Language Matters | Year of the Tiger: where does the word ‘tiger’ come from and what might it have in common with Viagra?
- Beyond ancient Greek the etymology of the word ‘tiger’ becomes uncertain, evolving possibly from an Old Iranian source meaning ‘sharp, pointed’
- Another origin could be from the Sanskrit word meaning ‘one who tracks by smell’ which some believe inspired the name of Viagra
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright”, opens William Blake’s late 18th century poem.
Earlier Middle English forms included tygre or tigre, from the Old French tigre, having evolved from the Latin tigris, which in turn came from Greek. At this point, its etymology becomes uncertain: the Oxford English Dictionary says of the Greek τίγρις that it is “a foreign word, evidently eastern, introduced when the beast became known”.
A popular account tells of how the word possibly comes from an Old Iranian source, given the Old Persian tigra, meaning “sharp, pointed”, and the Avestan (the language of Zoroastrian scripture) tīghri “arrow”. Various early common era writings in Greek and Latin even conflated the naming of the beast and that of the river Tigris – “because it is the fastest of all rivers”. Modern scholars have found little evidence for this.
Other work points to the first encounters of Europeans with tigers – and their first appearance in Greek writings: when Alexander the Great in 326BC was presented with tamed tigers by Indian ambassadors, and subsequently when Seleucus I in 300BC, in token of his subjugation of lands “as far as the river Indus”, sent a pair of live tigers to Athens.
The Sanskrit vyāghrá “tiger” – derived from “one who tracks by smell” – thus may well be an ultimate source for the word. Various Indo-Aryan forms descended from this, including the Hindi bāgh; and it is cognate with the Middle Persian babr/bebr, and related to the Old Armenian vagr and the Old Georgian vigr.