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.  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)