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The word is first mentioned in Latvian in 17th-century dictionaries. It is a heavily discussed word spread around Baltic Sea, up to Russianбурка́н(burkán), борка́н(borkán) and Finnishporkkana, Estonianporgand, Livonianborkõn, borkõnz, borkkiņ, the immediate sources of which are unknown but are sought in any of the neighbouring Indo-European languages. Possible scenarios:
from Old Frisianbure, burre(“conic root; top of a stake, pile (in the ground)”) + a diminutive suffix -ken, -kan (cf. the Old Frisian reduced form burke(“little root”)). But it is dubious that the diminutive suffix would get a long vowel and even become stressed. In turn it is tempting to assume in this constellation that the German is from Latvian. One needs to ask why this word has prominence only in the extreme fringes of the German and Russian language areas respectively.
from Burgundian rule over the Netherlands, hence the word would just reflected the country name Burgundy. This is backed by the observation of the carrot plant’s spread in the Late Middle Ages from the Mediterranean over Middle Europe to Northeast Europe. But the transmitting forms of Low German and Dutch dialects are in question.
It is from a non-Indo-European substrate language which had an alternation that explains the anlaut variation between the voiced bilabial plosive and the voiced bilabial nasal of the aforementioned words. Ancient Greekβράκανα(brákana, “wild vegetables”) is a random correspondence if not remotely related via the source language of this word.
The Baltic words are possibly from a non-Indo-European substrate language and German and Russian derive from Latvian. Proto-Slavic*mъrky and Proto-Germanic*murhǭ are random correspondences, possibly from an unrelated substrate.
Junttilla, Santeri (2014) “Die alten baltischen Lehnwörter im neuen estnischen etymologischen Wörterbuch”, in Baltu Filoloģija, volume XXIII, number 2, page 131
Karulis, Konstantīns (1992) “burkāns”, in Latviešu Etimoloģijas Vārdnīca (in Latvian), Rīga: AVOTS, →ISBN
“Möhre” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache