On 13/04/2016 23:00, *GB* wrote:
> *GB* ha scritto:
>
>> Mah... Cattius, cat(t)us e Catullus sono nomi romani, ma possono avere
>> un'origine gallica.
...
OED dice che gli altri europei hanno ripreso il gatto di Roma :)
Old English catt (c. 700), from West Germanic (c. 400-450), from
Proto-Germanic *kattuz (cognates: Old Frisian katte, Old Norse köttr,
Dutch kat, Old High German kazza, German Katze), from Late Latin cattus.
The near-universal European word now, it appeared in Europe as Latin
catta (Martial, c. 75 C.E.), Byzantine Greek katta (c. 350) and was in
general use on the continent by c. 700, replacing Latin feles. Probably
ultimately Afro-Asiatic (compare Nubian kadis, Berber kadiska, both
meaning "cat"). Arabic qitt "tomcat" may be from the same source. Cats
were domestic in Egypt from c. 2000 B.C.E., but not a familiar household
animal to classical Greeks and Romans. The nine lives have been
proverbial since at least 1560s.
The Late Latin word also is the source of Old Irish and Gaelic cat,
Welsh kath, Breton kaz, Italian gatto, Spanish gato, French chat (12c.).
Independent, but ultimately from the same source are words in the Slavic
group: Old Church Slavonic kotuka, kotel'a, Bulgarian kotka, Russian
koška, Polish kot, along with Lithuanian kate and non-Indo-European
Finnish katti, which is from Lithuanian.
[...]
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=CAT