“head” (caput) is pen. In Ainu pen means the “source” or “head” of a river; “the upper part of a valley!” It also appears in penram “the chest.” The words tu for “two” and re for “three” still keep us at home. So also tumbu. Tumbu means in Ainu “an appartment in a dwelling.” Thus, poru is a “natural cave” and tumbu, first, a “dwelling appartment” or “division in a cave” and then a “room” in a house. But further, the word Tumbu has very interesting associations. By some it means “womb,” and according to others “the placenta.” Tun means “foetus,” and hence comes the word tuntun, “fish-row.” All this reminds one of the Anglo-Saxon word Tûn “a close” (German “Zaun”), which afterwards becomes a “Town.”[1] Chisei, “house” applies to the “home” of many living objects as, a wasp, bee, man, bear and such like beings, while tumbu is only applied to the living apartment of a human being, whether it be in a cave, in a pit dug in the side of a hill or in a hole dug in the level ground; or whether it is a room in a “house” or Chisei, as that in of my house in Sapporo, or the poky dark hole 6 feet by 9 in the southeastern corner of Chief Penri’s hut at Piratori which was put up for me to sleep in; all these “divisions” or “apartments” are tumbu, “rooms” in Ainu. But it is a well known fact that the English word “tomb” is from the mediaeval Latin tumba. But tumba first meant “a hillock,” after that “a tomb.” Again one therefore wonders whether there is any family relationship between tumba “a hillock” and tumbu, “a apartment in a cave."
Now, pu in Ainu is the ordinary word for “godown” or “store house.” Hence tumpu or tumbu really means “the home” or “storehouse of the foetus” of living beings. Or, again, this last word tumbu might well be compared with the Russian домъ “home,” the final ъ of the Russian word being taken for the Ainu bu or pu, and thus we are brought to Latin domus.
A comparison of the Ainu word garu with the Welsh garu is also interesting for both are identical in meaning, which is
- ↑ Max Müller Vol II. Page 27.
