The Languages of Europe: A Cultural Introduction

A Cultural Introduction to the Languages of Europe

Prof. Joseph E. Garreau

I’ll begin with a little story, a true story that tells you about A German feels about an Italian, more exactly how a young German driving a German car felt about an Italian automobile. That was in the summer of 1961, I was hitchhiking on my way to Innsbruck, in Austria, to join a group of German and Austrian friends I had met at the university of Louvain in Belgium where I was a student at the time and go hiking with in the Austrian Alps. A young German salesperson in a blue Volkswagen, not the bettle but the 1500 squareback of old, picked me up on the German autobhan on his way to Munich. There was no speed limit on the autobahn in those days, and I still can see the needle past the 150 km mark, and that was fun ... Suddenly a red Alfa-Romeo sped by at about 170, 180... like a bolide (a French word from Latin bolis, from Greek bolis like a missile (or a missile). We both looked silently at the vanishing beauty. Then, my German driver said to me in perfectly intelligeable French : you see – he was talking about the fast and flashy Alfa-Romeo, that is the girl to love, but THIS, adding a gentle tap to the steering wheel of his reliable VW (pronounced “FaVé”) IS the girl to marry.

This true example shows how Germans see Italians : nothing in their view replaces Teutonic reliability. Italian women may be beautiful, fancy Italian cars are perhaps very fast, but we Germans prefer German engineering! A big difference!

Here is another important notation: One of the major cultural differences between northern Europe (Scandinavian countries, Benelux, British Isles, Austria and Germany) and southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece) is the way to conduct business, namely on a much more concessus-type approach in the north whereas it’s a more autocratic and authoritarian, - understand “bossy-type” in the south. Human nature may be the same everywhere but we do not think or act alike. The’re is, for example, an expression in Dutch ‘een zuideneuropees leventje’, which says it well. It can be translated as something like “a little life from the south of Europe” that is to say an easy life without problems.

We never must not forget the “weight” of European history : centuries of wars between the British and the French, the French and the Germans, the British and the Irish, the British and the Dutch. Why do you think we still say in English “to talk like a Dutch uncle” or “to go Dutch”? This is just a reminder of the time when the rivalry in international commerce between these two sea powers was high. Dutch courage, for the British, is the courage of the drunkards, a Dutch wife is (“pardon my French”) a bitch of a wife.

In the late Middle Ages, when the lingua franca was Latin, there were already a series of formulae more or less proverbial, in which were expressed stereotypes, which already were a form of linguistic racism. The most often quoted of these examples is the one about the multilingual Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (1500-1558) and what language he would employ. If he wanted to talk to men, the Emperor said, he would speak French; if he wanted to speak to ladies, he would speak Italian; to speak to his horse, he would speak German and, if he wanted to talk to God, he would speak Spanish. This is, of course, the Franco-Spanish version of the anecdote ; for the Italians, Italian, of course, is the language of men and French the effeminate language. . . German is also ill-treated in another proverb that goes back to the XVIIth century: “German howls, English cries, French sings, Italian plays the comedy, and Spanish talks.”

• Let’s begin with the French and see how other languages treat them. English first. Sure, we find ‘French cuisine’, ‘French dressing’ , ‘French fries’, but immediately after, in alphabetical order: ‘French kiss’, ‘French lover’, ‘to take the French leave’, and other pejorative expressions, such as the ‘pardon my French’ just mentioned...

Spanish treats the French a bit more generously. They say ‘desperdirse a la francesa’, (which means without saying good bye), the same as the Germans say ‘sich auf französich empfehlen’ (to escape the French way), which, in both cases seem to have been borrowed from English.

The Dutch may say about the French and their cuisine : ‘Leven als God in Frankrÿk’, that is to say : live like God in France, but they also nasty things about them: ‘Franse complimentem maken’ (to compliment the French way, that is say, ‘to flatter’), ‘Met de Franseslag’ (in the French manner, that is to say sloppy), and here is another one: ‘Parÿse opvattingen’ (Parisian ideas, which means allowing all kinds of debauchery).

The Danes are nor far behind: ‘frankske artikler’ (French articles, no! not le, la, les, but condoms). The French, on the other hand, used to say - for the now all too-common préservatifs - ‘capotes anglaises’ (= ‘English raincoats’). For the Danes, ‘franske postkort’ (French postcards mean erotic postcards). Here is another one: ‘franske ydelser’ (French benefits, by which, you must understand, mean not taxable).

From all this we gather a rather negative image of the French: flatterers, lazy and debauched for the Dutch; with a reputation for “taking the French leave”, not very trustworthy in a word. Or again, take the English dictionary and what it says in a Shakespeare’s concordance at the word French: “the lusty French”, “the false French, “the fearful French”.

Truly, the French have had bad press. As individuals they are much like anyone else, some good, some bad. But everyone has the same gripe about the French as a nation : that they’re arrogant. Even the English and the Germans think so, and they should know. They complain that the French act if they had invented culture, as if no one else could cook with élan, write poetry with panache, or behead aristocrats with finesse. For proof of French arrogance, people say, one need look no further than their generous contribution to the lexicon of snobbery, to which they have donated nouveau riche, parvenu, arriviste, petit bourgeois, faux pas and chauvinist, among others.

Now, what about the English?

The French say ‘capotes anglaises’, and the English reciprocate with ‘French letter’. In slang, you’ll hear the expression ‘les Anglais ont débarqué’ or ‘avoir ses Anglais’ (in reference to the red uniform of the British army in the XVIIIth century. For the French, the English are also des rostbifs, whereas the Dutch prefer to say ‘Engels gaar’, cooked the English way, that is to say badly prepared. But it’s mostly their supposed coolness that seems to dominate with stereotyped expressions such as : ‘Engels flegma’ in Dutch, le flegme britannique, or as they say in Danish “stive englændere’’, the ‘stiff English’.

More seriously, what does this mean? Let’s try to make sense out of this.

When you look at all these stereotyped expressions, which are like fossils or traces of times past, what do we see?

1. First, the profusion of popular ways to name people living on the other side of the border, based on their food habits: froggies or frogs, rosbifs, Krauts or sausage eaters, or macaroni or pizza eaters, with a geography based on four poles: overcooked roastbeef in England, saucisse and cabbage in Germany, frogs and escargots in France, and pasta and more pasta in Italy.

2. The second picture we get is simply the way the English talked about their neighbors, the French, the Dutch, and the Irish. You know some of these expressions about the Irish : ‘Irish bull’, ‘to get on’e Irish up’. In other words, these pejorative expressions are like fossils, traces of times past, reflecting the ideological look that the British cast on their former enemies and that have been kept in the language without, many times, any thought of offending anyome anymore.

3. There is a third form of racism prevalent in Europe, racism against foreigners. Just think of the word we use in French, Italian, Spanish for a foreigner: étranger, straniere, extraño, the word means both foreign and strange. In the Romance languages, the word for ‘stranger’ also means foreigner, outsider. It has a clear ‘them and us’ distinction.

Since the1950s, many new strangers have come to Europe –

Turks, Indians, Africans and Arabs - ‘guest’ workers are they’re call in German or former colonial subjects, some of whom are now in Belgium, France or England second generation Europeans. But there is a widespread reluctance to accept them as fellow Europeans. The Italian press has found a novel way of calling these people. They call them extracommunitarios, meaning from outside the European community, which disregards the large number who are European citizens. The expression has caught on, but in shortened form: they’re call the extras.

To me this outwardly innocuous little word (“extras”) is more dangerous than froggies or Krauts or rosbifs. Names can always hurt you. Sometimes they stick, sometimes people become what you call them. It’s been 1500 years since the Vandals devastated Gaul but - what do you think the word ‘vandalism’ come from? – they still get the blame for graffiti and broken public toilets.

There is indeed a paradox, Frogeaters, Rosbifs, Krauts, Macaronieters and others, in short the very people who call themselves names, are working toward a European Union and, at the same time, they don’t seem to stop making fun of each other.

