Around 1,000 Greek words can’t be traced to any Indo-European language. Where do they come from?
Ἦσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον γλῶσσαν ἱέντες.
Êsan hoi Pelasgoì bárbaron glôssan híentes.
‘The Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek.’
~ Herodotus (Histories 1.57)
There are about 1,000 words in Ancient Greek that can’t be traced back to any Indo-European language or any other known language in the region. These lexical enigmas even include some words and names you might think of as quintessentially Greek:
- λαβύρινθος (labýrinthos) ‘labyrinth’
- ἐλαία (elaía) ‘olive (tree)’
- Ἀχιλλεύς (Akhilleús) ‘Achilles’
- Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseús) ‘Odysseus’
- Κόρινθος (Kórinthos) ‘Corinth’
- Ἀθῆναι (Athênai) ‘Athens’ / Ἀθήνη (Athḗnē) ‘Athena’ (goddess of wisdom)
- Ἄρης (Árēs) ‘Ares’ (god of war)
Despite centuries of effort, linguists have not been able to trace these words back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the parent language from which all the other Indo-European (IE) languages descend. Nor have they identified words in neighboring languages that Greek might have borrowed them from.
Where, then, do these words come from? In this issue of the Linguistic Discovery newsletter, we’ll dig through layers of linguistic history to reveal the mystery language that influenced Ancient Greek.
The approximate present-day distribution of native speakers of the eight branches of the Indo-European language family within Europe and Asia. (Wikipedia: Indo-European languages)
Paleo-European / Old European Languages
All languages contain a fossil record of their history.
While Indo-European languages have been around for a long time, and Greek has likewise been spoken in Greece for several millennia, Indo-European languages haven’t always blanketed the majority of Europe like they do today. At one point the Indo-Europeans were pastoralist newcomers to a strange land, one that had been occupied by Neolithic farming societies for millennia.
Early Indo-European migrations according to the prevailing Kurgan Hypothesis, which places the Indo-European homeland north of the Caucasus in the Pontic–Caspian Steppe. (Wikipedia: Proto-Indo-European language)
The peoples who preceded the Indo-Europeans—called Early European Farmers—spoke any number of Paleo-European (a.k.a. Old European) languages. Very few of these left any written evidence (just Aquitanian, Etruscan, Iberian, and a handful of others), and only one survives today (Basque). Even so, these Old European languages left an indelible mark on the Indo-European languages that succeeded them.
Map of known Paleo-European (Old European) languages, including ones that are directly attested with written evidence and those that are only indirectly attested. (Wikipedia: Paleo-European languages)
Imagine you’re a band of early Hellenic (Greek) speakers whose ancestors had migrated over generations from the Pontic–Caspian Steppe into the eastern Mediterranean. Along the way, those ancestors encountered all sorts of novel foods, plants, animals, and terrain—things like olives, hyacinth, figs, and cypresses. Even the sea was unfamiliar at one point, migrating as your ancestors did from a landlocked steppe. What do you call all these things?
One option is to recruit existing vocabulary for new purposes. For example, when the Greeks first described hippopotamuses in the mid-5th century BCE, they cleverly called them ‘river horses’ (ἵππος ὁ ποτάμιος [híppos ho potámios] ‘the horse of the river’ [lit. ‘the riverine horse’]; Herodotus, Histories 2.71, c. 440s BCE). This later gave rise to the compound ἱπποπόταμος (hippopótamos) ‘hippopotamus’ (Dioscorides, De materia medica 2.25, c. 50–70 CE). The Greeks even applied this strategy to the sea! One of the words the Ancient Greeks used for ‘sea’ was πόντος (póntos), which comes from PIE *póntoh₁s ‘path; road’. Every other branch of Indo-European kept the original ‘path/way’ meaning (e.g. Latin pōns ~ pontis ‘bridge’, from which English gets pontiff and pontificate), but Greek extended it to mean ‘sea’, apparently in the sense of ‘the water-way; the sea-crossing’. Another Ancient Greek word used poetically to refer to the ‘sea’ was ἅλς (háls), whose primary meaning was actually ‘salt’. The sea, then, was ‘the salt’.
This strategy of coining new terms for novel experiences was, however, the minority one. Why invent new words for things the local Paleo-Europeans already had names for? Why not simply adopt the local name? That’s exactly what Indo-Europeans did as they settled across the continent, casually borrowing hundreds of words for plants, animals, types of terrain, places, and other natural phenomena. Thus it’s no surprise that the primary Greek word for ‘sea’ is actually θάλασσα (thálassa → English thalassocracy ‘rule of the sea’, used for maritime empires), which, unlike póntos and háls, has no firm Indo-European etymology. Linguists have long tried to connect this word to Indo-European, but no proposal has won wide acceptance. This is exactly what we’d expect: because the Proto-Indo-European language arose in the landlocked steppes, it had no need for—and has no securely reconstructable word for—‘sea’. (Linguists have, however, reconstructed terms for snow, cold, wolves, bears, and honey—all consistent with the temperate, continental interior.) Its daughter branches only acquired sea vocabulary later. As they reached the coasts, each language innovated or borrowed its own word for ‘sea’: English sea, Latin mare, Greek thálassa, etc.
The same process happened for all the other items I mentioned earlier:
- olive: ἐλαία (elaía) ‘olive (tree)’: A very early borrowing which existed in Proto-Hellenic as *elaíwā and Mycenaean Greek (in Linear B) as 𐀁𐀨𐀷 (e‑ra‑wa), but has no clear Indo-European etymology. This same Pre-Greek word was also the source of the Etruscan word *𐌄𐌋𐌄𐌉𐌅𐌀 (*eleiva) ‘olive’, where it was borrowed by the Romans as olīva (the source of the English words olive and oil).
- hyacinth: ὑάκινθος (hyákinthos) ‘hyacinth’: Again, no clear Indo-European etymology exists. English borrowed the word hyacinth from Greek. Hyacinthus was probably a Pre-Greek god who was superseded by Apollo, and was portrayed as his lover in Greek mythology.
- fig: Greek borrowed several words for ‘fig’, including ἐρῑνεός (erīneós) ‘wild fig-tree’, ὄλυνθος (ólynthos) ‘wild fig’, and σῦκον (sŷkon) ‘fig’. These too have no Indo-European precedent.
- cypress: Appears in Mycenaean Greek (in Linear B) as 𐀒𐀠𐀫 (ku‑pa‑ro) and Ancient Greek as κυπάρισσος (kypárissos). Lacks an Indo-European etymology. English borrowed the word cypress from Greek.
Because the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived outside the native range of these plants, their language lacked words for them. They only borrowed the words upon arriving in the eastern Mediterranean. Speakers coin or borrow new words as they need them, and migration events often trigger such a need, leaving a trace of that migration in the language’s lexicon (and grammar, but that’s a point for another article). In this way, all languages contain a fossil record of their history. They are a catalog of what the population lacked when they arrived in an area or came into contact with new peoples. In this article, we’ll use that linguistic fossil record to discover what the language that existed in the Aegean prior to the Greeks—which we’ll call Pre-Greek—was like.
Substrates, Superstrates, & Adstrates
Migration is just one piece of the puzzle, however. When one language disappears and leaves only traces of existence in other languages in the region, this is typically the result of social stratification: one more socially dominant community (militarily, economically, technologically, politically, etc.) imposes its language on another less dominant one. Linguists refer to this situation as linguistic stratification: the socially dominant language is called the superstrate language, while the less dominant variety is called the substrate language. This metaphor likens languages and population movements to geological strata, where each new population to enter an area adds another layer to the linguistic history of the region.
