births
August 28, 1612
Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Dutch linguist and scholar (died 1653)
Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn
Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn was a Dutch scholar. Born in Bergen op Zoom, he was professor at the University of Leiden. He discovered the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed the existence of a primitive common language which he called 'Scythian'. He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. He excluded languages such as Hebrew from his hypothesis. He died in Leiden.