Kalamehe (Kalamees)

Fisherman, angler. One of an occupational street-name group. See Meremehe. Kala is derived from the proto Finno-Ugric *kala, fish (see also Karelian, Finnish & Veps kala, Hungarian hal, Sámi guöllé, Nenets, халя, etc.) and related to Uralic (Mansi: хул) and Altaic (Tungusic: kul, salmon; Khalka Mongolian: xalim, whale, presumably of the biblical prophet-swallowing variety, hard to imagine them having a word for it otherwise). Clearly a very old word, although not corroborated by the last example: Christianity was first known in Mongolia in the late 13^th/early 14^th C. Further away again, we have Proto-Eskimo *iqałud, Sumerian kad, and even Somali, kalluun, all also fish. Stepping into very murky waters, along with other basic words such as Uralic *nime giving Estonian nimi, and maybe related to Sanskrit nā́man-, Latin nomen and English name, our PIE *kʷalo-, large fish (cf. Latin squalus, dogfish or ‘large sea fish’), Old Prussian kalis, shad, and Old English hwæl, giving present-day whale suggest possible common origins going back at least 5000 years.