[TO BE REWORKED] Is there is hope, it is with the young people of Europe required to study two foreign languages in school and having constant student exchanges. To study another language is to mold yourself into another view of the world, and go farther in your perception of the ‘other’, deeper than the fact he or she eats frog legs, cabbage, spaghetti or roast beef. This will take years. And whatever form the European Union takes, the non-flattering portrait is not going to fade away in one or two generations.

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E u r o p e a n E t y m o l o g i e s

Introduction

1. Some Examples

• Etymology : from Gr.etumos (true) and logia (science or study that deals with a certain subject) is the study of the origin, formation, and development of a word. Semantics is the study of meaning in language forms, particularly with regard to its historical change.

•Whisky < Gaelic uisce (which is pronounced [ishgui] and means water.

In a similar fashion, vodka is the diminutive of Russian voda, which also means water and can be compared to French eau-de-vie or Spanish agua ardiente.

• Carnaval < carnem levare = to take meat away = allusion to the meatless days of Lent. Cf. carême, < quadragesima dies (fortieth day), end of Christ’s fast in the desert.

• Marshal (high officer of state, of the army, in charge of ceremonies)

< OF. mareschal (mod. maréchal) < OHG.marah (horse) and scalc (servant) = he who takes care of horses.

• Pantaloon > pants, F. pantalon < San Pantal(e)one, a favorite saint in Venice, whose name means “all misericordious” (pan eleimon in Gr.) ; then a Venitian caracter in Italian comedy represented as a foolish old man (xvi); breeches in fashion after the Restoration (xvii); tight-fitting trousers which superseded knee-breeches (xviii); trousers in general (xix).

• Belladonna = “fair lady”: medicinal plant containing atropine, the propriety of which is to dilate the pupils of your eyes. Said to be so named because in Italy (xv) a face cosmetic was made from it, making the lady beautiful = bella donna.

• Symposium = “drink together”; initially a banquet. (same word: potion).

• Pregnant, Sp. incincta < from Latin etymology meaning wearing no belt.

• Stallion , Fr. étalon < (ad stallum) = at the stall, i. e. reserved for reproduction.

• Porcelain > china ware < porcella , diminutive of porca: sow: - porca, fem. of porcus swine; originally the shiny shells are said to have been so named from their resemblance to the vulva of a sow. Fr. procelaine, It. porcellana. [porcus < (0)F porc > pork: flesh of the pig used as food (xiii)].

•Book. In English, the word book is related to beechtree. In Russian, beech is said bouk. In German, a letter from the alphabet is Buchstab, which literally means a beech stick; letters were inscribed on such sticks.

• In Romance languages (Sp. and It. libro, Fr. livre > librairie > Engl. library), the word comes from Latin liber, i.e. the thin part of the tree between the cork and the sapwood, which is used as paper.

• The same vegetal origin is found in the word paper < papyrus. This Egyptian reed is also at the origin of the city of Byblos in Lebanon, which gave the word bible. It is interesting to note that exceptionally the word parchment

(< Fr. parchemin) is not linked to the vegetal world, etymologically it means “Parthian skin” i.e. writing material prepared from skins invented at Pergamum in Asia Minor.

2. Names of Monetary Units

[TO BE REVIEWED – add story of the Euro Ï ]

• The dollar is a deformation through bad pronounciation of the word Thaler, old German currency. The word comes from Joachimst(h)aler and the Joachim’s valley in Bohemia where mines were exploited to make silver coins.

• In Germany, the name mark comes from the mark that identifies the coins, such as the écu , i.e. the shield struck on old French coins of the same name, which is found in the Portuguese escudo. (ecu = European Currency Unit.)

• The franc is the beginning of the inscription from the legend Francorum rex = king of the Franks, on gold coins first struck in the reign of Jean-le-Bon (1350-64). We may compare it with the future European currency, the Euro, which is also a prefix.

• Many names of monetary units are linked to the idea of weight, the weight of a precious metal, usually gold. Peseta (peso) < Spanish silver coin : dim. of pesa weight. (from L. pensa, pl. of pensum > poise, to ponder, peser). < Pound = £ ( French reminiscence of livre = pound). Same in Italian (Turkish, Lebanese) with lira.

• British penny and German Pfennig are the same word, probably from Latin pannus, a cloth (pieces of cloth were in Barbarian Europe used as a medium of exchange).

• The florin (Netherlands) is a gold coin first issue at Florence in 1252. It. fiorino, from fiore flower; the coin originally so named bore the figure of a lily on the obverse.

• The Russian ruble comes from the verb roubit (to share, to partake). A ruble is a “parcel” of gold.

• The dinar of some Arabic countries is the equivalent of the old Latin currency thedenary, whereas the Morrocan dirham is the Greek drachma ; the rial is the king’s money: the réal. Denary, drachma, rial all are European names.

• The Haïtian gourde comes from Spanish gordo : big amount of money!

3. Names of Peoples and their Languages

• The Germanic tribe called the Franks, whose chief was Clovis, gave the French their name. In many foreign languages the name remains the same, simply deformed or “disfigured” by local phonetics and the different endings of the adjective form: Engl: French, Ger. Franzose, It. Francese, Sp. Francés,

Slavic Frantsouz, Arabic Fransaoui, etc.

• In Finnish, where are not used words beginning two consonants, the omission of the intial [F] in France, gives the name Ranska.

• The Japanese insert the letter u between f and r, which gives Furansu.

• The Chinese utilize an [a], which gives fa-lan-sa, shortenend in fa. The ideogram, i.e. the Chinese character that represents this fa means “law”. A Frenchman: fa-guo-ren [fakwojen] = “a man from the country of the law”.

• The Greeks, who are an old people, retain the Gallic name, i.e. the one preceding the invasions of the Frank tribes. France = Gallika.

• Germans are designated by one or the other of the Germanic tribes that settled in Germany, or in Allemagne (from the Alemanni) as we say in French. In the first case, the generic term of German is used, in the latter the name of a group of Germanic tribes, the Alemanni, who were defeated by the Franks in 496. The Sandinavians use the name Saksa (Saxons). The name Teuton, which means people or tribe in Celtic, is at the origin of what the Germans call themselves: Deutsch (< Lat. Theudisca ) or its Italian equivalent:Tedesco.

• The Russians call the Germans Nemtsy (Nemets in the singular), perhaps because they occupy territories situated beyond the Niemen river; or perhaps because they are “mute”(niémoï) for the Russians!

• Many peoples name their neighbors by using a pejorative term, which often stays with them for ever. Examples: The Greeks call “Barbaroi” those who did not speak their language, and consequently were the equivalent of savages.

Similarly, for a long period of time, the Western world considered North Africa populated by “barbaric” peoples and name them Berbers, who named themselves (in the singular form) Tamazight i.e. free man or Kabyle , i.e. man of the tribe.

Names can always hurt you. Sometimes they stick, sometimes people become what you call them. Wales is from welisc, the Saxon term for foreigner. Or the Gypsies, so called because they said they had come from Egypt. A last example: It’s been 1500 years since the Vandals - where do you think the word vandalism come from? devastated Gaul but they still get the blame for graffiti and broken public toilets!

4. Days of the Week and Months of the Year

• The days of the week very often are named according to their numerical order; thus in Portuguese: segunda feira (second fair) is Monday and so on until sexta feira (sixth fair), i.e. Friday. Saturday and Sunday retain their religious reference: sabado (sabbath), and domingo (Sunday), day of the Lord (Dominus in Latin).

• In English and in German, Sunday /Sonntag is the day of the sun; Monday / Monntag is the day of the moon = lundi; lunedi; Tuesday is the day of Mars, god of war and fire; Wednesday, mercredi = day of Mercury, god of commerce and trade, or in English day of Wotan, Germanic god of war. In German, as in Russian, Wednesday is the middle of the week (Mittwoch). Thurday, day of Jupiter (in Latin Jovis dies), is Donnerstag, literally day of Thunder, the latter being the attribute of Jupiter. In English, Thursday is derived from thunresday <thunder. Friday, (French: vendredi, day of Venus), is equally devoted to woman in both English and German (Freitag): i.e. the day of Frigg, the spouse of the god Wotan. Saturday is the day of the planet Saturn.

