Sur l’origine du roum. talpă, ou la rencontre entre ‘plante du pied’ et ‘taupe’
On the Origin of the Rom. talpă, or the Meeting between ‘Mole’ and ‘Sole

Summary/Abstract: The Rom. talpă ‘sole’ is generally connected to the Hung. talp (cf. REW, DLR etc.). However, the existence of other Romance forms with the same meaning (Friul. talpe, Comel. talpa, etc.) calls into question the hypothesis of a Hungarian loanword.In Latin, the word talpa is indeed attested, but only with the meaning of ‘mole’, which is inherited in most of the Romance languages. Although Tagliavini (1926) does not question the Hungarian origin of the Rom. talpă, he proposes for the Friul. talpe and the Comel. talpa ‘sole’ a common “prehistoric” origin with the Lat. talpa ‘mole’.We aim to reanalyze the hypothesis of a Latin origin for the Romanian word. We consider that the Romance terms meaning ‘mole’ and those designating the ‘sole’ are derived from the same etymon: thus, although the second meaning is not attested in Latin, we will try to show that, from a cognitive point of view, the two meanings can be the result of parallel evolutions starting from the same semantic core. It seems that we are dealing with an etymon of Indo-European origin, related to the notion of ‘earth’, which, on the one hand, may evolve towards the meaning of ‘mole’, and on the other hand towards that of ‘basis’, ‘foundation’, ‘foot sole’.

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