Proto-North Caucasian: *mer(ʔ)V
Meaning: a k. of berry
Notes: Reconstructed for the PEC level. We must note some interlingual loans: 1) since the Lak and Darg. (Chir.) forms have an identical reduplication, it is probable that one of them borrowed from another (probably Darg. < Lak., since the form is known only in the Chirag dialect of Darg.); 2) Archi has a word mam 'raspberry', usually in the combination gʷac:ilin mam (lit. "mare's nipple"). It is probable that Archi borrowed the Lak. form mamar(i) and reinterpreted the -ar(i) part as the plural suffix, thus building a neologism mam (coinciding phonetically with mam 'nipple, breast' which is of course quite coincidental).
A form like PN *mur-iḳ (*mor-iḳ), reflected in Chech. mürg, was probably the source of Osset. murḳä 'guelderrose', further - Ad. marāḳʷa, Kab. mārḳʷa 'strawberry, blackberry', Ub. mǝ(r)ḳ́a- id., Abaz. maraḳʷa 'mulberry', Balk. marako 'strawberry' etc. This direction of borrowing is probable because in PN the element -iḳ is easily recognized as a suffix.
See Abayev 1973, 141; Shagirov 1, 266 with literature.