• The names of the months have a great unity in European languages. The first months of the year originate in names of gods, goddesses, emperors or Roman holidays, such as Janus for January, februa, feast of the Purification, for February; Mars for the god of war; Maius, god of vegetation; Junius for June; Julius (Caesar) for July; Augustus for August. The last months are a reference to their numerical order in the old Roman calendar, which began in March with the arrival of spring, from Sept-tember (seventh month) until Dec -ember (tenth month).

• Finnish is a very rare exception. The names of the months are linked to nature. Thus there is the month of the oak tree, seeding, wheat or mud, which somewhat resembles the calendar used by the French Revolution (fructidor, ventôse, etc.)

5. Names of Persons

• Are of Semitic origin first names ending in -el, which is the root of Allah, meaning God. Names, such as Michael, Emmanuel, Daniel, Raphaël, have the meaning of “similar to God”, “God with us”, “God has judged” , “God has healed”. . .

• First names originating in Greek are mostly compound names: Veronica : “the true icône i.e. image; Christopher: “carrying Christ” ; Philip: “who loves horses”; Eugene: “of a good race”; Alexander “defender of men”. One also finds simple first names: Stephen (Stefano, Etienne crown; Basil, equivalent to Vassili: :the king; Catherine: the pure; (Cf. the Cathars); Sophia, wisdom (cf. philósophos: : lover of wisdom).

• Latin first names, examples: Cesar, Julius, Antony, Aimé, René(e): reborn through baptism, Felix: happy, Victor: victorius.

• First names of Germanic origin come from pagan names of men (and women) who were later canonized by the Church; Richard: hard king; Karl / Charles: manly; Hugh: intelligence; Albert (Adal berht): noble and brillant.

• For your curiosity: In the Caribbean (Lesser Antilles), it was customary in colonial times to give as a first name the one figuring on the calendar. So you could have Fetnat (for those born on July 14, Fête nationale) or Immaculéon (December 8) or Pievépape (Pie V, pape).

6. Family Surnames

• In Europe, family names, much more recent that first names, appeared when a registry for baptism and, later on, a civil registry, were kept. Nobles, usually, bore the name of their estate (Michel de Montaigne), whereas people of the common adopted as patronym such and such particularity: character trait, physical appearance, or a personal designation which had passed into a professed trade. Some examples of names of trade: Le febvre < Latin faber (Cf. fabricate); Schneider in German is the same as Taylor in English; Cooper is one who makes and repairs casks; Thatcher is one who makes or repairs roofs, especially with straw; Eisenhauer (Eng. Eisenhower), one who strikes iron.

• Among the many traits indicating physical appearance, examples (in French) are many: Boiteux (Lame), Têtu (Stubborn), Lecourt (The Short), Lelong, Lenoir, Leblond. Are numerous also names indicating a geographical origi, or names linked to a particularity of the land: Deschamps (from the fields), Duchêne (of the oak tree), Dubois (of the woods), - as well as Siobud, Dubois written backwards. Maisonneuve (of the new house). In English, we have Churchill: hill of the church, Copperfield: field of copper.

• It is interesting to note also how some Jewish names of people who have settled in Europe have been modified. Some have retained the name of the religious function, such as Cohen, Levi, Kaplan (priest assistant), others have chosen a name linked to the emblem of the tribe to which they were attached. Thus, the tribe of Juda, whose emblem is the lion, have given in German names such as Löwen. The Nephtali tribe, whose emblem is the deer, has given many Hirsh families, or the wolf of the Benjamin tribe, people by the name ofWolf. Jacob evokes in the Bible the story of Jacob at the well; in the Netherlands, in translation, we may find people by the name of Putteman (from Latin puteus, “people from the well”, Eng. pit, Sp. pozo, It. pozzo. Hence in Italy people by the name of Pozzo.

A well-known French last name is that ofVeil, simply the anagram of Levi.. In the Caribbean, there are names such as Manlius, from the Roman centurion awaken by the geese of the Capitol, or names such as Balicoups (baille-lui des coups = beat him up), whose ancestor probably must have been in charge of administering corporal punishment.

7. Some Examples of Toponymy.

• Istanbul (the ancient Constantinople = Constantinopolis: the city of Constantine) owes its supposed etymology to the Greek phrase Eistan polis, “here is the city” said by a Turk. But it may as well be the simple deformation of Constantinopolis.

• Naples < Neapolis : “new city”. Saragossa < deformation of “Caesar Augustus”; Badajoz < Paz de Agosto: “peace of Augustus”. Many Spanish names have an Arabic origin: Valladolid (i.e. Belad el-walid) is “the country of the father”; in Grenada the Alhambra is al-hamra (the red), from the color of the stone used to construct the palace. Guadalajara, oued el-Haraja, is “the river of pebbles”. Cadiz bears a Phoenician name, a deformation of Gaddir (wall), which we find in the Berber city of Agadir in Morroco.

• In Portugal, the capital city of Lisbon (Lisboã), according to some philologists, stands for Olisippo, “the city of Ulysses”, and, according to others, Alisibbo, a Phoenician name meaning “good harbor”.The province of Algarve originates in the Arabic al-gharb (the west), which we find in Maghreb, lit. “where the sun sets” i.e. the west. Trafalgar (Taraf al-Gharb) = “direction of the west”.

• In Greece, Athens owes its name to Athena, daughter of Zeus, goddess of Art & Thought. Thessaloniki comes from the name of Alexander the Great’ s sister.

• in Germany, Munich or München, evokes the word “monk” (in OHG munih). Köln bears a Roman name: the ancient Colonia (in French, Cologne) Agrippinensis. Similarly, Koblenz draws its name from the Latin Confluentes, the cofluent of Rhine and Mosell. Mainz (Mayence) is a bit more complicated: it is the old Moguntiacum, from the name of a Celtic god, known as Mogo.

• Austria (Autriche) is a deformed pronunciation of Österreich, “Orient Empire”. Its capital, Vienna, is a simplification fromVindobona, a pre-Latin appellation meaning “white location”.

• Zurich (in Latin Duriacum ) comes from the Celtic root*dur , which means water, the same as in contemporary Breton. Basel (Bâle) was in Greek Basilea, the royal (city).

• Luxembourg is also a deformation, that of Lützelburg : small protected castle.

• In the Netherlands, (Holland < holt : woods = a “wooded land”), the names of cities ending in -dam evoke a dam or a barrier constructed across a waterway. Amsterdam is “the Amstel dam”.

• In Belgium, the city of Mons (a Flemish appellation of “monts” = mounts), not surprisingly, is called Bergen in Flemish, i.e. “mounts”. Brussels, originally Bruoc Sella, is composed of Broek (marshes) and seli (dwelling). In Flemish, Antwerpen (Anvers), means “with piers / jetties running out into the sea”.

• In Denmark, literally “march -- [from Frankish *marka i.e. “boundary] - of the Danes”, the capital Copenhagen (København) means “port of merchants”, (cf. German kaufen, to buy).

• In Iceland, “ice country”, the name of its capital, Reykjavik, means “smoking bay”. (Reyk has the same root as German rauchen, to smoke.

• Sweden owes its local name of Sverige to the Varangian people, one of a group of Scandinavian seafarers who established a dynasty in Russia in the ninth century.

• In Great Britain, if we’re not sure of the origin of the name London, we know that Oxford means what is says: the ford of the oxen, the Greek equivalent of which is Bosporus. All the endings in -chester (Winchester, Manchester...) originate in Latin castra (camp). The Essex county is “the country of the Saxons from the east” in opposition to Sussex, which is “that of the Saxons from the south”.