Languages as geological strata
In the course of linguistic stratification, both languages naturally influence one another, but the substrate language is often lost entirely, leaving only traces within the superstrate language. So when we have indirect evidence of a historically unknown language that influenced a historically known language—like the way the Pre-Greeks influenced Ancient Greek—we are usually looking at a case of linguistic stratification. Indeed, the early Greeks, and especially the Mycenaeans (c. 1750–1050 BCE), are associated with major advances in technology (including writing), economy, and social organization in the Aegean. Another example of linguistic strata can be seen in the diversification of Latin into its descendant Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and several dozen others). While the dominance of Roman culture gradually erased many of the local languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, each of those local languages nonetheless influenced the Latin spoken in their respective regions. Over time, those various flavors of Latin became distinct languages.
One other type of linguistic “stratum” (which breaks the geological layering metaphor somewhat) is an adstrate language—a language which influences a neighboring population. Like substrates, this often happens in cases of social stratification, where the adstrate community is considered socially superior or dominant to the surrounding communities (but it can also occur due to simple geographic proximity). Due to the cultural dominance of the Roman Empire throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, for instance, Latin functioned as an adstrate language for many of the languages that sat across the līmes (the Roman frontier). Even though the Germanic-speaking territories east of the Rhine and north of the Danube never fell under Roman administration, centuries of trade, military contact, and cultural prestige still left a layer of adstrate borrowings in Proto-Germanic:
| Latin |
Meaning |
Proto-Germanic |
English |
German |
| cāseus |
‘cheese’ |
*kāsjus |
cheese |
Käse |
| cattus |
‘cat’ |
*kattuz |
cat |
Katze |
| coquīna |
‘kitchen’ |
*kokīnā |
kitchen |
Küche |
| piper |
‘pepper’ |
*pipar |
pepper |
Pfeffer |
| pondō |
‘a pound (by weight)’ |
*pundō |
pound |
Pfund |
| saccus |
‘sack, bag’ |
*sakkiz |
sack |
Sack |
| via strāta |
‘paved road’ |
*strātā |
street |
Straße |
| vīnum |
‘wine’ |
*wīnam |
wine |
Wein |
In this article, we’ll be hunting for both a substrate and an adstrate that influenced Ancient Greek.
How to identify borrowed words
Any given piece of linguistic evidence can look quite flimsy on its own; it is only in the context of broader patterns that such evidence becomes convincing.
At this point you might reasonably be asking, “How do we know that some substrate language influenced Ancient Greek? How do we know that the mystery words were borrowed? Can’t they just be random exceptions?” This exact problem has vexed historical linguists working on the Pre-Greek problem for over a century. Nonetheless, we not only have good reasons for thinking a word might be borrowed, but we can even be highly certain when a word can’t come from Indo-European. Sometimes, the answer is obvious because there’s a similar word with a clear etymology sitting right in a nearby language. The Ancient Greek word ἔβενος (ébenos) ‘ebony’, for example, has no Indo-European etymology, but just across the Mediterranean Sea was the Egyptian word 𓍁 𓈖 𓏭 𓆱 hb‑n‑j‑WOOD (hebni) ‘ebony’, and we know that the Ancient Greeks traded extensively with the Egyptians. But the evidence for a loanword is often more subtle. Below are some of the different types of evidence (or non-evidence) linguists use to determine which words are borrowed (in Ancient Greek in particular).
Words which lack an Indo-European etymology
The field of linguistics continues to refine Indo-European etymologies, either via newly-discovered tablets and inscriptions, or improved availability of existing data in the form of etymological dictionaries and online databases, allowing them to bring more (and more accurate) data to bear on Indo-European history. Despite these advances, the mystery words of Ancient Greek have resolutely resisted etymologization. If the number of potential non–Indo-European mystery words were gradually decreasing with each new discovery or advance, the lack of an Indo-European etymology might not mean anything. It’d be reasonable, in that case, to view them as a temporary problem that we’d expect to solve eventually. But there is no indication that future discoveries will ever uncover Indo-European origins for these words. If a word existed in Proto-Indo-European, we should expect to find cognates of it in several of its child languages, and that’s just not the case for these words.
Some other words without a firm Indo-European etymology include:
- θησαυρός (thēsaurós) ‘treasury, treasure’ → English: thesaurus
- ἴδη (ídē) ‘wood, wooded hill’ → place name: Mount Ida
- βασιλεύς (basileús) ‘king’ → English basilica, basil (because it was associated with royalty)
The last example is especially convincing because Indo-European already has a word for ‘king; ruler’ (PIE *h₃rḗǵs → Latin rēx ‘king’), and basileús doesn’t resemble it. It is thus likely that Greek borrowed basileús as a term for the local rulers when they arrived in the Aegean.
Also convincing are words which surface in Latin or other, non–Indo-European languages when the words in those languages also lack etymologies. For example, Greek οἶνος (oînos) ‘wine’ has confamiliars¹ in:
- Latin: vinum
- Hittite: winija‑
- Armenian: gini
- Ethiopian (Ge’ez): wain
- Hebrew: jajin
None of these words can be reconstructed back to a word in their protolanguages (Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Semitic), so the reasonable conclusion is that the original word for ‘wine’ must have come from some Paleo-European substrate language. The word then spread around the Mediterranean as part of the diffusion of wine culture under the influence of the Phoenicians (from c. 1000 BCE) and subsequently the Greeks (from c. 600 BCE).
Words which are phonologically impossible for Indo-European
Sometimes there is no Proto-Indo-European word—reconstructed or imagined—that could possibly produce a word in Ancient Greek if it followed the normal sound changes that happened during the evolution from PIE to Greek. For example, the /dn/ at the beginning of δνόφος (dnóphos) ‘darkness’ cannot be explained by any Indo-European sound law. Ancient Greek also had the suspiciously similar word κνέφας (knéphas), which also means ‘darkness’ (and ‘twilight; dusk’) and which also starts with an impossible sound sequence for inherited Indo-European words in Greek, /kn/. Add to this the words ζόφος (zóphos) and ψέφας (pséphas) which also mean ‘darkness’ and lack clear Indo-European origins, and it’s obvious that we’re looking at a set of related words that must have all come from a Pre-Greek word meaning ‘darkness’, and that word must have started with a sound or sequence of sounds that was difficult for the early Greeks to pronounce: dnóphos ~ knéphas ~ zóphos ~ pséphas. In fact, most of the Ancient Greek words that start with ⟨ψ⟩ /ps/ (a sound sequence that was impossible in Proto-Indo-European) are mystery words without Indo-European etymologies. Linguists have proposed all sorts of connections for each of these words, so that there are as many hypothesized etymologies for them as there are researchers. This lack of consensus is itself suggestive that the words are probably Pre-Greek, but the main point here is that these words do not fit the sound patterns of Indo-European.
