anser.

Probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰh₂éns. This PIE term may have yielded Proto-Italic *hans, which shifted into *hāns due to a Latin rule mandating the lengthening of a vowel before ns. This new pre-form may have formed a paradigm of the shape *hāns ~ *hānsos, which perhaps possessed an accusative singular form *hānesem. This accusative form would then have evolved into *hānerem, which was then possibly remolded into *hānserem on the basis of the genitive singular form. It is perhaps possible that this accusative singular form then served to introduce -er- into the rest of the inflectional paradigm. However, in any case, *hānser is not attested from Roman material, which includes inscriptional attestation of the cognomen Ānser. The absence of h may be due to influence from the unrelated word anas (“duck”). Cognates include Sanskrit हंस (haṃsa), Ancient Greek χήν (khḗn), Russian гусь (gusʹ), Old Irish géiss, Old English gōs (English goose), and Albanian gatë (“heron”).