• In France, many cities bear the names of peoples or tribes, whether Gallic or not. (Parisii) > Paris, Angers, Nantes, Poitiers, etc.. Many places bear also a religious name: Saint-Brieuc, Saint-Malo. Sometimes, the name suggests a monastery, Moutiers, or a specific cult (Montmartre : mount of martyrs). Some towns have their names linked to a person: Orléans evokes the emperor Aurelianum. Châteauroux is “le château de Raoul ; Cherbourg comes from Caesaris burgus: the village of Caesar. In Normandy, the names of cities ending in -fleur are a deformation of the Scandinavian word fjord ; for example, Barfleur = “the creek in the shape of a wedge ; Dieppe, simply means “deep”. In the East, the names ending in -wy originate from Latin vicus, meaning village; Longwy = “the long village”. The English equivalent, even closer to original Latin, is-wick (ex. Gatwick, the “Goat Farm”) or -wich (ex. Greenwich).

• To conclude: Indo-Europeans, more than other peoples perhaps, appear to exalt the cult of personality. The Greek emperor Alexander, for example, gave his name to Alexandria (Egypt), Qandahar (India), Iskenderun (Turkey). Roman emperors have been particularly celebrated. Just in France, we have Orléans (<Aurelianus), Grenoble (Gratianopolis), Coutances (<Constantia), Cherbourg (Caesaris burgus). We find the name of Caesar in Israel (Césarée), Kayseri (Turkey), Jerez (Spain); Augustus in Augsburg (Germany), Aoste (Italy), Badajoz (Spain), Famagouste (Cyprus), or, with both names together, Saragossa (Caesar Augustus). Saints, all over Europe, have also given their names to many cities and towns.

We’ve seen the same cult of personality in former USSR, but it lasted just the time of a revolution! Leningrad has returned to its previous Saint-Petersburg. Outside Europe we have, of course, Washington, Harare (Zimbabwe) after the name of a tribal chief, Hochiminhville (formely Saïgon).

Finally, in topology, God seems to be less present than his saints. In France, we have Villedieu (The City of God), in Sweden, Göteborg, ... and that’s about it. Let’s mention alsoAllahabad in India and Bagdad in Irak.

THE INDO-EUROPEAN GROUP

The languages from the Indo-European group, i.e a family of some 132 diverse but related tongues that range from Armenian to Swedish, are spoken by half of humanity. The most distant ancestor that we can study is Sanskrit, one of the first languages of written culture.

Let’s begin by examining the mysterious family ties that link languages as diverse as Russian, English, Latin, Greek, Hindi, Bengali, Singhalese, French and others. The most known example of similarity of that of numbers, where the systematic character of variations helps us prove that we are not talking about coincidences but family resemblance.

Let us select English, German, Spanish, French, Greek, Russian, Persian, and Bengali (8 languages)

EN GER SP FR GR RU PER BEN

1 one eins uno un énas odin yek êk

2 two zwei dos deux dio dva do dui

3 three drei tres trois tris tri sé tin

4 four vier cuatro quatre tésséris tchetyrié tchahar car [tshar]

5 five fünf cinco cinq penté piat’ pandj panc [pantch]

6 six sechs seis six heksi shest shish choe [chhoy]

7 seven sieben siete sept hepta siem haft shat

8 eight acht ocho huit okto vosiem hasht at

9 nine neun nueve neuf énia déviat no noe

10 ten zehn diez dix déka désiat dah dosh

hundred hundert ciento cent hékaton sto sad shô

EUROPEAN ETYMOLOGIES

I. MALE & FEMALE

1. Woman...

• At the origin, we don’t find “Adam’s rib” but an Indo-European root: *dhé (to suck), which we find in the Greek word thêlê (nipple, teat). The Latin felare (same meaning) takes us to the word femina, (femme), by definition “the one who breast feed”. From the same root is the Latin fetus or foetus (pregnancy), which takes us to filiation. (fils, fille, figlio, filho, Sp. hijo). Hijo gives us the etymology of the famous hidalgo, the origin of which is hijodalgo, “son of something”, which is the condition of every being of masculine sex, notwithstanding in vitro fertilization.

The literary term fecundity (borrowed from French fécondité), i.e. fertility, goes back to the same root, but also to felicity (happiness), since the Latin felix meant fertile and therefore happy (Sp. feliz, It. felice).

You may be surprised to discover that Latin fenum, Sp. heno, It. fieno, Fr. foin (hay) and Latin fenusculum, (lit. “small hay”), Eng. fennel, French fenouil, Sp, hinojo, It. finocchio have the same root. However, this does not tell us why in Italian slang a homosexual is called finocchio.

• (Just a note discovered in a recent British book: “Aside from finocchio, which is of Florentine origin, the most common pejoratives for gay men in modern Italy are frocio, more or less equivalent to ‘faggot’, and recchione (sometimes rendered as ricchione). The latter originated in Naples and may derive from orecchio (ear), touching their earlobes being one way that men would signal to others that they were gay. In Mafia slang a gay man is a seicento (six hundred), a reference to the rear-enginded Fiat 600.” (Your Mother’s Tongue A Book of European Invective, by Stephen Burgen, London, 1996, 136)

Here is how we can show the evolution of the Indo-European roots that take us to femme, Frau, mujer, moglie, dame, donna, doña.

*dhé *per *dem

(to suck) (forward) (domestic)

Latin Gothic Latin Latin

felare fra mulier domus

French Engl Ger Spanish Italian French Italian Spanish

femme from Frau mujer moglie dame donna doña

It’s another Latin root, mulier, that takes us to Spanish mujer, Italian moglie (spouse). The Italian donna didn’t follow a straight progression road (*dem, in Indo-European, designated the idea of domesticity). This takes us to Latin domus (house) and the master of the house, dominus (master). Thus we have in English (some borrowed from the French) domicile, domain, donjon, dominate, domestic, etc.

The most curious one is the word danger, directly connected to dominus. In Low, decadent Latin, dominus had given the word dominiarium (dominion) power, which has evolved in French into the form dongier and has given the expression “estre en dongier”, i.e. to be under the control, or the power of somebody, and therefore . . . in a dangerous situation. The same root dominus reappears in the Spanish title don (Master), the French dame et the Italian donna: by definition la “bella donna” stays home!

The English woman, for it part, is an alteration of wifeman, the wife of the man, (which is found in the other Germanic languages: Ger. Weib, Dutch wijf, Danish viv ); this at the time when the word man designated a person of both sexes. In German, the word for woman, Frau, is related or linked to Indo-European *per (forward, through), Greek peri (around), Latin per (through), which in Gothic gave the root fra- (indicating origine). It gave also the English preposition from.

2. Man, the “terrestrial being”

In Romance languages, man, is linked to an Indo-European root *khem-, meaning “earth”. We have in English (from French) the words humus and humility. Man, by definition, is a “terrestrial” being (by opposition to God, the “celestial” being). However, the Latin term, homo, at its origin designated man and woman, both terrestrial beings. With time, the term became more specific and designated a human being of male sex: homme, hombre, uomo, homem. During the Middle Ages, in Europe, the whole vocabulary of feudality will be based on the same word homo: hommage /homage (homenaje, omaggio, homenagem. Besides homo, Latin also used another term, meaning more specifically of “male sex”, the word vir (related to Indo-European *wir (man), which takes us to such words as: viril, virtue, virtuous. This demonstrates what esteem was granted to the male sex!

Here is a telling example: in Latin we had the word virago, which originally meant a woman who has the ‘virtu’ i.e. the courage of a man. In today’s French (kept in English), a virago is “a woman who looks like a man”, i.e. lacking feminity. The fact that this latter word has taken such a pejorative meaning in French, for example, is a clear indication of the type of machismo or male superiority that took hold in the Mediterranean world. In short, woman cannot compete with man in the domain of virtue! (Or compare the two Spanish expressions: “el hombre de la calle” i. e. the regular guy , and “una mujer de la calle” i.e. a prostitute).

In Germanic languages, man is still more pretentious. His name is linked to the root *men-, which designated the process of thinking. Therefore, English man, German Mann, Danish mand, are all related to the word mind.

*men *khem

“thought” “earth”

Gothic Latin

man homo

“I think”

Engl Dutch German Danish French Italian Spanish Portuguese

man man Mann mand homme uomo hombre homem

The doublet homo-vir (human species - man) still exists in German: Mann - Mensch, whereas it has disappeared in English and in Romance languages. Remains a “small” problem: that of human rights! When we say in French les droits de l’homme, or in Italian diritti dell’uomo, do we mean to include the rights of the woman as well? German says: Menshenrechte, the same as English human rights, and Spanish derechos humanos. Canadian French found the solution by saying droits de l’être humain.

Concluding on a light note, on could argue that man seems less important than woman, since the word man has given the indefinite derivative: one in English, on in French, (based on the simplification homo > omo >om >on) and German man, which means one, people, as in Man spricht deutsch , lit.: One speaks German. Some German feminists however are not happy with this abusive use of the indefinite and have proposed to replace man by Frau!

3. Father and Mother

The pair father-mother constitutes one of the most telling examples of the “family links” betwen Indo-European languages. Indeed, when we consider the following chart, it’s hard to doubt *pater -*matr were the original Indo-European roots. Let’s start with Sanskrit, Greek and Latin; then from the Romance language side and Old English and Old German to modern English, German, Danish and Dutch.

Sanskrit: pitar-matar Old English: faeder-modor

Greek: pater-mêtêr Old High German: fater-muoter

Latin: pater-mater Danish: fader-moder

French: père-mère ` Dutch: vader-moeder

Italian: padre-madre German: Vater-Mutter

Port.: padre-madre English: father-mother

Span.: padre-madre

We notice the phonetic equivalencies originating in the Indo-European *p ; we notice also that the *m initial remains unchanged. However, this does not mean that father and mother are two invariant, i.e. unchanged notions through centuries of evolution. Everything leads us to believe that there was, in early Indo-European languages, no present day parallelism between our words father and mother.

The Indo-European *pater is the chief, father as well as priest or boss, whereas *matr denominates all the women within a social cell, mother as well as female servants and slaves. The emphasis is placed on the father, whose social importance is overvalued in relation to the mother. Here is an example: etymologists have been able to reconstruct a whole set of vocabulary to designate the man’s family, such as “mother of the husband”, “father of the husband”, “sister of the husband”, “wife of the husband’s brother”, etc., without being able to reconstruct anything similar on the woman’s side.

Incidendally - feminists would say not surprisingly- this over-valuation of the importance of the father is far from being universal: in a semitic language like Arabic for example, one finds the same root for the word mother, the word um, and the idea of community of all Muslims, or that of nation: the word umma. In Hebrew, the Jews for example, consider that only the mother can transmit “Jewishness” to the chidren.

*matr

Germanic

Greek Latin West Germanic N. Germanic

mêter mater

French Italian Spanish Portuguese English German Dutch Danish

mère madre madre madre mother Mutter moeder moder

*pater

Germanic

Greek Latin West Germanic N. Germanic

patêr pater

French Italian Spanish Portuguese English Ger Dutch Danish

père padre padre padre father Vater vader fader

In summary, *pater and *matr had a much contrasted lineage. Around the notion of father has developped a system essentially linked to property and its transmission: the father is the garantor of both the land and the property, the well-named patrimony, he is the protector of the family, therefore the patron (boss). He transmits the membership, i.e. the idea of belonging to a larger group, which, in Romance languages, took the name of patria (fatherland). This idea of patria is everywhere linked to the father, although in English we alternate betwen fatherland and motherland (We always say in French “la mère patrie”).

French Italian Spanish English German

patrie patria patria fatherland Vaterland

patrimoine patrimonio patrimonio patrimony Vatererbe

patron patrón padrone Patron patron

Things are somewhat different on the mother’s side, “the one who gives life”, who guarantees legal maternity (if there are doubts as to who can be the father, there is no doubts when it comes to the mother!). The mother,therefore, symbolizes reproduction. Following these different directions, we find first the idea of marriage, with in Sp., It., Port., the word matrimonio. (There was also in Old French the word matremoigne, the ancestor of mariage).

The Latin matrix meant both the female ready to give birth, and, in a larger sense, a stock bearing offshoots (cf. offspring in English). We have in English the word matrix used in linguistics or in math; the word matrice in French means the womb, the uterus. We say in English “to register”and in Romance languages, e.g. in French, “immatriculer”. This matrix / stock stump leads in Spanish to the word madera, Port. madeiro, (wood), French madrier (beam), Sp.madero, Port. maddeiro and It. madrillo, with the same sense. This leads also to the word matter and material (Ger. Materie, Fr. matière, Sp. materia, etc.

4. Emperor, partisan and parents

The Indo-European root *per, with the sense of procurating, quickly separated into three branches: one that expresses the notion of bringing to the world (Lat. parere), the second, the notion of preparing: parare, and third, the notion of portion, part (Lat. pars).

*per

Latin parere Latin parare Latin pars

(to give birth) (to prepare) (part)

parents to separate party

parturition emperor partisan

In the three cases, the basic idea of procurating remains as the origin of the word: parere (to give birth) is to procurate a child to the husband, parare means to prepare with the intention of giving, and pars designates the part or portion granted to someone. But this basic meaning evolved in three directions.

1. With parere (to give birth), things are relatively simple: we have the word parent (Sp. pariente, It. and Port. parente), and in these three languages the word parto, which in French isaccouchement and in English delivery - although we’ve kept the Latin in post-partum depression..

2. The Latin form parare, for its part, very logically gave in French parer (It. parare, Sp. parar) with the meaning of blocking or stopping, and its derivatives: prepare, repair, separate. The word appareil (apparel) is directly linked to the idea of preparation: the word originally means preparations, before taking its modern sense.

3.The Latin verb imperare, still derived from parare, had, for his part, taken the sense of “to take measures”, “to direct”, hence, in Latin imperium and imperator, which leads us to empire and emperor, (empereur, imperador, imperatore).

Remains pars, which brings to the verb to part, to separate, to partake, hence “to part from somebody” (Port. and Sp. partir, It. partire), Eng. party.

From there we have the word partisan (partigiano, partidario): a militant supporter of a party.

To complete the family, let’s finish with uncle and aunt. The Indo-European designated inclusively a grandparent with the term *aw, which gave in Latin avus, grandfather, It. avo, Sp. abuelo, and avunculus, i.e. “the mother’s brother”, which gave in French oncle, Eng. uncle. In fact, the Romans distinguished between the paternal uncle (patruus), the maternal uncle, just mentionned, (avunculus), the paternal aunt (amita), and the maternal aunt (matertera). Two of these terms have disappeared. Remained solely uncle and aunt (from amita). In French, baby-talk transformed the wordante to tante. (In popular Canadian French, I’m told that they go to a “second degree”, and say “ma matante ”).

The Italian zio and Spanish tîo (zia and tía) come from Greek theios via Low Latin thius.

5. The children : brothers and sisters

The latin word infans, which gave the word enfant, infante, infancy, meant “he who does not talk”. At the origin, there is the root *bha, which gave the Latin verb fari: to talk. By definition infancy is a very short period of life.

As for brothers and sisters, we need to go back to *bhrater, which changed into frater in Latin, frère in French, fratello in Italian (in the sense of “Frère Jacques”). It corresponds to the Spanish fray (Fray Luis de León) and the Italian fra (Fra Angelico). The same root is found in Germanic languages via the Gothic brothar: Eng. brother, Dutch broeder, Danish broder.

The same Indo-European root had given in Greek phratêr, with a slightly different sense: “a member of a phratria”, which gave in old French confrarie, an association of religious men, modified into confrérie through the influence of the word frère.

The word sorella, sister in Italian, soeur in French finds its origins in *swes via the Latin soror, whereas Gothic swistar gave English sister, German Schwester, Dutch zuster, and Danish soster. The Latin term soror had in addition another form, that of sobrinus, which gave cosobrinus, to designate the children of two sisters, which, in turn, led to French cousin and English cousin. All in the family!

6. Race and Engine/ Engineer

One Indo-European root, *gen/*gne had a large very progeny (offspring)! The first Latin form corresponding to this root: genere, is found in a whole set of terms, such as to engender (in Physicsto generate ), engendrer, generation ; as well as the word gens in French, (Sp. and It. gente), as well as the word gentil (Sp. gentil, It. gentile, Engl. genteel). The original sense, of course, was “belonging to the same race”. Then in Church Latin Gentiles came to mean the non-Jews, a calque i.e. a copy on the Hebew word goim. Belonging to “the same gender”, you are necessarily “generous”!

From the same root *gen we have finally the word germain (which we translate in Eng. as cousin), which in French retained at first the sense of “frère” (brother), a sense kept in Spanish in hermano and Portuguese irmão.

The French word engin (which gave engine), which before designating a machine meant skillfulness, dexterity, in a word ingeniosity, gave the word engineer. Surprise? The Sartrean word “néant” (nothingness) has the same origin: néant <ne gentem: no one, nothing).

This prolific root gave in Latin another form, nasci (to be born) and an abundant offspring: the verb naître in French, (nacer, nascere), aîné (antius natus = born before) , Noël (day of birth), nature, nation, etc.

The French word imprégner, Eng. impregnate, which meant in the Middle Ages to fecundate was confused or mixed up with the word empreindre (lit. to imprint). We find the same image in Italian and in Spanish with the word pregno full, and the words for pregnancy, It. prenezza, Sp. preñez.

Finally there is the Greek form gono-, that we find in a series of technical terms such as gene, genealogy, cosmoginy, genesis, genetic, etc.

When we compare all these Greek and Latin terms with the Germanic side, we find only a few. The root *gen is found in the Gothic kunni, tribe, then in English with the word kind (genre, sort) and in German with Kind, meaning child.

?? genteel

II. PARTS OF THE BODY

1. Feet and hands

The word designating the foot is also among the word showing best the continutity of Indo-European languages: from the Indo-European root *ped to Sanskrit pat, to Greek pous-podos and to latin pes-pedis, then to French poed,

Sp. pie, Port. pé and It. piede.

The Gothic fotus, for its part, is at the origin of the word foot, Danish fod, Dutch voet and German Fuss.

Correspondences

*p *gen-/*gne

Latin Gothic Latin

genere kunni nasci

to generate genie kin, kind Noël

progeny Kind naïf

genre engine pregnant nature

generous engineer impregnate nation

Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic

p p p f

No surprise in discovering that the same root has produced pédicure (chiropodist), podium. What about pedigree in English? The word is a deformation of French “pied de grue”. The word “péage”, which we translate as toll, is a payable fee to have the right to set foot. A pionnier, Eng. pioneer has also the same root.

The hand, “on the other hand”, has a less linear story. We have a Greek root, palamê, palma in Latin, which ended in French paume, the palm of your hand. Hence the series of words such as plaine, planche, llano, llanada, plancha, plato in Spanis ; piano, pianura, piatto in Italian.

From the Latin manus, we have manual, maintenance, manuscript, manoeuvring, manner, mandate, etc. and all their cognates. However the connection between manus and emancipatio is less evident. In Latin, the verb mancipare (to sell), meant to take with the hand. The suffix -cipare, which has the same origin has to chase, had the sense of “catching”. Therefore, emancipation (ex-mancipare) i.e. freeing of slaves is the opposite of possession.

2. Leg / Gambling & Vaulting Room

This time, it’s a European root (rather than Indo-European) *kamg, expressing the idea of curvature, (Greek kampê), then of articulation, that leads us to two words with no apparent relations: leg and room.

What is called in Frenchjambe or in Italiangamba is by definition “that which can bend”, and so is jambon (ham), Sp. jamón. We have in English, talking of animals - and lottery -- the verb to gambol (a wild jump into luck?).

The same root, *kamb, takes us to Greek kamara, a vaulted roof, then to Latin camera, and to the verb derived from it: camerare, “to build in the shape of a vault”. Therefore, by definition, the word chamber, chambre, It. camera, Port. camara, GermanKammer, cannot have a flat ceiling. (The French word plafond means exactly what it says: plat fond : flat bottom

However, whether with flat, vaulted or cathedral ceiling, a chambre has always been the place where one would hide one’s possessions, which could attract prospective robbers, who nicknamed a chambre cambriole ; which, for example, explains the word cambriolage in French i.e. breaking and entering.

On the other hand, between friends, one shares a chambre, hence the word camarade in French and comrade in English, Kamerad in German, camarad in Spanish and Portuguese, camerata in Italian; it’s always the same idea of “sleeping under the same roof”, (vaulted or not)!

3. Head

Both words, French tête and Italian testa, are atypical and isolated: they originate in Latin testa, meaning an earthern vase. Testa has obviously retained the trace of a pleasant image, which we find today in many slang words in French, assimilating the head to a pot or a bottle: bouille, cafetière, carafon, fiole.

To understand the other designations used for head, one needs to go back to Latin caput, a word originating in the Indo-European root *kap, which we find also in the Greek kephalê and the German Gipfel (summit, top).

*kap

Greek Latin Gothic

kephalê caput haubit

capitia

French Italian Portuguese Spanish English German Dutch Danish

chef capo cabeça cabeza head Haupt hoofd hoved

Thee Indo-European *k has evolved into a h in Germanic, hence the word head, German Haupt, Dutch hooft, and Danish hoved. The Latin caput evolved into French chef (in English chief) and Italian capo, whereas a popular Iberic form, capitia, gave cabeça in Portuguese and cabeza in Spanish.

The same head or summit is at the origin of the word chapter (chapitre, capítulo, capitolo), as well as “capital” punishement: French décapiter, Italian decapitare, Sp. descabezar, Port. descabeçar), and a certain number of words designating different kinds of chiefs: caudillo, caporal, capitán and jefe in Spanish, caporale and capitano in Italian, etc.

Along the same paradigm, we have the verb precipitate : “to fall with the head forward” (Sp. precipitar, It. precipitare).

Finally, the same Indo-European root gave in Latin capitalis, capital. The word cattle (in French cheptel) first meant riches or possessions, a proof that in a primitive rural society the maincapital was the ownership of many heads of cattle.

4. (Evil) Eye, graft and carnation

The Indo-European root *ok, (eye) leads to Sanskrit aksi (eyes), to Greek osse (with another Greek form, ophthalmos, as well as the Latin oculus. However, the word oculus in Latin had also the meaning of bud, hence the word inoculare (to graft), Engl. inoculate, as in “to inoculate a patient against a disease”.

The suffix -ox is found in such words as atrox (atrocious), lit. “looking black”, and ferox (ferocious), lit. “with a fierce eye”. Féroce and atroce have their Romance cognates: feroce, atroce in Italian, atroz and feroz in Spanish, atroz and fero in Portuguese.

Gothic augo, similarly to Greek ophthalmos, have not followed the normal development of the Indo-European form *ok. Most likely the Gothic word augo has been volontarily modified in order to avoid to pronounce the word “eye”, for fear of the “evil eye”. Therefore, we have eye in English, Auge in German, oog in Dutch, øje in Danish. We have here a common phenomenon, which consists, in order to respect a taboo, to deform or to modify an appellation, because of the naïve belief that the word itself and the thing that it so named are one.

The slit shape of the eye gave birth to an image, which is at the origin of the Spanish word ojal and It. occhiello, boutonnière or botton hole. We’ve seen that the verb “inoculate” at first meant “to graft”; we stay in the same field with the word “oeillet” (carnation), by definition “a little eye”, which at first designated the eyelets of a shoe, then the odorous flower, oeillet in French, carnation (because of its fleshy colors) in English, and clavel in Spanish. Clavel finds its origin in the word clavo, meaning both nail and cloves , because of the powerful smell. In Italian, garofano means both carnation and cloves.

III. ANIMALS

To those who would doubt that animals have a soul, etymology has a formal and formidable answer, since the two words, animal and anima, soul, refer to the same Indo-European root, *ane-ani, breath, and more specifically vital breath. Are we in for some surprises?

1. Bee, Honey, and Flee

Men have been gatherers before practicing agriculture, hunters before raising cattle. Therefore wild honey was one of the products men gathered in the wild ; only much later did they trap bees to produce honey in beehives.

The Indo-European root *medhu (honey) became *mel in European languages; thus we have meli in Greek, mel-mellis in Latin, which gave

Fr. and Sp. miel, or It. miele. Curiously however, English (where miel is honey, from Anglo-Saxon hunig (cf. German Honig, Danish honning and Dutch honig) goes back to the *mel root to create the word mildew -word for word “honeydew”, to name a disease in plants, especially vine and potato plants.

The bee, for its part, is named quite differently according to languages. English bee, Dutch bij, and German Biene remain faithful to Indo-European *bhei. Greek inovates by naming the bee melissa “honey flee”, probably because the Greeks avoided to give the insect its real nam during the harvesting season for fear of bringing bad luck (another taboo). In Romance languages, the name came from Latin apicula, a diminutive of apis, which became abeja in Spanish, abelha in Port, abelha in langue d’oc (southern France), hence the French abeille. Old French had a form stemming from apis, which was ef (pronounced é) and had become too brief to remain as such, hence the borrowing from langue d’oc (also known as Old Provençal). Italian has retained the short form ape.

If honey is an old commodity that men and bears have been consuming for millenia, there is no Indo-European word for beehive, simply because the beehive had not been invented: men were satisfied to gather honey from bees in the wild.This explains why the forms are recent and varied: arnia in Italian, colmena in Spanish (Celtic origin? we don’t know), French ruche (from rusca, of Gaulish origin, rusca = bark). In English we have hive, in Dutch huif (perhaps from Latin cupa, (cask, vat), German Bienenkorb, lit.“bee basket”.

What about beewax? The Greek kêros and Latin cera gave in Italian and Spanishcera as well as cierge (religious candle), Sp. cirio, It. cero, Germ. Kerze.

In summary we see that the semantic field of bee, honey, and wax takes root at an early period in history and retains a certain unity: beekeeping (or apiculture < api (bee)) is an ancient and generalized practice in Europe (Read Virgil).

From the bee to the fly, there is but a flapping (flutter?) of wings. Again an Indo-European root *mu-/mus-, which we find with the same sense in Latin musca (“Puer, abige muscas”), gave the French mouche, Sp. and Port. mosca, Germ, Mücke (we’ll also see another form, Fliege). From the word mosca, Spanish derived mosquito, which was kept in English, French say moustique, German Moskito. The Italian form, moschetto, designated at first the arrow shot from a crossbow, before designating the arm itself. Thus we have in Spanish the word mosquete, French mousket, and English musket.

Here is how we can summarize the philological evolution of the musca (flee) turned into a musket.

*mu

Latin musca

French Italian Spanish

mouche mosca mosca > mosquito

French Italian

mousquet

moustique moschetto musket

We haven’t dealt with the English fly yet, nor the German Fliege. Both words stem from a German root, *fliek, with the sense of “flying” or “fleeing”. This explains the English verb to fly, German fliegen, but also in Romance languagesflecha in Spanish, flèche in French, freccia in Italian, which we call an arrow, but simply means “a thing that flies”. Thus the flee has given its name to two weapons, which is quite a lot for a harmless insect!

2. The cuniculus or rabbit: another taboo word?

A word as common as rabbit or lapin in French (also a term of endearment: “mon petit lapin”) is just an etymological mystery in practically all European languages. In fact, there is no Indo-European root to name our fluffy bunny!

In Latin we had, on the one hand, the word cuniculus (Sp. conejo, It. coniglio, Port. coelho, Old French conin and conil, English cony (as in Coney Island), German Kaninchen. But we don’t know the origin of cuniculus. In Latin we had the word lepus, which gave the word lièvre (hare in English), that’s all. The word cuniculus, it has been suggested, was borrowed from pre-Roman Iberic with a sense of underground gallery, den. In other words, the rabbit was defined as an animal living underground.

Men (as opposed to women) being who they are, very early in historical philology, the French form conin and conil lended themselves to sexual jokes. You simply need to think of the proximity with the word cunnus in Latin, which gave in French the word con ,(a taboo word, reduced nowadays to the meaning of jerk). Hence, in French, the word conin was abandoned in exchange for the word lapin, the origin of which we know also nothing! It’s only in the XIVth century that appeared the words lapin and lapereau (young rabbit), which permits us guess the origin of a word *lap or *lappa for which some etymologists suggest the sense of flat stone with the same image of burrow, or hole in the ground, as in pro-Roman cuniculus.

This French lapin cannot be linked to the word lepus, which gave lièvre (hare in English), Spanish liebre, Port. lebre, It. lepre. On the other hand, we find in Portuguese, despite the form coelho (rabbit), a laparo (French lapereau), which again could lead to an Iberic origin. The word lapereau does not originate from lapin. We may surmise that the word laparo could have arrived to Portugal via the seaways, linked, who knows, to the trade of pelts.

In English, we’re faced with the same duality: rabbit on the one hand and cony / coney on the other. Cony <cuniculus poses the same eymological problems as its corresponding Spanish or Italian. As for the word rabbit, perhaps it is connected to the Old Dutch word robbe (rabbit), which still does not reveal its origin. We’re left with the word hare. In Romance languages, the word lièvre, Sp. liebre, Port. lebre, and It. lepre, all stem from the word lepus. As far as we can tell, hare in English, haas in Dutch, Hase in German are connected to Sanskrit çaça (çaç), meaning the jumper, without philologists however being able to reconstruct the Indo-European root.

All this leads us to believe that there existed with rabbit and hare, a kind of semantic taboo and that, for obscure reasons, the rabbit in particular must have been considered a taboo animal.

3. Pig, Pork, Porpoise and Porcelain

The domesticated pig seems to have played a major role as a source of meat for our ancestors. We’ve been able to reconstruct two roots, one purely European, *pork, and the other Indo-European, *su.

From the above *su, we arrive at Latin sus, hence the Italian suino (pig) and, via Gothic swein, with the same sense, to English swine, German Schwein, Dutch zwijn, and Danish svin, as well as to the word designating the female: sow in English, Sau in German, so in Danish and zo in Dutch. Curiously, the root sus, of Latin origin, seems to have developed essentially in Germanic languages.

The root *pork, for its part, takes us to Latin porcus, the domesticated pig which gave the origin of porc in French (we do not prononce the final c), Spanish puerco, Italian and Port. porco, but also their derivatives, such as pourceau or porcelet (piglet). No surprise in the naming of the English porcupine (from Old French porc espin --porc d’espine), "a pork with quills”). Porcelain is a different story! Again, the British borrowed it from the French, porcelaine, earlier pourcelaine (sound “ou” in Old French), Sp. porcelana, It. porcellana, German Porzellan. The word originally designated a very shiny and large univalve shell (named cowrie or cowry in English) before qualifying, by analogy, a type of ceramic. The shape of this shell with its slit in the middle, because of its resemblance to the vulva of a sow, was given in Italian the name of porcellana, from the feminine porcella (sow).

4. Fox and Foxy

The fox gives us another example of taboo animals, with the rabbit, probably one of those malefic creatures considered to bring bad luck. Curiously, this animal bears its Indo-European name - from a root *puk meaning bushy - only in Germanic languages: fox in English, vos in Dutch, Fuchs in German. It has given also the verb fuchsen in German (to trick, to vex). In English don’t we have the familiar verb to fox, to puzzle or to deceive as well as the adjective foxy?

The Latin vulpes didn’t have much success in Romance languages; it has survived in Italianvolpe, Romanian vulpe, and in a few dialects. This vulpes at first had given in Spanish vulpeja, which disappeared and was replaced by raposa, itself replaced by the actual zorra. Raposa is generally considered as being linked to rabo, which means tail, the same way as the Germanic series of fox, Fuchs is sometimes compared to the Sanskrit word pucchah, meaning tail. In summary, in both Spanish and Sanskrit, a fox would mean “the tailed one”.

What is interesting in this example is the general tendency that consists in naming animals from their exterior appearance, the fox being first caracterized by its bushy tail (The same thing is true of the squirrel, < Greek skiouros, “shadow-tail”). Originally, the Spanish word zorro probably meant lazy, and in modern Portuguese the same word for fox still means the animal on the one hand and “slow, drugging one’s feet” on the other.