Another indication that a word is Pre-Greek is the sound β /b/, which was rare or possibly absent in Proto-Indo-European, but common in Pre-Greek loanwords:
- ἄβλαροι (áblaroi) ‘wood’
- ἀβύρβηλος (abýrbēlos) ‘much; burdensome; big; heavy’
- ἀρβύλη (arbýlē) ‘a kind of tough shoe or half-boot’
- ἀτάρβακτος (atárbaktos) ‘unafraid’
- βάρβιλος (bárbilos) ‘seedling peach tree’
- θόρυβος (thórybos) ‘noise; uproar, clamor (esp. of a crowd); tumult, confusion’
- κίβαλος (kíbalos) ‘messenger, courier’
There are also many words which seem like they could derive from Indo-European, but don’t obey the expected sound patterns. For example, Ancient Greek had two similar words τάφος (táphos) ‘funeral; grave’ (→ English epitaph, cenotaph, taphonomy) and τύμβος (týmbos) ‘grave; tombstone’ (→ English tomb, via Latin). The first of these comes from PIE *dʰm̥bʰos ‘tomb’ and follows all the normal sound changes you’d expect from PIE to Ancient Greek. But týmbos is a dupe: it looks related, but it doesn’t follow the expected sound changes. So either the similarity between the two words is purely coincidental, in which case týmbos was probably borrowed from a Pre-Greek, non–Indo-European language, or týmbos does in fact derive from PIE, but through some unknown, intermediate Indo-European language, which Greek then borrowed it from.
Words with lots of phonetic variation
When words are borrowed from one language into another, they often initially arrive with a slew of different pronunciations. Sometimes this is because the donor language has sounds that the recipient language does not, so speakers of the receiving language have to approximate them as best they can. This was likely the case with the ‘darkness’ words we saw above: variation like dnóphos ~ knéphas ~ zóphos ~ pséphas suggests that there was an initial consonant or consonant cluster in that word which the Greeks had difficulty pronouncing.
Often, however, variation in borrowed words occurs simply because speakers of the recipient language are unfamiliar with the word. The Powhatan word makasin, for example, contains only sounds familiar to English speakers, but when English colonists borrowed the word, the range of spellings included maccaseene, makissin, mogason, moccasin, and mogozeen. It took a century or so for the spelling and pronunciation to standardize. Random variations in spelling and pronunciation like this are often a clear indicator of borrowed words.
The word “random” is important there. We also see variation in spelling whenever languages undergo broader sound changes, but this variation is regular and predictable, not random. For example, Proto-Greek had a set of palatal sounds */ty, tʰy, ky, kʰy/ which all became *t͡s or possibly *t͡ʃ. In the Attic, Boeotian, and Euboean dialects of Greek, that *t͡s / *t͡ʃ sound became /tt/, but in the Ionic, Doric, and other dialects of Greek it became /ss/. At the beginnings of words, it became /t/ ~ /s/. This sound change yielded pairs like the following:
| Ionic |
Attic |
Meaning |
| θάλασσα thálassa |
θάλαττα thálatta |
‘sea’ |
| μέλισσα mélissa |
μέλιττα mélitta |
‘bee’ |
| σήμερον sḗmeron |
τήμερον tḗmeron |
‘today’ |
| τέσσαρες téssares |
τέτταρες téttares |
‘four’ |
The variation in these words is not evidence that they were borrowed, because this is regular, patterned dialectal variation. Notice that our Pre-Greek word thálassa / thálatta ‘sea’ is in this list too. This is a borrowing, but it’s not the /ss/ ~ /tt/ alternation that tells us that. Evidence of its loanword status comes from elsewhere. But its participation in the /ss/ ~ /tt/ alternation does tell us that it was borrowed very early in the history of Greek, before this sound change took place (the period of Proto-Greek, c. 2200–1700 BCE). It also tells us that it contained one of the palatal sounds that later became /ss/ ~ /tt/.
That’s all to say: mere variation is not sufficient evidence of borrowing. The variation must not be attributable to regular sound changes in the language; it must be largely random instead. In fact, part of the evidence that thálassa ‘sea’ is borrowed is that it also shows random variation in addition to the regular dialectal variation. It appears once in Hesychius’ glosses as δαλάγχαν (dalánkhan), exhibiting /d/ instead of /tʰ/ for the first consonant, and with a consonant cluster /nkʰ/ instead of /ss/ ~ /tt/. But remember that the /ss/ ~ /tt/ sounds originally derived from some type of palatal consonant. This strongly suggests that what Hesychius wrote as ⟨γχ⟩ /nkʰ/ was an attempt to represent a palatal /ky/. (Hesychius was compiling the glossaries of earlier writers.)
Here are some other Ancient Greek words that we know are borrowings in part because of their variant pronunciations:
- Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseús) / Ὀλυσσεύς (Olysseús) ‘Odysseus / Ulysses’
- The version with /l/ is the one that reached Latin (Ulixes), and this is why the epic hero is called Ulysses in the Roman tradition and Odysseus in the Greek tradition.
- λαβύρινθος (labýrinthos) / Mycenaean 𐀅𐁆𐀪𐀵𐀍 da‑pu₂‑ri‑to‑jo (daphurinthoio) ‘labyrinth’
- This word has the same /l/ ~ /d/ alternation as Ulysses ~ Odysseus, as well as a /b/ ~ /pʰ/ alternation.
- σῦκον (sŷkon) / Boeotian τῦκον (tŷkon) ‘fig’
- Exhibits an /s/ ~ /t/ alternation. Latin and Old Armenian may have also borrowed this word from the Pre-Greek substrate as fīcus ‘fig tree’ (→ English ficus) and թուզ (tʻuz) ‘fig’, respectively.
- ἀσφάραγος (aspháragos) / ἀσπάραγος (aspáragos) ‘asparagus’
- Latin got the /p/ variant and gave it to English.
In other cases we see variation in the presence of an initial /w/ sound, which is especially neat because Greek originally had a /w/ sound but then lost it! In Mycenaean Greek (c. 1400–1200 BCE), the /w/ was still present, as shown in words like 𐀷𐀙𐀏 (wa‑na‑ka) ‘king; lord’. Many dialects (Aeolic, Doric [including Cretan], Elean, Boeotian, etc.) retained that /w/ and wrote it with the letter digamma ⟨ϝ⟩ as ϝάναξ (wánax) well into the Classical period (5th–4th C BCE). But the Attic and Ionic dialects lost /w/ before the emergence of alphabetic writing (8th C BCE), so they wrote the word as ᾰ̓́νᾰξ (ánax). But even though Homer never writes a digamma, the meter of his poems often behaves as though the /w/ were still there, because they were originally composed when it was!
In any case, notice how the /w/ was simply deleted from wánax to yield ánax. But for many Pre-Greek loanwords, we see attempts to render a /w/ sound even in the dialects that lost it! The city of Axos on Crete, for example, is written as ϝαξός (Waxós) in the Cretan dialect but Ὀαξός (Oaxós) outside Crete. If this word had already existed in Greek, the /w/ would have simply disappeared in the non‑/w/ dialects, like it did for ánax. Instead, those dialects attempted to write the /w/ sound they heard when they adopted the name of the place from the Pre‑Greeks. Since the /w/ sound and ⟨ϝ⟩ letter were already lost to them by that point, they approximated it with ⟨Ὀ⟩ /o/ instead. This shows that the Greeks adopted the Pre-Greek place name after /w/ had disappeared in most dialects.
We see the same attempt to represent /w/ in variations of the word for ‘hyacinth’:
- standard literary form: ὑάκινθος (hyákinthos)
- Cretan: ϝάκινθος (wákinthos)
- Cretan variant: βάκινθος (bákinthos)
Here, the /w/ surfaces as ὑα‑ /hya/, ϝα‑ /wa/, and βα‑ /ba/.
In sum, random variation is often a key piece of evidence that a word is borrowed.
Words in certain semantic categories
As mentioned above, certain categories of words are likely to be borrowed by a people migrating into an area, namely terms for plants, animals, terrain, and some simple tools. Thus, if a word has no strong etymology and it refers to either a natural phenomenon or local material culture or social practices, it’s a good candidate for a loanword. In Beekes 2010 etymological dictionary of Greek, he lists 1,106 words as coming from Pre-Greek. Of those, the largest categories of words are for flora and fauna. (Beekes does not include most place names in the dictionary.) The table below shows the total category counts. You can see that, with the exception of human physiology, these are exactly the types of words we’d expect to be borrowed from Pre-Greek.
- Flora: 178
- Fauna: 180
- Landscape & Natural Phenomena: 37
- Minerals: 27
- Agriculture: 38
- Human Physiology: 81
- Attire & Jewelry: 21
- Equipment & Utensils: 154
- Construction: 34
- Culture: 51
- Musical Instruments / Arts: 18
- Religious Festivals / Feasting: 8
- Divine/Numinous Beings, Priests, & Temples: 12
- Theonyms / Mythical Characters: 26
What I find especially interesting is that the Greeks adopted almost their entire pantheon from Pre-Greek civilization! Except for Zeus, Eos, Pan, Hades, and perhaps Poseidon, all the names of Greek gods cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European, and are likely loanwords from Pre-Greek substrate language (Verhasselt 2009: 211).
Pairs of words that mean the same thing
When a language has numerous pairs of words that both refer to roughly the same concept, this is often a sign of extensive borrowing. This is especially true when those words are concentrated in one or a few semantic fields. For example, English famously has pairs of words for animals and the foods that come from those animals, where the name of the animal derives from English but the name of the food derives from French:
| Animal (from English) |
Meat (from Norman French) |
| calf |
veal |
| chicken / fowl |
poultry |
| deer |
venison |
| cow |
beef |
| pig / swine |
pork |
| sheep |
mutton |
Originally, both the English and French words referred to the animal—boef was simply the Norman French word for ‘cow’; porc was the word for ‘pig’, and so on. But due to the social stratification between French speakers and English speakers after the Norman Conquest, the French words eventually came to refer to the food rather than the animal.
In cases of population migration or invasion, such as the arrival of the early Greeks in the Aegean or the Norman invasion of England, the result is often that words from each language are associated with different social contexts or registers, reflecting the uneven mixture of the two cultures. This means that two or more words for the same concept can exist side-by-side in a language, each being used in different contexts. (Notice that this is also a case of linguistic stratification, where French was the superstrate and English was the substrate.)
Ancient Greek exhibited this pattern with words relating to weaving. Alongside Indo-European words for weaving and textiles are a set of alternate words for the same things, which lack any clear Indo-European etymology. Pairs of words like the ones in the table below are a strong indication of substrate borrowing.
Converging Evidence
Obviously, none of these methods of identifying borrowed words is airtight. Any given word might be a random exception whose explanation is lost to history. And no single feature listed above is diagnostic by itself. Instead, we determine borrowings through the confluence of evidence, and the way certain words pattern together in groups. We look for words that participate in recurrent or systematic patterns.
Consider the following Ancient Greek words:
- ἄσβολος (ásbolos) ‘soot’
- σποδός (spodós) ‘ashes; ember’
- ψόλος (psólos) ‘soot; smoke’
All these words lack clear etymologies, and show the same /d/ ~ /l/ variation we saw earlier. The initial /a/ of ásbolos cannot be explained by normal sound changes, and the consonant cluster /sb/ is anomalous for Proto-Indo-European. psólos reverses the order of the consonants to /ps/, which aligns it with the many other Pre-Greek loanwords that start with an initial /ps/. (Remember from earlier that almost all Greek words beginning with /ps/ have turned out to be loanwords.) Add to this the fact that PIE has a word for ‘ash’, *h₂eh₁s‑, which looks nothing like any of these forms, and is the source of the Greek reflex ἄζω (ázō) ‘to dry up; to parch’. This is thus another case of duplicate words for the same thing—one borrowed, one native. Taken together, the evidence shows that these three words are undoubtedly different variants of some non-Greek borrowing.
Or consider the words ἄνθραξ (ánthrax) and κάνδαρος (kándaros, attested in Hesychius’ glosses), which both mean ‘charcoal’. While there is a potential but shaky PIE etymology for kándaros (*(s)kand‑ ‘to shine; to glow’), there are no good ones for ánthrax. There is also no known process by which an initial /k/ gets added to or deleted from a word in the journey from PIE to Ancient Greek, and no explanation for the variation between /tʰ/ and /d/. In fact, both the variable initial /k/ and the ‑ak suffix in ánthrax (pronounced /án.tʰraks/) are features found in many Pre-Greek loanwords. Given this converging evidence, the most likely explanation for these words is that they both come from a single Pre-Greek word.
Aside: The multifaceted nature of the evidence for any given word’s etymology makes it difficult for linguists to explain, succinctly, how we know where a word comes from, or how we reconstruct words in languages that were never written down. We rely on an interconnected web of principles and patterns that we’ve deduced from the written historical record over three centuries of research in historical linguistics. Any given piece of evidence can look quite flimsy on its own; it is only the context of broader patterns that such evidence becomes convincing. This state of affairs is why, I believe, so many people are suspicious of historical reconstructions in linguistics.
To sum up, linguists actually have a surprising number of tools at our disposal for resolving just which words in a language are borrowed.
Where was the Pre-Greek language spoken?
We can do even better than simply identifying specific words that were probably borrowed: in some cases we can show that the words must have come from the same, specific substrate language (or closely-related languages). We can list specific features the language might have had, and even roughly where it was spoken, though we have little or no direct written evidence of it.
The most definitive piece of evidence that we’re looking at borrowings from a specific substrate language is when we see similar-looking pieces of words across many of the borrowings. This may represent a prefix, suffix, or entire word in the substrate language that got borrowed wholesale along with the rest of the word/phrase. For example, place names in England are rife with fossilized affixes that were originally words in substrate or adstrate languages:
- Brittonic penn ‘head, hill, headland’ → English Pen‑
- Penrith
- Penzance
- Pendle Hill
- Penge (London)
- Latin castra ‘camp’ → English ‑chester / ‑cester / ‑caster
- Chester
- Manchester
- Winchester
- Leicester
- Worcester
- Gloucester
- Lancaster
- Old Norse bý ‘farmstead’ → English ‑by
- Derby
- Rugby
- Whitby
- Grimsby
- Selby
Each of these suffixes acts as a record of a particular stratum in English’s history: the pre–Anglo-Saxon Celtic layer, the Roman occupation layer, and the Old Norse (Viking) layer. Toponyms (place names) are an especially rich source of information about extinct substrate languages because migrating populations tend to adopt existing place names, especially for names of settlements. (At least half of U.S. states have names derived from an indigenous language, for example.) Toponyms tend to be relatively stable over time, at least compared to other words in the lexicon.
