PRASŁOWIAŃSKIE *ČIŽЬ, *ČIŽЬKЪ, *ČIŽIKЪ 'CZYŻYK (SPINUS SPINUS L.)': WYRAZ RODZIMY CZY UGROFIŃSKIE ZAPOŻYCZENIE?

This paper discusses the origin of the Proto-Slavic ornithonym *čižь / *čižьkъ / *čižikъ m. 'common siskin, Spinus spinus L.'. The Eurasian siskin is a well known and easily recognizable songbird whose characteristic voice sounds like the repetitive chirp of čí-čí [ʧi:-ʧi:]. The onomatopoeic explanation, which was adopted many times in the literature on the subject, can only be justified after the first palatalization of the guttural consonants in the Proto-Slavic language, dated to the middle of the first millennium BCE. Thus, the Proto-Slavic term for 'siskin' is innovative from the point of view of the Balto-Slavic phonology. We cannot decide whether the ancestors of the Slavs themselves created the ornithonym *čižь / *čižьkъ / *čižikъ on the onomatopoeic basis in the late phase of the development of the Proto-Slavic language, or rather borrowed it from a foreign source. The voiced phoneme *-ž-, disturbing the native "onomatopoeic" origin, seems to support the hypothesis of foreign-language borrowing. In this article it is suggested that the source of the alleged loanword was probably the Proto-Uralic term *čičä(-kä) ~ *činčä(-kä) denoting 'little songbird' (clearly preserved in Saami, Permian, Ugric and Samoyed languages), presumably already functioning at the time of the collapse of the Uralic community (i.e. in the fourth millennium BCE), and therefore several millennia older than the Proto-Slavic term for 'siskin'. The author assumes that (in all probability) the Proto-Slavs took over this Uralism through an unidentified Finno-Ugric substrate that left various traces in the Proto-Slavic vocabulary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]