 Happy holidays, and welcome to the Endless Knot! Today, we're taking to the skies with everybody's favorite bunch of flying ruminants! Let's start with the word reindeer itself. The second element is simple enough, right? A deer is a member of the family Servidae, a type of ruminant mammal, except the word deer didn't always refer to that animal. The Old English form of the word is deor, and could be used to refer to any sort of animal. This use may have even survived into early modern English, as in the line from Shakespeare's King Lear, mice and rats and other such small deer, though this may have been something of a joke. Interestingly, the Proto-Indo-European root of deer means to blow, or puff, or rise in a cloud as dust, vapor, or smoke, and has a great many English derivatives such as fume, thyme, in reference to its strong smell, dizzy, deaf, dumb, and dumkopf, literally dumbhead in German, in reference to defective perception or wits, and dove for its smoky color. Naturally, a deer is a breathing thing, and the word animal, from Latin, has the same semantic progression, coming from a root meaning breath. And isn't it appropriate that the reindeer is a cognate of dove, another Christmas-related animal that frequently appears as a tree ornament symbolizing peace? But what about the first part of reindeer? Well, it has nothing to do with reins as in the harness for a horse, though Santa does use reins to steer his reindeer. In fact, it's a reference to the antlers from a root care, meaning horn, which also gives us the word horn, as well as the cladistic family name servidae, from Latin, carewous, deer. Indeed, that first element as Old English, ran, and Old Norse, harain, were used by themselves to refer to reindeer. Another word we get from the root care is heart, not the blood pumping organ, but the word for a male deer. The Old English form of this word is herret, which was also the name of the hall of the Danes under King Hrothgar in the epic poem Beowulf, described as high and horn gable, either because the gables were adorned with horns or looked like antlers. Speaking of antlers, reindeers are the only species of servids in which both males and females grow them. What's more, the male reindeers lose their antlers after the mating season in late fall, whereas the females keep them until they have the following summer. And the antlered females have the highest rank in the feeding hierarchy during that period, useful since they're gestating offspring. So if you see a picture of Santa's reindeer with antlers, you can be sure they're all female. But before we leave behind the etymology of reindeer, I should point out that another word for the species, usually used in Canada, is caribou, coming from the mikmak word kalipu, which means literally it shovels snow because the animals kick the snow in order to feed on the moss and grass underneath. So we should all be referring to them as caribou since Santa at the North Pole lives in Canada, he even has a Canadian postal code H0H0H0, where you can send your wish list to Santa and get a reply. So turning to Santa's reindeer in particular, well, originally they weren't. Reindeer that is. Earlier depictions of old St. Nick had him going about on foot or on a white horse. In fact, still to this day in the Dutch tradition, Sinterklaus rides a white horse called Amerigo. It wasn't until an obscure 1821 anonymous poem published in a New York magazine called The Children's Friend that Santa was connected with reindeer, but just one reindeer. The poem goes, Old Santa Claus with much delight, his reindeer drives this frosty night, or chimney tops and tracks of snow, to bring his yearly gifts to yo, uh, you. Now the first question is, why reindeer? Where did the New York poet get that idea, as it wasn't part of the traditional St. Nicholas legends, and New York is a long way from reindeer. Well, one suggestion is that it might come from Lapland legends of a kind of old man winter who would drive his reindeer down from the mountains bringing the snow with them. This is a general winter figure, though, not a Christmas gift-giver. But the name of the Finnish Christmas gift-giver, now more or less conflated with the North American Santa Claus, Yulupuki, literally means yule goat. Yule was originally the Old Germanic pagan, specifically Norse, mid-winter festival that eventually got subsumed into Christmas, when Christianity arrived on the scene. In Norse myth, Thor's chariot is pulled by two goats, called Tan Grisnir, Teethbearer, and Tan Gnoster, Teethgrinder. And these names are sometimes rendered into English as Cracker and Nashor, perhaps reminiscent of the first two reindeer names, Dasher and Dancer. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. In any case, I suppose goats are notionally closer to reindeer than horses. Maybe? The second question is why eight reindeer? That 1821 poem only mentions one, so how did the number grow? Well, you may have already guessed that it was in the famous poem Twas the Night Before Christmas, actually titled A Visit from St. Nicholas, that we first hear of eight tiny reindeer, who all have names, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donor, Blitzen. Now, leaving aside the indication that they and St. Nicholas himself were tiny, guess that's how we fit down the chimneys, why specifically eight reindeer? And why those names? To answer this, we need to take a quick look at the poem's author. Originally published anonymously in 1823, the poem was later attributed to scholar Clement Clark Moore, Professor of Greek and Hebrew, and also writer of a huge ancient Hebrew dictionary. In keeping with all the scholarly learning, the reindeer names contain a number of rather learned illusions. And in addition to the possible goats of Thor I mentioned earlier, it may be a reference to another Norse god, Odin, that gives us the number eight. You see Odin, who is sometimes known by the name Yolnir, or Yulfigur, is one of the possible forerunners of the Christmas gift-giver figure. And Odin wrote an eight-legged horse named Slipnir, which literally means slippy. Eight legs, eight reindeer? Well, let's have a look at the names of those eight reindeer. First up is Dasher. Dash probably comes from a Scandinavian source, meaning beat or strike, hence dash to pieces, as well as move quickly, hence the hundred yard dash. The punctuation mark, dash, comes from the notion of a hastily written pen stroke. And from there, the expletive dash at all, because the curse word dam would be reproduced in print as D dash dash M, so as not to corrupt the innocent. A dashboard was the barrier in front of a carriage or sleigh which prevented mud from being dashed up from the horse's hooves and ruining the clothes of those riding in the vehicle. When the automobile or horseless carriage was invented, the dashboard was kept to protect the passengers from the dirt of the wheels. And once the engine was placed in front of the car, the dashboard protected the passengers from the heat and oil of the motor. And eventually the car's various instruments were located on the dashboard, which has kept the same name in spite of the changes in meaning. The first mass produced automobile, the Oldsmobile curved dash, was so named because its dashboard was curved, resembling that of a sleigh. I suppose Santa's sleigh must have a dashboard too, but presumably he doesn't have to worry about mud since his sleigh flies. Another related word is dashing, meaning fashionable and showy, as in a dashing young man. This use comes from the 18th century colloquial expression to cut a dash, which I suppose you might want to do on the dance floor. Speaking of which, next up is dancer. The etymology of dance is a bit uncertain. The word comes into English from old French danse. Ultimately, it either comes from Frankish dintion to tremble or from the Proto-Indo-European route 10, meaning to pull or stretch, suggesting dancing in a line or file. I guess the reindeer are stretched out in lines when pulling Santa's sleigh, but really they should be dancing in a circle as the word carol, possibly coming from Latin corolla, meaning little crown, originally referred to a kind of circle dance performed to a particular type of lyric song. So maybe dancer was also a singer. I suppose prance might suggest a motion similar to dancing, appropriate since prancer is our next reindeer. Funny thing is, historically speaking, prancer shouldn't be a reindeer but a horse. The word prancer was originally from the 1560s, thieves slang for a horse. Again, it's a bit uncertain where prance comes from, but it has been possibly linked to Middle English prankin' to show off from Middle Dutch, prankin', and thereby related to the word prank. But lest you think that pranking is rather more related to another holiday, April Fool's Day, Christmas too has its own tradition of pranking in Miss Rule. During the late Middle Ages and early modern periods, there was a tradition of appointing a peasant as the Lord of Miss Rule, a kind of mock king who oversaw the Feast of Fools during Christmastide. This would generally involve drunkenness, wild partying, disguises, and other types of topsy-turvy revelry. It's been suggested, though not without some debate, that this custom dates back to the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, celebrated at the same time of year, which featured gift giving and a carnival atmosphere in which masters serve their slaves. Well, if prancer should've been a horse, vixen should've been a fox, and a girl. Because you see, vixen is the feminine form of fox. In Old English, as in modern English, while the male was a fox, the female was a vixen, with the feminine ending ien causing the vowel to mutate, as also seen in Old English pairs like wolf, male, and wolfen, female. Guess that's further evidence, along with the antlers, that the reindeer were all female. As for the root of the words vixen and fox, this is a matter of some debate. We know it can be traced back as far as proto-Germanic fuchsaz, feminine fuchsigno, as there are cognates, meaning fox, in the various Germanic languages. But fuchsaz does not come from the usual word for fox in proto-Indo-European, wolfay, which leads to Latin wolfays, and thereby the scientific name for the fox. So where did fox and its cognates come from? Well, it seems to have been a taboo replacement. Instead of using the fox real name, which might