Places like Corinth, Knossos, Athens, and Lemnos had already been settled for thousands of years when the first Greeks arrived in the Aegean. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that all four of those names are indisputably Pre-Greek borrowings, and that they each contain suffixes that recur time and again in placenames across the Aegean! The most famous of these is the ‑νθ (‑nth) suffix, which appears, inter alia:
- Ἐρύμανθος (Erýmanthos): Erymanthos, a mountain range in the Peloponnese peninsula
- Ὑάκινθος (Hyákinthos): Hyakinthos/Hyacinth, a mountain in Attica
- Κήρινθος (Kḗrinthos): Kerinthos, an ancient town in Euboea
- Κόρινθος (Kórinthos): Corinth, a city on the isthmus joining the Peloponnese peninsula to mainland Greece
- Ὄλυνθος (Ólynthos): Olynthus, an ancient city in present-day Chalcidice
- Τίρυνς, Τίρυνθος (Tíryns, Tírynthos): Tiryns, an ancient Mycenaean city in the Peloponnese peninsula
Also widely attested are the ‑σσ (‑ss) suffix in Knossos, the ‑ν (‑n) suffix in Athens, and the ‑μν (‑mn) suffix in Lemnos. Below is a sampling of place names that these suffixes appear in.
- ‑σσ (‑ss)
- Ἁλικαρνασσός (Halikarnassós): Halicarnassus, an ancient city on the coast of Anatolia (modern Turkey)
- Κνωσσός (Knōssós): Knossos, a Minoan palace on the island of Crete
- Λάρισσα (Lárissa): Larissa, a city in Thessaly
- Παρνασσός (Parnassós): Parnassus, a mountain in central Greece and home to Delphi
- ‑ν (‑n)
- Ἀθῆναι (Athênai): Athens, capital city of Greece
- Λέρνη (Lérnē): Lerna, a region of springs and a former lake in classical Greece, south of Argos
- Μυκῆναι (Mykênai): Mycenae, an ancient Mycenaean city in the Peloponnese peninsula
- Μύκονος (Mýkonos): Mykonos, an island in the southern Aegean Sea
- ‑μν (‑mn)
- Λάρυμνα (Lárymna): Larymna, a port town in Phthiotis
- Λῆμνος (Lêmnos): Lemnos, an island in the northern Aegean Sea
- Λεπέτυμνος (Lepétymnos): Lepetymnos, a mountain on the island of Lesbos
- Μήθυμνα (Mḗthymna): Methymna, a town on the island of Lesbos
- Ῥίθυμνα (Rhíthymna): Rethymno, a city on the island of Crete
(The reason these suffixes are in the middle of these words is because Greek speakers added the normal Greek case suffixes on the end when they borrowed them.)
Because these are toponyms tied to specific places, we can even map the region where this Pre-Greek substrate was originally spoken! Below is a map of Pre-Greek toponyms showing the approximate area where the Pre-Greek substrate was spoken.
Greek toponyms (placenames) borrowed from a Pre-Greek substrate. This map only shows toponyms that are widely acknowledged to be Pre-Greek with a relatively high degree of certainty, and only toponyms with the well-attested Pre-Greek suffixes ‑μν‑, ‑ν‑, ‑νθ‑, and ‑σσ‑/‑ττ‑ (‑mn‑, ‑n‑, ‑nth‑, and ‑ss‑/‑tt‑). Other potential Pre-Greek suffixes are excluded. Other toponyms widely acknowledged to be borrowings but which are not firmly linked to the Pre-Greek substrate, such as Κρήτη (Krḗtē) ‘Crete’, are also excluded. Finally, some place names were omitted for reasons of space, especially those in and around Athens.
You can view the entire dataset of Pre-Greek toponyms, including less certain ones and ones that were excluded from this map, here.
How to identify a Pre-Greek suffix
The intellectually cautious among you are now probably rightly asking, “How do we know these are suffixes and not just common sounds in these words?” The strongest piece of evidence for these suffixes is that in some cases, versions of the word can be found both with and without the suffix. The single best example of this kind of alternation is the toponym Κήρινθος (Kḗrinthos). When used as a normal word rather than a place name, kḗrinthos meant ‘bee bread (perga)’, while κηρός (kērós), without the ‑nth suffix, meant ‘beeswax’. Kerinthos, then, was very likely named such because it was known for its beekeeping! We can be even more certain that this word for ‘beeswax’ was borrowed from some other language because it’s confamiliar with similar words around the Mediterranean:
- Latin: cēra ‘wax; beeswax’
- Albanian: qiri ‘candle’
- Lithuanian / Latvian: korỹs / kāre ‘honeycomb’
Other Pre-Greek words that appear with and without their suffixes include:
- ∅ ~ ‑nth
- Ἀμαρυσία (Amarysía), one of the names for Artemis
- Ἀμάρυνθος (Amárynthos), a township on Euboea, and another name for Artemis
- ∅ ~ ‑mn ~ ‑n
- Δίκτη (Díktē)
- δίκταμνον (díktamnon) ‘dittany (of Crete)’
- Δίκτυννα (Díktynna) ‘Cretan goddess’
- ∅ ~ ‑ss ~ ‑n (and a possible ‑l suffix)
- Μυκάλη (Mykálē)
- Μυκαλησσός (Mykalēssós)
- Μυκῆναι (Mykênai)
- ∅ ~ ‑m (another Pre-Greek suffix)
- πύργος (pýrgos) ‘tower’
- Πέργαμον (Pérgamon)
- πέργαμος (pérgamos) ‘citadel’ (esp. of Troy)
- ‑nth ~ ‑ng (another Pre-Greek suffix)
- μήρινθος (mḗrinthos) ‘thread’
- σμῆριγξ (smêrinx) ‘hair’
- ‑nth ~ ‑ng
- ἕλμινθος (hélminthos)
- ἔλμιγγος (élmingos) ‘worm’
- ∅ ~ ‑nth
- ὄροβος (órobos) ‘bitter vetch’ (an ancient grain legume)
- ἐρέβινθος (erébinthos) ‘chickpea’
This last one is an especially important piece of evidence because the word for ‘chickpea’ (or very similar types of legumes) was also borrowed into other languages of Europe, sometimes with, sometimes without the ‑nth suffix:
- Latin: ervum ‘bitter vetch’ (without ‑nth)
- Proto-Germanic: *arwīt‑ ‘pea’ (with ‑nth, as ‑t)
- Armenian: aṙowoyt ‘alfalfa’ (with ‑nth, as ‑t)
In general, whenever a place name has a non-toponymic meaning in addition to its toponymic meaning, and the etymology of that word is unknown, the word is undoubtedly Pre-Greek in origin. This is especially true if it also appears to contain one of the known Pre-Greek suffixes. Here are a few last examples like this:
| Toponym |
Basic Meaning |
Suffix |
| Ἄψινθος (Ápsinthos) |
ἄψινθος (ápsinthos) ‘wormwood’ |
‑nth |
| Ὑάκινθος (Hyákinthos) |
ὑάκινθος (hyákinthos) ‘hyacinth’ |
‑nth |
| Καρδαμύλη (Kardamýlē) |
κάρδαμον (kárdamon) ‘cress’ |
‑m |
| Κύαμον (Kýamon) |
κύαμος (kýamos) ‘bean’ |
‑m |
| Ὄλυνθος (Ólynthos) |
ὄλυνθος (ólynthos) ‘wild or sterile fig’ |
‑nth |
| Ὄθρυς, Ὄθρυος (Óthrys, Óthryos) |
ὄθρυς (óthrys) ‘mountain’ |
— |
| Σμίνθη (Smínthē) |
σμίνθος (smínthos) ‘mouse’ |
‑nth |
A corroborating piece of evidence for these suffixes is the simple fact that they occur not just in toponyms, but in many of the mystery words for plants, animals, foods, etc.—the same semantic categories of words that are most likely to be borrowed:
| Greek |
Romanization |
Meaning |
Suffix |
| αἴγινθος |
aíginthos |
‘name of a bird’ |
‑nth |
| ἀσάμινθος |
asáminthos |
‘stone bath tub’ |
‑nth |
| βόλινθος |
bólinthos |
‘European bison’ |
‑nth |
| θάλασσα |
thálassa |
‘sea’ |
‑ss |
| κόρυνθος |
kórynthos |
‘barley bread’ |
‑nth |
| κυπάρισσος |
kypárissos |
‘cypress’ |
‑ss |
| λέβινθος |
lébinthos |
‘a kind of beans’ |
‑nth |
| μίνθη |
mínthē |
‘mint’ |
‑nth |
| νάρκισσος |
nárkissos |
‘narcissus’ |
‑ss |
| τερέβινθος |
terébinthos |
‘terpentine’ |
‑nth |
Finally, toponyms ending in ‑nth and ‑mn show a distinctive root pattern, with a strong preference for open syllables (ones not ending in a consonant) and an almost total absence of consonant clusters in the middle of the word that start with a stop consonant. This is extremely unusual for Proto-Indo-European. As a rule, PIE roots had a CVC structure (C = consonant, V = vowel) and many consonant clusters—the expanded root template is (s)(C)CVC(C), yielding numerous consonant clusters. So the fact that words which show these Pre-Greek suffixes are also phonologically unusual for PIE is another piece of evidence that these words probably came from a non–Indo-European language.
Congratulations, now you know how to identify a Pre-Greek suffix! So now whenever you see an ‑nth in a Greek loanword in English like hyacinth, you’ll naturally think to yourself, “Oh neat! That word is from a Pre-Greek substrate language!” (Right?)
What was the Pre-Greek language like?
In addition to the Pre-Greek suffixes, there are some patterns that recur in potential loanwords with too great a frequency to be mere coincidence, and suggest that the Pre-Greek language may have had some prefixes as well: ἀ‑ (a‑), κ(α)‑ (k[a]‑), and σ‑ (s‑). The main evidence for these prefixes is that there are written records of these words appearing both with and without the initial sounds:
ἀ‑ (a‑)
There are around 65 words that show evidence of an a‑ prefix, many of which fall in the characteristic semantic domains of plants and crops (19 words), animals (10), as well as landscapes, foods, and the human body (smaller numbers). Interestingly, the a‑ prefix is not found on cultural terms like jewelry, armor, social hierarchy, professions, instruments, and words relating to the arts, etc.
- γηθυλλίς (gēthyllís) ‘chives’ ~ ἀγασυλλίς (agasyllís) ‘plant that produces ammoniacum (gum resin)’
- γέλγις (gélgis) ~ ἄγλις (áglis) ‘garlic’
- κάστον (káston) ~ ἄκαστος (ákastos) ‘maple’
- κίρρις (kírris) ~ ἀκιρίς (akirís) ‘lamp’
- κόρνοψ (kórnops) ~ ἀκορνοί (akornoí) ‘a kind of locust’
- χραμαδοῖλαι (khramadoîlai) ‘tortoise’ ~ ἀχραδαμύλα (akhradamýla) ‘snail’
- νηρίτης (nērī́tēs) ~ ἀναρίτης (anarítēs) ‘sea snail’
- ῥωδιώς (rhōdiṓs) ~ ἀρωδιός (arōdiós) ‘heron’
- (σ)καλαβώτης ([s]kalabṓtēs) ~ ἀσκάλαβος (askálabos) ‘spotted lizard; gecko’
- στάχυς (stákhys) ~ ἄσταχυς (ástakhys) ‘ear of corn’
- στεροπή (steropḗ) ~ ἀστραπή (astrapḗ) ‘lightning’
- κύνωψ (kýnōps) ~ ἀχύνωψ (akhýnōps) ‘ribwort’
κ(α)‑ (k[a]‑)
The k(a)‑ prefix, like a‑, only appears on words for plants, animals, and simple technologies. There are 13 clear cases, including:
- ἴχλα (íkhla) ~ κίχλη (kíkhlē) ‘thrush’
- ἄρυα (árya) ‘walnuts’ ~ κάρυον (káryon) ‘nut’
- ὄγχνη (ónkhnē) ~ κόγχναι (kónkhnai) ‘pear’
- σκάνδιξ (skándīx) ‘chervil’ ~ κασκάνδιξ (kaskándix) ‘onion’
- ἀπήνη (apḗnē) ~ πήνα (pḗnā) ~ καπάνα (kapā́na) ‘wagon’
- Note the possible a‑prefix here.
- ἄχλαξ (ákhlax) ‘small stones’ ~ χάλαζα (khálaza) ‘hail’ ~ κάχληξ (kákhlēx) ‘small stones’
- ἀλινδέομαι (alindéomai) ~ καλινδέομαι (kalindéomai) ‘to roll about, wallow’
σ‑ (s‑)
Again, the majority of terms with s‑ are words for plants, animals, and body parts. Sometimes the s‑ occurs with an additional a‑ as well, suggestive of the presence of the a‑ prefix.
without a‑
- γέλενος (gélenos) ‘asphodelus, narcissus’ ~ σχέλινος (skhélinos) ‘wild cypress’
- κιδάφη (kidáphē) ~ σκιδάφη (skidáphē) ‘fox’
- κίκερος (kíkeros) ~ σκίγκος (skínkos) ‘a type of lizard found in Asia Minor that is used as medicine’
- κορδύ̄λη (kordȳ́lē) ~ σκορδύ̄λη (skordȳ́lē) ‘tumor; swelling’
- βάταλος (bátalos) ‘a lewd man’ ~ σπάταλος (spátalos) ‘wanton; lascivious’
- πέλεθος (pélethos) ~ σπέλεθος (spélethos) ‘dung’
- φαττάγης (phattágēs) ~ σπατάγγης (spatángēs) ‘scaly ant-eater’
- θριγκός (thrinkós) ‘topmost course of stones in a wall, cornice, frieze’ ~ στριγχός (strinkhós) ‘little wall; crown of a building’
- τοπεῖον (topeîon) ‘rope, cord’ ~ στυππεῖον (styppeîon) ‘the coarse fiber of flax or hemp’
- μήρινθος (mḗrinthos) ~ σμήρινθος (smḗrinthos) ‘cord, thread’
- μύραινα (mȳ́raina) ~ σμύραινα (smȳ́raina) ‘moray eel’
- μῖλαξ (mîlax) ~ σμῖλαξ (smîlax) ‘taxus’
- φάγνος (phágnos) ~ σφάγνος (sphágnos) ‘salvia’
- τρύχνον (trýkhnon) ~ στρύχνον (strýkhnon) ‘nightshade’
with a‑
- φάρυγξ (phárynx) ‘throat, gorge, larynx, windpipe’ ~ σφάραγος (spháragos) ‘throat, gullet’ ~ ἀσφάραγος (aspháragos) ‘gully, chasm, deep trench, abyss’
- κάλαφος (kálaphos) ~ ἀσκάλαφος (askálaphos) ‘an unknown bird, perhaps an owl’
- καλαβώτης (kalabṓtēs) ~ σκαλαβώτης (skalabṓtēs) ~ ἀσκάλαβος (askálabos) ‘lizard, gecko’
- κάμων (kámōn) ~ σκαμ(μ)ωνία (skam(m)ōnía) ~ ἀσκαμωνία (askamōnía) ‘scammony’
Was Pre-Greek one language or several?
