I believe so. I researched it a bit more. According to http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ling&allowed_i... , which is a better resource than the sites I found earlier, it comes from Old English, meaning " 'person or thing of a specific kind or origin;' in masculine nouns also 'son of' (cf. farthing, atheling, O.E. horing 'adulterer, fornicator')."
It further clarifies: "Both these suffixes had occasional diminutive force, but this was only slightly evident in O.E. -ling and its equivalents in Germanic languages except Norse, where it commonly was used as a diminutive suffix, especially in words designating the young of animals (e.g. gæslingr "gosling"). Thus it is possible that the diminutive use that developed in Middle English is from Old Norse."
It appears then that "-ling" in Old English meant "person or thing of a specific kind or origin", which it shared with other Germanic languages, and grew to acquire the diminutive use after the Old Norse influence on English.