invoke the pestilent creature itself, a taboo replacement name is used instead. This is a common process with animal names, such as with the word bear, which literally means brown one. The original proto-Indo-European root, referring to the bear, does survive in Latin, ursus, giving us the constellations, ursa major and ursa minor, which mark out the arctic, a word which comes from the Greek derivative of that same root. Well, Santa and the reindeer do live in the arctic at the North Pole, after all. Interestingly, the word bear gets swapped out again in the name of the hero beowulf, whose name literally means beowulf, a stand-in for the word bear. So all that being said, what is the literal meaning of the word fox? Well, there are a number of suggestions, but the most likely is that it refers to the fox's distinctive tail, coming from the root puke, meaning tail. By the way, in another instance of sly and foxy name replacement, in French, which originally had a word descended from Latin Woolpays, the standard word now is renard, which comes from a popular folk character in medieval literature, renard, an anthropomorphic trickster figure who is always up to no good. Indeed, the slinus of the fox is its main cultural association. I suppose that might lie behind the compound word foxfire, a kind of eerily bioluminescent fungus, which is associated with the will of the wisp and the original sense of jack-o'-lantern, mischievous fairies that lead nighttime travelers to their doom. But this is all leading us astray to yet another holiday, Halloween. So let's return to our foxy roots, specifically the one that gives us Latin Woolpays. It is so close to the root that lies behind English wolf and Latin lupus that there appears to be something linguistically sly going on behind the scenes. And indeed, sometimes the words for foxes and wolves are used interchangeably. And as a final point on the cultural associations of the animals, in English, foxy is a word that is applied to sexually attractive women. Vixen, which had the earlier sense of an ill-tempered, quarrelsome woman, seems now to be gaining the sense of a sexually aggressive woman. And in Latin, the feminine form lupa refers to a prostitute. But lest we cast any aspersions on our reindeer Vixen, let's move on to the next reindeer in line. And that is comet. As an object flying through the heavens, the word comet seems an appropriate name for one of Santa's team. Comet comes ultimately from Greek in the expression aster kometes, meaning literally hairy star, on account of the long tail of the star, which was thought to look like hair. Cometes comes from Greek kome, meaning hair of the head. And that's the end of the line as we don't know where that word comes from. In addition to comets looking hairier than other stars, they were also notable to ancient observers for being temporary moving stars. Since they came and went like that, they were often taken as portents of important events. And to bring this all back to Christmas again, it has been speculated that the star of Bethlehem, which marked the birth of Jesus, was in fact a comet. Though other astronomical objects, such as an unusual conjunction of planets or even a supernova have been suggested. The Magi or wise men, as they are sometimes known, were in this case likely astrologers following the star. But moving on from stars in the heavens to gods, next up is the reindeer Cupid. Cupid is of course the Roman god which the Romans associated with the Greek god Eros. Latin Cupido, desire or love, comes from the verb cupura, to desire, which goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root quep, meaning to smoke, cook, move violently, be agitated emotionally. So I suppose you could say that Cupid is really smoking. The English derivative cupidity generally refers to desire from money, not sex, but the related concupiscence does indicate sexual desire. Also possibly from this root, through Latin vapor, steam, are the words vapor and evaporate, and through vapidos, English vapid, literally that has emitted steam or lost its vapor, flat or poor. Greek eros, by the way, may come from the root ere, meaning to separate or adjoin, which also gives us rare, through Latin rares, having intervals between, hence full of empty spaces, and thus rare. If this is the root of eros, it would then come from the Greek verb erasthai, to love, from the idea of being separated from. Well, absence does make the heart go fonder, or perhaps that should be fondler, since we're talking about erotic love here, eros also leading to English erotic and erogenous. Today, of course, we associate the god Cupid with that little cherub who flies about shooting love hours at people around St. Valentine's Day. But as we again stray into yet another holiday, I'll bring it back to wolves and Roman traditions, because some have tried, not very convincingly, to trace a line between Valentine's Day and the Roman festival Lupercalia, which just happens to fall on the 13th to 15th of February. Lupercalia, which draws its name from Latin lupus, wolf, is a kind of pastoral festival associated with fertility, hence the supposed connection with Valentine's Day, in which, according to the historian