Historical Artifacts

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Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!

Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.

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PugJesus

106

Kabuto (Samurai helmet) with an octopus crest, Japan, 18th century AD (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by PugJesus to c/historyartifacts

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't suppose anyone knows the etymology of Kabuto? I can't help but notice it's very similar to Latin Capita meaning head.

Almost certainly it's just a coincidence, of course. But both Indo-European and Japanese populations do have ANE ancestry, so there is a potential candidate for a common source, however unlikely that is.

[–] PugJesus 4 points 2 months ago

Unfortunately, as Japonic is its own language family entirely, it's almost certainly a coincidence. But wiktionary gives some possible etymologies here

From Old Japanese. Found in the Nihon Shoki of 720 CE with the reading kaputo.[1]

Derivation currently unknown.

A surface analysis might suggest a derivation from 被る (kaburu, “to wear something on the head”). However, that reading derives from older form kagafuru and does not appear until 850,[1] some time after the first appearance of kabuto.

An alternative analysis might suggest a compound of 頭 (kabu, “head”, kun'yomi and native Japanese term) +‎ 兜 (to, “helmet”, on'yomi and borrowing from Chinese). However, the “head” sense with the kabu reading does not appear until near the end of the Muromachi period.[1]

Word-medial bilabial plosives usually underwent lenition, shifting along the lines of /p/ → /f/ → /w/, then vanishing altogether except where the following vowel was /a/. This lenition often did not happen at morpheme boundaries in compound words. The persistence of the /b/ in kabuto might thus suggest that this term was originally a compound of ka + puto. The ka element is uncertain, possibly the か (ka-) intensifying prefix added to adjectives; Old Japanese puto would be the stem and root of modern 太い (futoi, “thick; fat; stout”), possibly in reference to the protective strength provided by a helmet. This puto would then have undergone rendaku (連濁) to become buto.

Compare the phonology of adjective か細い (kabosoi, “very slender”), composed of this ka- prefix and adjective 細い (hosoi, ancient pososi) and demonstrating a similar retention of the bilabial plosive and rendaku (連濁).