the Nostratic Ogre

Posted on Wed 26 May 2004 under etymology , nonsense


For some reason my readers keep asking me about Hebrew/Indo-European correspondences of words. Today the word in question is the Shrek-inspired ogre, which may or may not be connected to Og, king of Bashan, the biblical giant.


Ogre was borrowed into early English from French, where it was attested in the meaning “fierce pagan” in late 13th century, and in the meaning “man-eating giant” from the early 14th (1300). As OED informs us, ogre’s etymology in French is unclear.
It is perhaps from Latin Orcus, the name of the god of the infernal regions (with metathesis of r ) or perhaps it is from the post-classical Latin Ugri, Ungri, or Ongri, applied by early writers to the Hungarians or Magyars . Compare Italian orco ‘demon, monster’ (13th cent.), Spanish huerco ‘devil, personification of death or hell’ (1330), Sardinian orcu ‘demon’, and early modern Dutch orck ‘unruly person’. Also compare this to bougre ‘heretic’ from French bougre, OFrench boulgre 'Bulgarian'.


Does this have any connection to Og, king of Bashan? I don’t know. I answer “unlikely” to all Nostratic questions, I am deeply suspicious of all such correspondences. But let’s imagine for a second an earth (Heb. erets) inhabited only by ogres (Ogs) and cats (hatuls) who subsist on hleb ‘bread, Germanic/Slavic’ (Heb. halah) while reading ancient svitki ’scrolls, Russian’ ( Heb. sviva, lesovev ’surroundings, to turn’).