Plutarch, young men ran through the streets naked, hitting women who wished to become pregnant or have an easier pregnancy with shaggy thongs. Always with the men hitting on the women, it seems, certainly makes you wonder what Cupid and Vixen were getting up to. Our next reindeer in the pantheon is Donner, or is it? In the original Clement Clarke Moore poem, it's Dunder, though you needn't feel like a Dunderhead, a related word, or a Dumkopf, for that matter, for not knowing that, as Donner is today the most common form of the reindeer's name. You see, Dunder is the 19th century Dutch spelling for the word, which means thunder, and which goes back to the proto-Indo-European root, stenae, meaning thunder. And I'm sure you'll be stunned and astonished, also related words, to hear that English thunder also comes from this root. Donner is the German form of the word. Also related is Thor, Old English Thunor, the Norse Lord of Thunder. Oops, that should be God of Thunder. Sorry, Thor. And since there appear to be wolves after me in this video, I may as well mention in Norse myths, Thor's father Odin meets his doom in the jaws of the monstrous wolf Fenrir, whose name means Fen-dweller. So I guess wolves are after them, too. And what goes along with thunder? Well, lightning, of course. And that's the sense behind the next reindeer name, Blitzen. Only again, the original poem had the Dutch form Blixen. The ultimate proto-Indo-European root behind the word is bel, which means shine, flash, or burn, and gives us such words as bleach, blonde, and flame, as well as belting, the Celtic Mayday celebration, yet another non-Christmas holiday. Blitzen also has some more closely related cognates in English, such as Blitzkrieg, meaning lightning war, the World War II German attack strategy, which employed surprise and speed to overwhelm the opposing forces. This was then shortened simply to Blitz, especially in reference to the Blitz, the German bombing raids against Britain in World War II. But this is also not a suitable topic for Christmas, so we'd best move on. Move on? But weren't there only eight reindeer? What about the most famous reindeer of all? Well, the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was written by Robert May, drawing on the memories of his own painfully shy childhood, as a free Christmas promotion in 1939 for the Montgomery Ward department store, where he worked in the advertising department. Almost two and a half million copies were given out that Christmas season, and the story became a big hit virtually overnight. And in a remarkable show of corporate loyalty, the store turned over the rights to the poem to May, and it subsequently became a commercially published book. May then handed the poem over to his brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, to turn into a song, which became a hit for Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, after it was turned down by the likes of Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore, and was eventually made into a Christmas TV special in 1964. As for songwriter Marks, although he was Jewish, as was May, he made something of a career out of writing Christmas songs, composing such hits as Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, A Holly Jolly Christmas, and Run Rudolph Run, the last for rock and roll legend Chuck Berry. As for the name itself, well, it looks like the wolves have finally caught up with us and are dressed in reindeer's clothing, because Rudolph means glory wolf. The second element we've already seen, the Germanic root that produces wolf. The first element is from hruad, a Germanic root meaning glory or fame, a common name element also found in the name Roger. That name appears in Old English as Hrothgar, literally glory spear, the name of the king in Beowulf, king of the Danes and Lord of the Hall Herod that we saw at the beginning of this video. Rudolph too has an Old English form, Hrothulf, who is mentioned briefly in Beowulf as the nephew of Hrothgar. These legendary figures also appear in an Old Norse saga as Hrothgar and Hrulfer, with the latter playing the larger role, gathering about him a court of 12 accomplished warriors, one of whom, Balfar Bjarke, whose name means warlike little bear, is often connected with Beowulf himself on account of his bearish name. Balfar Bjarke's father was magically turned into a bear and he seems to have inherited this connection from his father as he is able to project his spirit as a giant bear in order to fight for Hroth with bear-like powers. So it seems there's more to those tiny reindeer than meets the wondering eye, from a wild menagerie to Norse myth, Roman festivals and Old English epic. Probably then a good idea to leave a carrot or two beside the cookies for Santa to keep on their good side. Thanks for watching. If you've enjoyed these etymological explorations and cultural connections, please subscribe and click the little bell to be notified of every new episode. And check out our Patreon where you can make a contribution to help me make more videos. I'm at alliterative on Twitter and you can visit our website, alliterative.net for more language and connections in our podcast, blog and more. Happy holidays.