> Sandy thinks my name is Joerg:
Not really. While all the users of this list speak a Germanic language, I'm the vociferous German around here.
>>?? Joerg: what does Uroxe mean? Does it mean Aurochs? Or summat else?
Urox is not a German word.
> Just to be sure, I checked my dictionary, and according to it Uroxe means
> Auroch. Auroch, on the other hand, has two possible translations back into
> Swedish: one is Uroxe, the other a species of european bison of which I've
> forgotten the name... Anyway, I remember that it begins with a "V", because
> when I looked up what the English name for _that_ animal, it was the exact
> same word except for beginning with a "W" - no mention of "aurochs" at all.
> I hope this clears things up? :-)
Oh deer... <g>
Like Elk is used for Cervus Canadensis and Alces Alces alike, apparently Aurochs both describes the European Bison (in German: "Wisent") and Bos Primigenius, the exctinct, about American Bison sized wild cattle of the central European woods.
Bos Primigenius is called "Auerochse" in modern German, but also "Ur" alone (a popular cross-word question). "Ochse" means oxen, in all its English meanings. "Auer" seems to mean forest (there is the "Auerhahn", the red-marked forest chicken (?)), although "Au" or "Aue" describes a river, or the flood region around a river (almost extinct in modern Europe, see the recent floodings, January in Germany, and just a few days ago in Italy).
Hold it, Webster's says that "ur" (all "u"s with a bar above) alone means bison in Old Low German, and gives "urohso" as the old name for the aurochs. Probably a case of reinterpretation of the "ur" into "Auer" meaning the above.
Caesar mentions aurochs hunts, and I recall to have read about an incident in which the Frisians were forced to pay a tribute in ox-hides of aurochs size instead of cattle-size, which forced them first to sell their families into slavery (well, some of them...), and finally to revolt.
Apparently the wisent inhabited the Slavic habitation area, whereas the aurochs lived in the German forests, further west. This makes the contact of Old Low German speakers ("Saxons") with wisent less likely. Confusion abounds...
To give this message a Gloranthan content: The aurochs is supposed to be one of the ancestors of domestic cattle. It is sufficiently powerful and wild to represent the greatest native bull one can imagine in most Orlanthi lands, and is close enough to one's own cattle that it is familiar. (In Prax, Storm Bull's 4-legged sons are depicted as males of the tribes' beasts...)
I think the term Urox applies only in regions where the sky-bull, the most fitting beast I can associate with Storm Bull, is not known.
KoS tells us, that the aurochs was extinct in Dragon Pass until around 1638, so I find little probability in Dragon Pass citizens calling the Great Bull such when the Stormwalk Mountain sky-bulls can be seen now and then.
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