A WORD-JOURNEY
Why is your horse named after a nag?
“Cal”, the Romanian word for horse, comes from Latin caballus. The surprise: in literary Latin, caballus could mean a workhorse or a nag, roughly our gloabă. In everyday speech, though, the same word meant simply “horse”, while literary Latin normally used the classical term equus. “Mârțoagă” is no mother of “cal”: today’s nag, a term of comparison. Below: the two words face to face, the Romance family, and the twist – feminine equa, alive in iapă.
- CABALLUS → CAL
- DEX: “– Lat. caballus”
- 7 EXAMPLES
- from the Romance family of caballus
- EQUA → IAPĂ
- the classical feminine, alive in Romanian
One animal, three fates:
- EQUUS CLASSICAL LATIN · horse
- CABALLUS SPOKEN LATIN · horse · in texts: nag
- CAL ROMANIAN · your horse
Chapter 1 · register makes the difference
Two words for one animal
Literary Latin normally used equus for “horse”. Caballus – in texts, a workhorse or nag – was the popular generic word for “horse”. It became the source of the everyday word in the Romance languages.
EQUUS
The classical, literary term
It means “horse” – that is all. Lexically, it is no “stallion”.
Penny 2002
CABALLUS
The popular, colloquial term
In everyday speech: “horse”. In texts: also “workhorse, nag”.
Lewis & Short; Penny 2002
Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus
A poetic attestation, with a depreciative sense. Lewis & Short also cites Epistles 1.7.88 and Satires 1.6.59, 1.6.103.
…mollis, debilis, lassus, tanquam caballus in clivo…
Petronius styles a colloquial register: an old priestess to Encolpius.
Chapter 2 · the Romance family
The popular word wins
A stable word beat the language of Cicero.
Caballus belonged to everyday speech, not to the stable.
Penny’s list: Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalo, French cheval, Italian cavallo, Romanian cal – all from caballus. Coromines (DECat) adds that, since the early Middle Ages, cavall and its cognates completely replaced equus in all Romance languages. Below, seven sourced witnesses – examples, not the full inventory.
Seven examples from the Romance family
- Romanian cal
- Italian cavallo
- French cheval
- Occitan caval
- Catalan cavall
- Spanish caballo
- Portuguese cavalo
Every form with its dictionary: DEX ’09 · Treccani · Larousse · Dicod’Òc · DECat · Penny 2002 · Priberam
Chapter 3 · the twist
But the mare ran off with the other word
The classical masculine lost the race for the generic name: the continuators of caballus replaced it completely. Its feminine lives on in everyday vocabulary.
EQUUS – the classical masculine
It never became the inherited generic word (Brewer 1984, after Väänänen). It returned through books:
EQUA – the feminine “mare”
It survives spectacularly in the Romance languages (Brewer 1984):
- Romanian iapă
- Spanish yegua
- Portuguese égua
- Catalan egua
- Logudorese Sardinian ebba
- Provençal, historical form ega
DEX: “IAPĂ … – Lat. equa.” MDA2: At: CANTEMIR, IST. 75.
Italian and French took their mare elsewhere – cavalla, jument (Brewer, fig. 1).
DEX shows, inside the definition of cal, the binomial Equus caballus: the rivals reunited as genus and species.
Interactive · three branches, three fates
The branches
Three Latin words set out together. Drag the slider from Rome to today and follow their fates – then play: which branch does each word come from?
EQUUS
the classical → the books
CABALLUS
the popular → Romance
EQUA
the feminine → the mares
TODAYRomance languages and English
ROME · Latin
EQUUS the classical, CABALLUS the popular, EQUA the feminine. Three words set out together.
THE PARTING · early Romance
EQUUS thins toward the books; CABALLUS unfolds; EQUA holds on.
TODAY · Romance languages and English
CABALLUS: cal, cavallo, cheval, caval, cavall, caballo, cavalo. EQUA: iapă, yegua, égua, egua, ebba. EQUUS: equine, equestrian – from books.
Which branch is it from?
Pick the branch, and the path lights up in the tree.
Round 1
cheval
The answer
Larousse. French cheval comes from caballus.
Round 2
yegua
The answer
Brewer 1984. Spanish yegua comes from equa.
Round 3
equine
The answer
etymonline, 1765. English equine comes from books (equinus ← equus).
Round 4
cal
The answer
DEX ’09. Romanian cal comes from caballus.
Round 5
ebba
The answer
Brewer 1984. Sardinian ebba comes from equa.
Round 6
iapă
The answer
DEX ’09. Romanian iapă comes from equa.
Score: 0 of 6
Chapter 4 · a phonetic parenthesis
How caballus became cal
The sound road from caballus to cal – with laws, not metaphors – is told at length in the sibling project:
Chapter 5 · a Romanian epilogue
The Romanian echo: călare, călăraș, Călărași
What follows is the late echo of caballus, not proof of its road into Romanian.
“CĂLARE adv. … – Lat. caballaris, -em.”
“CĂLĂRAȘ … Corp militar de slujitori auxiliari ai domniei … – Călare + suf. -aș.”
At: COD. VOR. 53/12. And cal is on record in the same place: COD. VOR. 122/13, a 16th-century manuscript.
A town named after horsemen – epilogue, not proof
The village of Lichirești became “the horsemen’s village”, then Călărași, after the settling of the călărași ștafetari (25 May 1722): “Lichirești called Călărași” (Caragea, 1780), “Călărași or Lichirești” (the Specht map, 1791). Stolnic Cantacuzino’s map (Padua, 1700) still shows it as Lichirești; on 18 April 1833 it became the seat of Ialomița county – all from the municipality’s official history, much later than the birth of the word cal.
