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Mostly from Richard Sears' Chinese Etymology site (authorisation), which in turn draws data from various collections of ancient forms of Chinese characters, including:
From Old Japanese. Attested in the Shin'yaku Kegonkyō Ongi Shiki (794) with the spellings 可夫刀 and 可夫度.[1] One source cites a manuscript of the Nihon Shoki (720) in which the word 冑 in the word has a katakana gloss カフト but these glosses may be later readings.[2]
Derivation currently unknown.
A surface analysis might suggest a derivation from 被る(kaburu, “to wear something on the head”). However, that reading derives from older form kagafuru and does not appear until the Nihon Ryōiki (810-824),[3] some time after the first appearance of kabuto.
An alternative analysis might suggest a compound of 頭(kabu, “head”, kun'yomi and native Japanese term) + 兜(to, “helmet”, on'yomi and borrowing from Chinese).
Word-medial bilabial plosives usually underwent lenition, shifting along the lines of /p/ → /f/ → /w/, then vanishing altogether except where the following vowel was /a/. This lenition often did not happen at morpheme boundaries in compound words. The persistence of the /b/ in kabuto might thus suggest that this term was originally a compound of ka + puto. The ka element is uncertain, possibly the か(ka-) intensifying prefix added to adjectives, or an abbreviation of 髪(kami, “hair (of the head)”) or 上(kami, “top”) (compare 挿頭す(kazasu, “to put decorations onto a hair or crown”, possibly from kami + 刺す(sasu, “to poke”)); Old Japaneseputo would be the stem and root of modern 太い(futoi, “thick; fat; stout”), possibly in reference to the protective strength provided by a helmet. This puto would then have undergone rendaku (連濁) to become buto.
Compare the phonology of adjective か細い(kabosoi, “very slender”), composed of this ka- prefix and adjective 細い(hosoi, ancient pososi) and demonstrating a similar retention of the bilabial plosive and rendaku (連濁).