The unrestrained reindeer

Was poor Rudolph so much under Santa Claus's rein that he had to be named reindeer?

[Middle English reindere : Old Norse hreinn, reindeer; see ker-1 in Indo-European roots + Middle English der, animal; see deer.]
From the 'Free dictionary':
"Although Saint Nick uses reins on his reindeer and reindeer are used to pull sleds in Lapland and northern Siberia, the word reindeer has nothing to do with reins. The element -deer is indeed our word deer, but the rein- part is borrowed from another language, specifically from the Scandinavian languages spoken by the chiefly Danish and Norwegian invaders and settlers of England from the 9th to the 11th century. Even though the Old Icelandic language in which much of Old Norse literature is written is not the same variety of Old Norse spoken by these settlers of England, it is close enough to give us an idea of the words that were borrowed into English. Thus we can cite the Old Icelandic word hreinn, which means "reindeer," as the source of the first part of the English word. The word reindeer is first recorded in Middle English in a work composed before 1400."


Actually, I have an icelandic dictionary (fascinating language & country..), and that tells me that hreindyr is the word for reindeer; the 'free dictionary' text above says "hreinn" is reindeer, but in modern icelandic that actually translates to 'clear' or 'pure', so maybe the reindeer was originally a 'pure animal', or somewhere someone's sources got mixed up...

Icelandic is the most well conserved language of the indo-european language family, and shows most of the roots of english and german word pretty well, and is very similar still to it's medieval form. That means the word 'hreindyr' is really close to the source of our reindeer and the german 'Rentier' (Ren does not have any meaning in german, so we just took over the sound of the word).

No room for Santa Claus..
Free the reindeers!