Throughout this article, I’ve mostly talked about “the” Pre-Greek language. Indeed, the suffixes in the last two sections give us strong reason to believe that Ancient Greek borrowed the words containing those suffixes from a single Pre-Greek language or group of closely-related languages. Throughout the history of modern linguistics, there have been multitudinous names and theories as to the identity of this mystery substrate, including:
- Pelasgian, an undocumented Indo-European language
- Parnassian, a language in the Anatolian branch of Indo-European, related to Luwian
- Aegean / Mediterranean, a non–Indo-European language which extended over a large part of the Mediterranean
- the Kartvelian Theory, that Pre-Greek was related to Kartvelian languages (e.g. Georgian)
- Pre-Greek, a non–Indo-European language spoken primarily in the region of Greece, following toponymic evidence
Even though each of these theories has been largely discredited except the last, each has advanced our knowledge of Pre-Greek in different ways. For example, researchers on this topic agree that the Pre-Greek substrate extended at least partially into Anatolia (Asia Minor), as you can see from the map of place names above. It was research into the now-abandoned Parnassian theory that brought this to light. But there simply isn’t enough evidence to support the idea that the Pre-Greek substrate is connected to Anatolian languages.
Even the Pre-Greek theory has been battered by fierce criticism, because its main proponent, Robert S.P. Beekes, considers nearly every possible loanword to be Pre-Greek as a matter of principle:
“I think that it is methodologically more sound to start from the assumption that non-Greek words are Pre-Greek. Only when there is reason to do so should we assume that they have a different origin.” (Beekes 2014: 45)
The linguistic reality, however, is much less tidy. Like everywhere else prior to the rise of urbanization and city-states, the Aegean comprised a rich tapestry of tiny local languages, spoken by at most thousands of speakers. The Ancient Greeks themselves mentioned a number of peoples in the region, some of whom were said to speak ‘a language which was not Greek’ (Herodotus’ description of the Pelasgian language, which launched a thousand linguistic theories about the Pre-Greeks):
- Aonians
- Cauconians
- Dryopes
- Hyantes
- Lelegians
- Pelasgians
- Temmikes
We also have written evidence (albeit often exiguous) of many other languages in the region:
- Carian (IE, Anatolian branch)
- Eteocretan (probably non-IE, possibly related to Minoan)
- Eteocypriot (probably non-IE)
- Illyrian (IE)
- Lemnian (non-IE, possibly Tyrsenian)
- Macedonian (not to be confused with the modern Slavic language; this one was Greek or closely related to Greek)
- Minoan (undeciphered and unclassified but probably non-IE)
- Paeonian (IE)
- Thracian (IE)
So it’s unsurprising that many scholars have attacked Beekes’ assumption of a unified Pre-Greek language, and also challenged his analysis of dozens and dozens of words. Nonetheless, that still leaves hundreds of words which do very likely belong to a single language, which—for lack of a term that hasn’t already been discredited—Beekes calls “Pre-Greek”.³
But what about the rest of the mystery words? Why not assume they come from Pre-Greek as well, even if they don’t have the signature Pre-Greek affixes? Once again, the meanings of the words are an important clue: almost all the words which exhibit specific Pre-Greek features (the ‑nth suffix, the s‑ prefix, etc.) are words for natural phenomena like plants and animals. The ones without these specific features are largely cultural terms referring to things like jewelry, clothing, social hierarchy, the arts, buildings and structures, etc. (There are two notable exceptions—λαβύρινθος (labýrinthos) ‘labyrinth’ and ἀσάμινθος (asáminthos) ‘bathtub’—which we’ll come back to in a minute.) Moreover, only the words for natural phenomena appear in languages elsewhere in Europe; the cultural terms are restricted to the Aegean. Here are a few potential pan-European connections to Pre-Greek words:
- radish (a‑ prefix)
- Ancient Greek: ῥάφανος (rháphanos)
- Latin: rāpum
- Old High Germanic: ruoba
- Welsh: erfin ‘turnip’ ← Proto-Celtic *arb‑īn-
- Old Church Slavonic: rěpa ‘turnip’ ← Proto-Balto-Slavic *rāpā́ˀ
- heron (a‑ prefix)
- Ancient Greek: ἐρῳδιός (erōidiós) ~ ἀρωδιός (arōdiós) ~ ῥωδιώς (rhōdiṓs)
- Latin: ardea
- Serbo-Croatian: róda ‘stork’
- bull (s‑ prefix)
- Ancient Greek: ταῦρος (taûros)
- Latin: taurus
- Proto-Germanic: *þeura‑ ~ *steura‑
- small stones (k‑ prefix)
- Ancient Greek: ἄχλαξ (ákhlax) ‘small stones’ ~ κάχληξ (kákhlēx) ‘small stones’ ~ χάλαζα (khálaza) ‘hail’
- Proto-Germanic: *hagla‑ ‘hail’
- chickpea (‑nth suffix)
- Ancient Greek: ὄροβος (órobos) ~ ἐρέβινθος (erébinthos)
- Proto-Germanic: *arwīt ‘pea’
- Old Georgian: ერევინდი (erevindi) ~ ერბინდი (erbindi)
- Latin: ervum ‘bitter vetch’ ← Proto-Italic *erw‑
- Armenian: առաւոյտ (aṙowoyt) ‘alfalfa’ ← *HrVbʰoud‑
So what explains this distribution of natural phenomena versus cultural concepts? Simply put, we are probably looking at two (or more) substrate languages which both contributed vocabulary to Ancient Greek. One had the ‑nth suffix and a‑, k‑, and s‑ prefixes, and provided terms for flora, fauna, and terrain. The other (or others) provided cultural terms such as jewelry, titles, clothing, instruments, etc. The reason that the terms for natural phenomena are shared outside the Aegean is probably due to the fact that, prior to the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, the Old Europeans were a surprisingly homogeneous population of farmers (Skoglund et al. 2012; Skourtanioti et al. 2023). While genetics ≠ languages, this nonetheless suggests that many of the languages of Old Europe were likely related. So it’s entirely possible that Germanic and Italic and Celtic and other Indo-European speakers independently borrowed words for things like ‘chickpea’ and ‘radish’ from Old European languages, and these words just happened to be cognate with the words in Pre-Greek. Alternatively, we can say that these words were common loanwords (‘wanderwords’) across Old Europe.
As for the cultural vocabulary, while these terms could in theory come from anywhere nearby, there is one culture which was known to have an outsized influence on the Mycenaean Greeks: the Minoans on the island of Crete. Minoan culture was extraordinary for its time, with monumental architecture, sprawling palace complexes, and luxury arts and crafts. The Minoans are often regarded as the first civilization (in the technical sense) in Europe, and their influence spread far across the eastern Mediterranean. Archaeologists refer to the way that Minoan culture radiated outward from Crete as the Versailles Effect, by analogy with the way the French court under Louis XIV influenced all of Europe. Minoan was, in other words, an adstrate rather than a substrate, spreading its lexicon to the neighboring languages.
The Minoans also developed their own writing system called Cretan hieroglyphs, which was not derived from the Egyptian or Mesopotamian systems (Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform, and later the Phoenician alphabet). Cretan hieroglyphs later evolved into (or perhaps alongside) the still-undeciphered Linear A script, which was a combination syllabary and logographic script. The Mycenaean Greeks then adopted a version of Linear A to write Greek. This script is called Linear B, and was deciphered by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris in 1952. Because 70% of the signs of Linear B are directly inherited from Linear A, we know the sounds of many words in Linear A, but we still don’t know what most of those Minoan words mean.
A table of Cretan hieroglyphs
A table of Cretan hieroglyphs (Wikipedia: Cretan hieroglyphs)
The intractable nature of Linear A means, unfortunately, that we can’t be absolutely certain that any Pre-Greek words were borrowed from Minoan, because we don’t know what the Linear A words meant. There are nonetheless some strong candidates for borrowings from Minoan:
- In Linear A, there’s a logogram 𐛢, which is one of the minority of signs we happen to know the meaning of—‘wool’. We know this because in Linear B the same sign means ‘wool’. In Linear A, the sign appears in bookkeeping contexts next to numerals, and often near the ideogram for sheep ⟨𐘏⟩ (also the sign for /qi/)—exactly what you’d expect for a sign meaning ‘wool’. But more importantly, if you look closely, you can see that the logogram is actually a composite of two syllabic signs—𐙁 (ma) and 𐘘 (ru or lu)—indicating that the word for ‘wool’ was maru or malu. It not-so-coincidentally happens that the Greek word for ‘wool’ was μαλλός (mallós)—a word with no Indo-European etymology. Thus mallós is almost undoubtedly a borrowing from Minoan.
- Labyrinths are strongly associated with Minoan culture, having been built in Greek mythology for King Minos of Crete to hold the Minotaur. The word λαβύρινθος (labýrinthos) ‘labyrinth’, it again not-so-coincidentally happens, is one of those rare cultural terms with a Pre-Greek ‑nth suffix. It even appears in Linear B (not Linear A) as 𐀅𐁆𐀪𐀵𐀍 (da‑pu₂‑ri‑to‑jo) ‘of the labyrinth’, meaning that the word was borrowed very early into Mycenaean Greek. Minoan culture would have exerted its influence on the Pre-Greeks just as it did the later Mycenaean Greeks. So in all likelihood, the Pre-Greeks borrowed the word for ‘labyrinth’ and tacked their ‑nth suffix on the end of it, then later gave the word to the Greeks.
- The Minoans also boasted the oldest known personal bathtubs in the ancient world, a technology which then spread elsewhere in the Aegean. The Greek word for ‘bathtub’, ἀσάμινθος (asáminthos), shows the classic ‑nth suffix even in early Mycenaean—𐀀𐀭𐀖𐀵 (a‑sa‑mi‑to)—meaning that this word too was likely borrowed by the Pre-Greeks from the Minoans, and in turn borrowed by the Greeks.
- There are also several toponyms which appear in Linear A, Linear B, and Classical Greek, meaning that the names of these places were borrowed from the Minoans. Predictably, these toponyms are all on the island of Crete.
We can say with some confidence, then, that the mystery loanwords of Ancient Greek come from at least two languages: the Paleo-European inhabitants of the Greek mainland, and the various other cultures in the surrounding region, most especially the extravagant Minoan palatial culture of Crete.
Languages are a fossil record of the history of their speakers. Hidden beneath the surface of every language are layers upon layers of history—a reflection of millennia of migrations, trade, and conflict. Historical linguistics allows us to recover some of that history, provided we know where and how to look for it. We will probably never fully recover the language of the Pre-Greeks, but it has left an indelible mark on the languages of the Mediterranean and even English. Every time you utter words like labyrinth, mint, narcissism, and guitar, you carry on the culture of those Paleo-Europeans who inhabited the Aegean prior to the arrival of the first Indo-Europeans over 4,000 years ago.
A reconstruction of the Greek town of Dimini in Thessaly, as it existed ca. 3700 BCE.
A reconstruction of the Greek town of Dimini in Thessaly, as it existed ca. 3700 BCE. Source unknown.
English words from Pre-Greek
This is a non-exhaustive list of words that are generally thought to be loanwords from a Pre-Greek substrate language into Ancient Greek, and which later found their way into English. I’ve done my best to represent the consensus view and avoid including dubious cases, but there’s certainly room to disagree with my individual choices. This article is, after all, a high-level summary of a vast field of research with lots of internal debate.
📑 Bibliography
The question of the nature of Pre-Greek and the status of loanwords into Ancient Greek are some of the most well-researched and debated areas in Indo-European linguistics. Below are just a few of the more recent sources that provide decent high-level overviews of the topic.
- Beekes, Robert S.P. 2014. Pre-Greek: Phonology, morphology, lexicon (Brill Introductions to Indo-European Languages 2). Brill.
- Duhoux, Y. 2007. Pre-Greek languages: Indirect evidence. In A.-F. Christidis (ed.), A history of ancient Greek: From the beginnings to late antiquity, pp. 223–228. Cambridge University Press.
- Meester, Lotte. 2024. Substrate stratification: An argument against the unity of Pre-Greek. In Guus Kroonen (ed.), Sub-Indo-European Europe: Problems, methods, results, pp. 283–300. De Gruyter.
- Verhasselt, Gertjan. 2009. The Pre-Greek linguistic substratum: An overview of current research. Les Études Classiques 77: 211–239.
Notes
¹ I use the term confamiliar to refer to words that are related through borrowing rather than direct inheritance. Two words that are related to each other because they both derive from the same word in a parent language are called cognates. The term confamiliar is meant to be the equivalent of cognate for borrowed words. The two terms nicely parallel the distinction in Latin between cognātus ‘related by birth’ vs. familiāris ‘member of a household (not necessarily related by blood)’. The term confamiliar is also used in the life sciences to refer to taxonomic members of the same family; so here I am merely extending the metaphor to refer to members of the same family of words. This is my own unique coinage, though. As far as I know, no other linguists use this term in this way (yet 🤞🏼).
² */tw/ sometimes underwent this sound change too, which is the source of of the /ss/ ~ /tt/ alternation in τέσσαρες (téssares) ‘four’. This word comes from PIE *kʷetwóres rather than a palatalized sound.
³ I don’t actually love the term “Pre-Greek” because in historical linguistics the prefix Pre‑ is generally reserved for an earlier stage of a single language, usually one reconstructed from language-internal evidence alone. This contrasts with the last common ancestor of a group of related languages, which is reconstructed by comparing those languages, in which case we use the prefix Proto‑. According to this convention, Pre-Greek or Pre-Proto-Greek should really refer to a hypothetical dialect of Indo-European from which Proto-Greek later emerged. Regardless, Pre‑ is still commonly used for substrates as well, such as Pre-Greek or Pre-Indo-European (i.e. the languages that existed in Eurasia prior to the arrival of the Indo-Europeans—not to be confused with Paleo-European / Old European languages, which refers more specifically to the Neolithic languages of Europe). (Another reason I dislike the term “Pre-Greek” is because this article would have sounded much cooler titled “Pelasgian: The mystery language hidden in Ancient Greek”, or “Parnassian” or the like.)
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