Talk:pern

possibly "both" etymologies are from Latin pernix "swift": an adjective that can be applied both to birds of prey and to rapidly spinning spools. But I don't know, both words seem to be rather obscure. At least within English they should be considered wholly distinct, even though they might share the same Latin etymology. --Dbachmann (talk) 11:34, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Apparently, Pernis is from an Aristotelian term for a bird of prey, so the above hypothesis is false. --Dbachmann (talk) 12:59, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

It turns out that Theodorus Gaza had the same thought before me. [1] It is rather satisfying to be able to squeeze such factoids out of google books, even if it took me two hours this time. --Dbachmann (talk) 13:23, 11 March 2012 (UTC)