to reflect on the origin and meaning of the words we use to refer to it. The purpose of this paper is to show how the word originated from the Sanskrit, and became what we call heart in almost all Indo-European languages, and how so many Spanish words in common use and many other of medical use comes from Latin and Greek words designating this part of the body. On the other hand, it is intended that this paper could help with some of the words used today when talking about heart and its diseases, that are barbarisms that we should leave out.

HEART IN ROMANIC LANGUAGES:

The word in Sanskrit for heart is “hrid¹”. According to the doctor and poet Chilean Hernan Baeza, this word means "jumper" and refers to the jumps that heart give in the chest in response to efforts and emotions. In the Hindu tradition the energy center (chakra) of heart is depicted as a deer or antelope in the act of jumping.

Apparently, one variant of the word “hrid”, which the Greeks would pronounce “krid”, then “kridía” and later (by metathesis) “kirdía”, resulted in Greek “καρδια” and Latin “cor¹”. When the Vulgar Latin developed into various Romance languages, most of them called the heart with the last word or words derived from it. Thus, Valencian, Catalan and Balearic say “cor”, the French “coeur”, the Swiss of the Grisons, “cor”, and Italians, “cuore”. The exception is Romania, where heart is said “inima”. This voice, which does not come from “cor” but for “anima”, evokes some intuitive relationship between heart and soul. Moreover, in Romanian do exist words that are derived from “cor” (eg, “cordial”) and from καρδια (eg,”cardiac”). In Esperanto, heart is “koro”. From “cor” comes also the curious English word “core”, which is used to refer to the inside of the human body and certain virus nucleocapsid.

In Castilian “cor” term was used during the Middle Ages. The word heart (which initially was written “coraçon”) first appeared around 1100, in “Seville anonymous Botanical” published by Asín. Initially, “corazón” must have been the augmentative of “cor”, but later came to refer to this part of the body with no size connotation³. This is also the origin of Galician “corazón” and Portuguese “coração”. Let us note, by the way, that the augmentative of “corazón” is “corazonazo” and that the expression "having a big heart" does not refer to the actual size of it but the generosity of its owner.

HEART IN OTHER EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

One might think that the words which designate heart in the Germanic languages have a very different origin. However, it is not. The similarity with Sanskrit “hrid” is evident in the old Gothic “hairtó1”, German “herz” (in Swiss German, “härz”), Dutch ”hart”, English “heart” and the Scandinavian languages (“hjerte” in Danish and Norwegian, hjärta in Swedish and hjarta in Icelandic). All these forms retain the initial “h”, also the “r” sound (shared with the Romance languages) and the final tongue-teeth [Ed: linguodental in the original ] sound in “d” or “t”.
The similarity with the variant “krid” is obvious in the Gaelic “croí”and Celtic “chridhe”.

As for the Slavic languages, the resemblance to Sanskrit is somewhat lower because krid’s “ k” gave way to sound “s”, but it retains the central “r”, as seen in the Russian “cepgye” (which could transliterate into Spanish as “sierdtsie” ), Ukrainian “cepye” (transliterated “siertsie”) Polish “serce”, Czech and Slovak “srdce”, Bulgarian “sartse” and Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian “srce”. The pronunciation of all these Slavs terms is similar. All are these words have tonic accent on the first syllable, except for the Bulgarian “sartse”, which carries the tonic accent on the last one.
Finnish and Hungarian belong to the Finno-Ugric languages and are related to the Uralic family spoken in northern Asia. They are not therefore Indo-European languages. The respective terms in which heart is designated (“sydän” in Finnish and “szív” in Hungarian) do not come from the Sanskrit words that are similar to those used in the neighboring countries.

Obviously, it was neither resemblance in the Basque "Bihotz".

Heart is “iló” in Romany and “garlochí” in gypsy caló. These gypsy voices are not similar to Sanskrit “hrid”.

HEART IN ARABIC AND TURKISH

Heart is “qalb” in Arabic and “kalp” or “yürek” in Turkish. Neither language is Indo-European. Despite the profound influence that language and Arab culture have had in Spain, it seems that the root “qalb” didn’t participate in the formation of Spanish words related to heart.


[…]


Correspondencia: Dr. J. Botella de Maglia.
Císcar, 25, p. 12. 46005 Valencia. España.
Resources:
1.Barcia R. Diccionario general etimológico. Barcelona: Seix, 1880.
2.Baeza H. El mito del corazón. Rev Esp Cardiol 2001;54:368-72.
3.Corominas J. Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana. 3.a ed. Madrid: Gredos, 1973.
4.Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua española. 21.a edición. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1992.
5.Diccionario terminológico de ciencias médicas. 8.a ed. Barcelona: Salvat, 1963.
6.Navarro FA. Diccionario crítico de dudas inglés-español de medicina. Madrid: McGraw-Hill Interamericana, 2000.
7.Navarro FA. Parentescos insólitos del lenguaje. Madrid: Ediciones del Prado, 2002.

The omitted part refers to some Spanish words that come from “cor” and “kardia” roots, and is my understanding that is far less interesting to the linguistic research of the word heart that the previous part.

[Basque Seeker]

Some comments:

Finnish and Hungarian belong to the Finno-Ugric languages and are related to the Uralic family spoken in northern Asia. They are not therefore Indo-European languages. The respective terms in which heart is designated (“sydän” in Finnish and “szív” in Hungarian) do not come from the Sanskrit words that are similar to those used in the neighboring countries.

I disagree, since my point of view “sydän” is similar to Russian “sierdtsie” and Czech and Slovakian “srdce”, and “szív” could be a mix of these words with Hebrew “lev” which is heart, or could be just another derivation of “srdce” or similar.

Obviously, it was neither resemblance in the Basque "Bihotz".

Now I can see some resembalce between the pronunciation of German “herz” and the Basque “Bihotz”. Interesting!

HEART IN ARABIC AND TURKISH

Heart is “qalb” in Arabic and “kalp” or “yürek” in Turkish. Neither language is Indo-European. Despite the profound influence that language and Arab culture have had in Spain, it seems that the root “qalb” didn’t participate in the formation of Spanish words related to heart.

I think “qalp” or “qalb” could be similar to Greek “kardia”, I think too that the sound “k” is very interesting since the point of view of the sound of heart working in the chest, like in Japanese "kokoro". To me, this sound is like "k-kn, k-kn, k-kn" 

[Medulin]

English: Heart
Various Indian languages (including formal Hindi): Hriday

[Peter_in_Tha iland]

“Heart” is one of the most commonly used words in Thai language.
In Thailand, one hears mention of “heart” many times every day.

For example, to understand is, literally, “enter heart”.
If I want to be sure someone understood what I said, I will ask, in Thai, “Did this enter heart?”
If she understood, she would reply, “Enter heart, already.”

More common examples from Thai:

To be calm and patient: “cool heart”
To be impatient: “hot heart”

To be absent-minded, distracted: “floating heart”
To warn someone: “poke heart” (jab with finger)

To be kind: “good heart”
To be generous: “water heart”
To be evil: “black heart”

To transliterate the word for heart, from the Thai, would be, “jai”.
Sounds similar to “my”.

In every language that I’ve ever studied, the short words are the most important and/or the most commonly used.
In Thai language, “heart” (“jai”) consists of just two letters: one consonant and one vowel.
Can’t get shorter than that -- which indicates the importance of the concept of heart in Thai culture.

- Peter
Bangkok