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Any other angles of this?
Looks to be, the circular rip on the bottom seems to be the same as the other. Thanks!
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What is it made of? It must weigh a ton!
I don’t suppose anyone knows the etymology of Kabuto? I can’t help but notice it’s very similar to Latin Capita meaning head.
Almost certainly it’s just a coincidence, of course. But both Indo-European and Japanese populations do have ANE ancestry, so there is a potential candidate for a common source, however unlikely that is.
Unfortunately, as Japonic is its own language family entirely, it’s almost certainly a coincidence. But wiktionary gives some possible etymologies here
From Old Japanese. Found in the Nihon Shoki of 720 CE with the reading kaputo.[1]
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 850,[1] 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). However, the “head” sense with the kabu reading does not appear until near the end of the Muromachi period.[1]
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; Old Japanese puto 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).
