Gaita vs Gaida

[Viking of Kiev]

I am trying to trace a connection between the name of Spanish north-west bagpipes gaita and the name of the Balkan bagpipes gaida (gajde etc.). The names themselves are almost the same.

Do they share common origin?

Some say both words came to Europe during Arabic/Turkic conquest which is quite convincing.
But Galician sources say that the word gaita derives from Germanic (Gothic) roots.

Does anyone have reliable versions or links to reliable sources?

[kmarty]

It probably won't help but ...

In Moravia (part of Czech Republic) and Slovakia this instrument is called gajdy (plural from gajda - which is read same as gaida):

which is same as dudy (south czechia):

They sould differs moreless only by their common key/tuning - G dur vs Es dur. Both have just eight tones.

It is just, probably useless, hint. I don't play on it and also I don't know anything more.

[Elvellon]

Seeing that other Slavic bagpipes are sometimes named koza, koziol (goat); the English/Germanic word goat comes from gaitaz, Gothic gaits; the Goths were seein both in Spain and in Eastern Europe; and bagpipe-making does include goats ... I'd bet on that.

[Yuri]

On the other hand, there exists across North Africa and instrument called in modern transliteration the "ghaita". It is simply a shawm, played just like any shawm. Google images will throw up any number of pics. Now, the Arab conquest of Iberia in the Dark Ages did bring those into the peninsula. I would imagine that the totally accidental similarity of the two totally unrelated words simply reinforced the name, that's all. Which of course doesn't explain the Slavic Gaidas at all. With Bulgaria you can argue some sort of connection, though Turkish is certainly not Arabic. With the Czech and Polish ones there isn't even that explanation.

[Elvellon]

Yuri, I was going to write about Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic contact but then came across Wikipedia:
The distinctive name [of the N. African ghaita/rhaita] owes to a medieval Gothic-Iberian influence.[1][2] In southern Iberia, various sorts of wind instruments, including the related shawm, are known as "gaitas" but in northern Iberia "gaita" refers only to bagpipes.
[1] and [2] are French language encyclopedias on Mediterranean and Arabic musical instruments.
^ Dictionnaire des musiques et danses traditionnelles de la Mediterranée, Paris, Fayard, 2005.
^ Pierre Bec, Les instruments de musique d'origine arabe, sens et histoire de leurs désignations, Toulouse, Isatis, Conservatoire Occitan, 2005

[MTGuru]

Without digging too deeply, but with linguistics training and intuition ... Elvellon's comments seem plausible.

Especially since the Proto-Germanic ghaitaz traces to a PIE (Proto-Indo-European) ghaido or ĝhaido, with the possible influence that implies.

It's also easy to overlook the 100+ year occupation of nearly the whole of North Africa by the Vandals, another East Germanic people linguistically related to the Iberian Goths. This establishes a Germanic substrate prior to Islamic conquest of both North Africa and Iberia.

Given additionally the disposition of Germanic tribes prior to the Migrations, a Germanic origin in "goat" could account for widespread distribution and diffusion of the term. Even today, "playing the goat" as a colloquialism or (perhaps humorous) synecdoche is not unknown. Sometimes literally:



Or if you prefer:

[MTGuru]

As for the OP question of gaita vs gaida ... The voicing/devoicing of the t/d sound could easily be phonemically conditioned historically, or in free variation (essentially random) across languages. Just ask any Brit and American about "butter" or "budder".

[CHasR]

Or if you prefer:

to be anatomically correct, however, the homo sapiens' navel would NOT be facing the camera. But let's not dig too deep.

Just ask any Brit and American about "butter" or "budder".

OR, in my town : "Brddh" yum

[Yuri]

I that goat playing a bag made from G.W. Bush? There seems to be a certain resemblance...

[MTGuru]

Looks more like N. Khrushchev to me. Well, the face anyway. I'm not sure about the rest.

[pancelticpiper]

the Proto-Germanic ghaitaz traces to a PIE (Proto-Indo-European) ghaido or ĝhaido, with the possible influence that implies.

Yes my book gives ghaido for goat in Common Germanic, but obviously it's Indo European because it crops up in Slavic languages also.

I need to get an Indo-European dictionary! All I have is a dictionary of roots of English words, which are listed as being Indo-European, or the Common Germanic roots which are non-IE, or the Latin roots which are non-IE, etc. But I think this book's scholarship is shaky.

BTW it's common for the same word to be used in various languages to denote different instruments. So there's a word-family tsampouna/zampogna
/simponi/chimpoi etc which refers to bagpipes, panpipes, and musical ensembles in various languages, the work kaval/caval which refers to various sorts of flutes, musette which can refer to bagpipes or flutes, dudy/duda/duduk/dudelsack/dudka/tuta which can refer to bagpipes, flutes, pipes that you smoke, and so forth.