Călărași municipality, Scurt istoric: Municipiul Călărași – Scurt istoric (PDF, in Romanian)
Chapter 6 · what is known and what is not
Where does caballus come from?
What is known
That it is a foreign word in Latin (Coromines, DECat: imported through Gaul, yet not Celtic – the Insular Celtic forms would be loans from Latin). And that it appears in old texts (Lucilius, 2nd century BC), almost always depreciative (Coromines, DECat).
What is not known – competing hypotheses
Celtic origin?
Lewis & Short, cautiously: “perh. Celtic”.
Greek origin?
Older dictionaries: Șăineanu points to Greek kabálles.
Eastern Iranian origin?
Zsolt Simon (Journal of Latin Linguistics 9/1, 2005) proposes a loan from an Eastern Iranian dialect, brought to Italy through the horse trade. A published hypothesis – not a consensus.
Questions
Five questions, five dictionary lines
What is the etymology of “cal”?
From Latin caballus (DEX ’09; DER, REW 1440).
What did caballus mean in Latin?
In literary texts: a workhorse or nag – “nag; workhorse” (Penny 2002). In everyday speech: simply “horse”.
Why doesn’t cal come from equus?
Equus was the classical term; the continuators of caballus replaced it completely (Coromines, DECat). Equus never became the inherited generic word – but its family fed learned formations such as equine and equestrian.
Where does iapă come from?
From Latin equa (DEX ’09), the feminine of equus. A sister of yegua and égua (Brewer 1984).
Are cal, cheval, cavallo and caballo related?
Yes: all continue Latin caballus (Penny 2002; Treccani; Larousse; Priberam).
Sources
Texts and dictionaries first, scholarship after. Every risky claim points at its source.
| Claim | The dictionary line | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Latin: texts and dictionary | ||
| caballus = “nag” | “an inferior riding- or pack-horse, a nag (poet. and in post-Aug. prose)” | Lewis & Short |
| Horace uses caballus | “Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus” (Ep. 1.14.43) | The Latin Library |
| Petronius 134 | “…tanquam caballus in clivo…” | The Latin Library |
| the deep origin: Celtic or Greek? | “perh. Celtic” vs “d. vgr. kabálles” | L&S + Șăineanu |
| Dictionaries of the modern languages | ||
| cal ← caballus | “CAL … – Lat. caballus.” + REW 1440 | DEX ’09 + DER |
| the historical spellings in DER | “prov. cavahl, port. cavallo” – quotation, not modern forms | DER |
| iapă ← equa | “IAPĂ … Femela calului. … – Lat. equa.” + CANTEMIR, IST. 75 | DEX ’09 + MDA2 |
| It. cavallo ← caballus | “[lat. caballus «cavallo da lavoro, cavallo castrato»]” | Treccani |
| Fr. cheval ← caballus | “(latin populaire caballus, rosse)” | Larousse |
| Pt. cavalo ← caballus | “Origem: latim caballus, -i” | Priberam |
| Ca. cavall ← caballus | “CAVALL, del ll. caballus ‘rossí’” | DECat (Coromines) |
| Oc. caval ← caballus | “From Old Occitan caval, from Late Latin caballus” | Wiktionary + Dicod’Òc |
| Alb. kalë, an old loan from Latin | “Borrowed from Vulgar Latin, from Late Latin caballus” (after Orel 1998; Topalli 2017) | Wiktionary; DER kalj |
| călare ← caballaris | “CĂLARE adv. … – Lat. caballaris, -em.” | DEX ’09 |
| călăraș ← călare + -aș | “Corp militar de slujitori auxiliari ai domniei …” At: COD. VOR. 53/12 | DEX ’09 + MDA2 |
| cal: COD. VOR. 122/13 | “[At: COD. VOR. 122/13 …]” — a 16th-century manuscript | MDA2 |
| mârțoagă = nag | “MÂRȚOAGĂ … Cal slab, rău îngrijit; gloabă. – Cf. mărțână.” | DEX ’09 |
| equine, 1765 ← equinus ← equus | “1765, from Latin equinus … from equus ‘horse’” | etymonline |
| equestrian, 1650s ← equester ← eques ← equus | “1650s, formed in English from Latin equester … from eques … from equus” | etymonline |
| Equus caballus in DEX | The binomial inside the definition of cal | DEX ’09 |
| Modern scholarship | ||
| equus vs caballus: the register | “‘nag; workhorse’ … the generic sense ‘horse’” (Penny 2002, p. 5) | Cambridge UP |
| equa → yegua, égua, egua, ebba, ega | fig. 1 + text (Brewer 1984, ZVS 97) | JSTOR |
| the Eastern Iranian hypothesis | a loan from an Eastern Iranian dialect, through the horse trade (Simon 2005, JLL 9/1) – a hypothesis | De Gruyter (DOI) |
| Local history | ||
| Călărași: Lichirești, the couriers, 1700, 1833 | docs. 1693/1722; the Cantacuzino map 1700; 18 Apr 1833 | Călărași municipality |
| Corroboration | ||
| corroboration: Romance ← caballus | “In all Romance Languages the word for ‘horse’ is derived from … caballus …” | Ohio State |
Every word-chain is quoted from the dictionary that states it, with the exact line beside the claim. Modern forms each come with their dictionary; historical spellings are marked as such. Hypotheses are marked as hypotheses, and loans as loans. Where the sources fall silent – who exactly carried the word – the page says so.
Type: Fraunces, Newsreader and Atkinson Hyperlegible, under the SIL Open Font Licence.