Hybrids and Wild Horses

Abstract The ninth chapter addresses another sign of horse domestication, the presence of terms for hybrids or a distinctive term for ‘wild horse.’ Most of the candidates for ‘wild horse’ do not satisfy the requirements of linguistic palaeontology and are rejected, but a possible term for ‘wild horse’ can be found by comparing a Basque word for ‘mule,’ a Gallo-Roman term for ‘pony,’ a Middle Irish term for ‘colt,’ and an Albanian word for ‘a young horse or mule.’ Terms for ‘mule’ and ‘hinny’ lack a consistent phonology, suggesting that these terms may have been borrowed independently, perhaps from substratum languages of the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean.