ON THE ETYMOLOGY AND SEMANTICS OF ANCIENT GREEK NAMES OF THE BOS TAURUS SPECIES (IN DICTIONARIES AND HOMER’S ILIAD)

This article attempts to clarify the etymology and motivation of the name Bos taurus LINNAEUS (cattle) in ancient Greek. At the beginning of the article, based on a number of scholarly works, the author gives a brief historical background on the domestication of animals, provides interesting facts on the reasons for the semantic variability of the names of animals, which can denote either wild or domestic species in different languages. Then the article describes the results of work with various etymological dictionaries (including both domestic and foreign), with the help of which the etymology of such ancient Greek lexical units as βοῦς ‘bull, cow’, ταῦρος ‘bull’, μόσχος ‘calf’, πόρταξ ‘calf, young heifer’, δαμάλης ‘calf’, δάμαλις ‘heifer’, στεĩρα ‘barren cow’, was analyzed. In conclusion, the features of the use of the words in question in authentic texts are traced (namely, using the example of Homer’s Iliad), it turns out that units differ in the frequency of their use, as well as in the context in which they are used. The observations are summarized at the end of the article. The most common nomination in Homer’s Iliad is the lexeme βοῦς, the second is ταῦρος. The nominations of cattle, if they were not borrowed, could be motivated by the external characteristics of the animal, its way of life, an appeal to recent birth, as well as various metaphors. The important role of the bull for ancient Greek culture is also noted, which was an image of strength and also acted as a sacrificial animal.