Podnos gives the following related bagpipe names gajda, ghaida, gaida, gayda, gajdy, guda, gajde, gaita, gaitachor, ghaita, gajdosovce, gajdosi, ghajdos, gajdosici in various languages including Turkish and Arabic.

[Viking of Kiev]

Thanks all for the info!
Especially to Elvellon, for his mention of this unexpected (for me) version that it was arabs who'd borrowed the name of the instrument rather than it came from them.

The origin of the word "gaita" is well grounded and looks convincing.

This is what online English Etymology Dictionary says:

goat (n.)
Old English gat "she-goat," from Proto-Germanic *gaitaz (cf. Old Saxon get, Old Norse geit, Danish gjed, Middle Dutch gheet, Dutch geit, Old High German geiz, German Geiß, Gothic gaits "goat"), from PIE *ghaidos "young goat," also "play" (cf. Latin hædus "kid").

The word for "male goat" in Old English was bucca (see buck (n.)) until late 1300s shift to he-goat, she-goat (Nanny goat is 18c., billy goat 19c.). Meaning "licentious man" is attested from 1670s. To get (someone's) goat is from 1910, perhaps with notion of "to steal a goat mascot from a racehorse," or from French prendre sa chèvre "take one's source of milk."

It is absolutely no wonder that a bagpipe was named after a goat - here in Ukraine local bagpipe is called "koza" that literally means "she-goat". This is what its bag is usually made of, as all know, of course. Not mentioning the sound which resembles goat bleating.
But while the origin of the name of the Spanish bagpipes (gaitas) seems to be clear, the main question I' am most interested in is not answered.

Is there a connection between GAITA and GAIDA and if there is, how did it happen?

I decided to research what Bulgarians say about the origin of the word GAIDA and found some interesting and somewhat mutually exclusive versions.

1.Official version, taken from the Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary 1971, p224, says this


this is in Bulgarian but since it is a language close to my native Russian I can read it bit.

The article mainly says that the word "gaida" came to Bulgaria from Arabs through the Turkish (as well it did to other lands which used to be under turkiс rule).

2. One more version found here says:

"Народните музикални инструменти, с които си служи българинът открай време, също носят отглас от далечната прародина. На първо място това е думата “гайда”, за която официалната теория гласи, че е била предадена на българите от арабите, понеже в някои арабски езици се среща думата “гайта”. В Памир и Хиндокуш обаче се среща думата “гайга” - свирня, а гайдите се наричат “гай” или “джай”, което значи буквално “мях” и съвпада по смисъл с едно от имената на гайдата в българския език - мешина. Друг широко разпространен музикален инструмент - кавала - напомня твърде много памирското понятие “кав” - пея, а също и кюрдското понятие “кавал”, с което се наричат кюрдските народни певци и особено изпълнителите на кюрдски религиозни химни."

that translates as:

"The traditional music instruments used in Bulgaria since ancient times bear a voice from its faraway land of origin.
In the first place there is a word "gaida" - official version of its origin claims it came to Bulgaria from Arabs though there are no word "gaida" in any of the Arabic languages. In Pamir and Hindoukush we can meet a word "gaiga" meaning "whistling" while bagpipes are called "gai" or "jai" which literally means "skin" or "bag of a bagpipe" and coincides in meaning with Bulgarian word "meshina". Another common wind instrument's name - "kaval" very much resembles a Pamir word "kav" - "to sing" as well as Kurdic word "kaval" which denotes traditional kurdic singers of religious hymns."

3.One more source under the name "The origin of Bulgarian words" gives this:

Гайда -> гаи - пея - санскрит, - meaning - Gaida - from sanskrit "gai" - to sing. No proof, just as it is.

Of these the official version seems to me more or less reliable.
It actually confirms the assumption that the word GAIDA may have come to eastern Europe from north-east Spain via Magrib Arabs and Turks.

But yet, the middle links of this chain remain obscure.

[pancelticpiper]

The article mainly says that the word "gaida" came to Bulgaria from Arabs through the Turkish...


... "gaida" - official version of its origin claims it came to Bulgaria from Arabs though there are no word "gaida" in any of the Arabic languages.


It actually confirms the assumption that the word GAIDA may have come to eastern Europe from north-east Spain via Magrib Arabs and Turks.

This assumption seems to be the exact opposite of vast and overwhelming evidence: gaida is a very widespread Indo-European word, which Arabic borrowed from Indo-European.

Obviously a word which Bulgarian borrowed from Arabic couldn't spread backward in time to Proto-Germanic and proto-Indo-European.

This supports what to me appears obvious, that bagpipes themselves are a European thing which in relatively recent times spread into the "Near East" and "Middle East" (and with the thing came the word for the thing).