There was in Old French a word for fox, which was goupil, a diminutive of *vulpiculus. This term however as early as the XIII century was replaced by the name of a man, Renart then Renard, which had been given to the goupil in many literary texts, the most famous of which is the Roman de Renart.

In short, we see that in Romance languages, the fox, which was given the name of a person in France and meant lazy in Spain and Portugal, seems to have been the object of some kind of taboo. In Germanic languages on the other hand, the name retained is that of the “tailed one”.

5. Cats, Dogs and Wolves

The name for cat does not go back to an Indo-European-root, but probably to a Celtic one, *catt. Some etymologists however think that the European name for cat could originate in Africa, because in Arabic or in Berber, are foundwords with the same consonance kit, kaddiska. Nothing indicates however that the borrowing could have taken place the other way around.

At any rate, it’s rather late in history, around the Vth century, that the domesticated cat , with the corresponding Latin word cattus, makes its apparition. Latin, in fact, had only feles, (hence feline), which designated a wild cat. Therefore, it is from this Latin cattus that we derive chat in French, gato in Spanish, gatto in Italian and gato in Portuguese.

The Germanic languages, for their part, had English cat, German Katze, Danish and Dutch kat, which they either borrowed from the Romance languages, or took from the Celtic *catt just mentioned.

A note on the French verb chatouiller (to tickle) and the German verb kitzeln (same sense). The origin of the French verb in unclear. It may have been borrowed either from the Dutch verb katelen or it may stem back to the word cat itself: chatouiller would then mean to scratch the way you stroke a cat or comparable to a cat’s fur. The German verb kitzeln could suggest a reference to the word Katze.

Talking of “cat’s fur”. . . You probably won’t be surprised to learn that French chatte (female cat), or the more familiar minet, gatto in Italian or pussy in English, in addition to our furry friend, mean all the same thing . . . Incidentally, the word puss for cat (also puss-cat) finds its origin in Gaelic pus, of unknown origin.

The word *kwon (for dog) on the other hand, appears very early at the side of man. Dogs were utilized by Indo-Europeans to guard their livestock and protect them against wolves in particular. This *kwon root is found again in Greek kuôn and Latin canis. It’s from the Greek term that we have learned words such as “cynocephalus” (dog-faced baboon), lit. a monkey with a dog’s face or “cynical”, lit. resembling a dog. Originally, the Cynics was the name given to philosophers who pretended to return to nature and refused social conventions.

Latin, for its part, gvae chien, cane in Italian, cão in Portuguese, and its derivatives, in particular chenil and kennel. More interestingly, it produced also the word canaille in French, canaglia in Italian and canalla in Spanish, which in English is translated by rabble or riffraff, both pejorative words as well.

You may be interested to learn why in Romance languages we named the scorching heat of mid-summer canicule in French, canicola in Italian, and canicula in Spanish. The word comes from Latin canicula, meaning little dog, which designated the Sirius star - named in French chien d’Orion - and appeared with the hot sun going from July 22 to August 23, hence the name of the star for the burning summer heat. This “little bitch” of canicula (canicula, lit. means little female dog), has also given the word chenille (caterpillar), retained as chenille in the textile industry, simply because our ancestors saw the larva of the caterpillar having a head resembling that of a little (female) dog!

Spanish and Portuguese distinguish themselves by naming the dog perro and the female dog perra. In reality, medieval Spanish had another word, can, derived from Latin. Perro was only used in a pejorative manner, without philologists being able to discover the origin of the word, perhaps the sound that shepherds made (“prrrrt”) to give orders to their watchdogs. Perro prevailed over can as well as its derivatives, such as perrera for kennel (Italian canile, French chenil), perrengue for an aggressive person compared to a fierce dog. Portuguese, on the other hand, has both cão and perro, the former used more frequently than the latter.

Finally, let’s return to *kwon. The corresponding Gothic form, written with h, led to German Hund, English hound (hunting dog), and its derivatives, suchs as in German Hündin (female dog), Hundelhütte (kennel), and, as a calque (a copy) on the word canicula, Hunstage, (lit. dog days).

What about English? The Saxon word dog was borrowed by different languages to designate not a dog in general but a particular type of dog proper to England, the bulldog. The word has given French dogue (bouledogue), German dogge, Duch dog and Danish dogge.

The wolf, *wlk^wo, designated an animal, which, with the bear, was at the center of Indo-Europeans’ preoccupations, for wolves attacked their flocks and killed their livestock. Their languages have preserved this root: lukos in Greek, lupus in Latin (Fr. loup, Sp. & Port. lobo, it. lupo) an wulfs in Gothic (Eng. wolf, Ger. Wolf). The Latin lupa (she-wolf), designated also the prostitute, hence the word lupanar in Romance languages to designate the brothel.

The Latin lupus gave also in French the expression “marche à la queue leu leu”, meaning “walking in a single / Indian file”, where the Old French word leu for loup has survived.

When you pick up the phone and say “Hello”, an expression borrowed from the French “Allô”, you’re in fact “crying wolf”! “Allô”, so it seems, originates in the expression “au loup! au loup!” “A wolf there!”.

The wolf was an important “feature” in European cultures. We find the name in many places in France, for example Saint-Loup-sur-Thouet in my native Deux-Sèvres or Saint-Leu. In Paris itself, the famous Louvre museum owes it name to a region infested with wolves.!.

6. Cows, Vaccine, Veal and Velum

Although raised for many years all through Europe, bovidae i.e. animals of the bovine family, have retained the most varied names. Let me mention first the French series of vache (cow), veau (calf), taureau (bull), boeuf (ox), which gave correspondingly in German, Kuh (cow), Kalb (calf), Stier (steer), Ochs (ox), and in Spanish vaca, ternero, toro, buey. We see that there are no connections between Romance and Germanic languages, and despite clear correspondences within the two groups, vache - vaca in Romance or cow-Kuh in Germanic, one still finds divergences: ternero in Spanish, veau in French, or Stier in German and bull in English.

Bull and cow in Indo-European come from the same term, *g^wow, which gives, one the one hand, Greek bous and Latin bos, which naturally takes us to boeuf in French, buey in Spanish, bue in Italian, and boi in Portuguese, and, in the other Germanic languages *ku, which ends up as cow in English, Kuh in German, ko in Danish, and koe in Dutch. We see that the double semantism of Indo-European *g^wow is divided between the Romance languages, where only the sense of boeuf, bue, bue, boi for the ox was retained and the Germanic languages, where was kept the name of cow.

Romance languages named the female of the bull from a Latin term, vacca (Fr. vache, Sp. vaca, It. vacca, Port. vaca), whereas Germanic languages, to name the male, used a root typically Germanic, Eng. ox, Dutch os, Danish okse, Ger. Ochs.

This French vache, or Italian vacca, presented very early the problem of carrying a disease called in English cowpox, lit. “the smallpox of cows”, which is a translation from the Latin variola vaccina, translated in French by variole vaccine, later on abbreviated in justvaccine, from which came the word vaccin in French, vaccine in English. It had been discovered by scientists that when human beings were inoculated with the virus of the “variola vaccina”, they were protected from smallpox. Hence the word vaccine, by definition inoculation of cowpox, and, by extension, inoculation of other vaccines, as Pasteur’s famous vaccine against rabies.

The male partner of the cow is not an Indo-European word either. It goes back to the Greek tauros, Latin taurus, Sp, toro, French taureau, whereas the English bull, Dutch bul, German Bulle , in addition to Stier, has an unclear etymology.

The baby of the cow brings us back to an Indo-European root, *wet, which means year. Hence the Greek etos (year), and the Latin vitellus) > It. vitello, (French veau), because the vitello was born in the course of the year.

As for the Germanic calf, German Kalb, Dutch kalf, Danish kalv, it has an etymology difficult to reconstruct, perhaps linked to Sanskrit garbha, which means foetus. To support this hypothesis, we can mention the fact that the skin of still-born calves was utilized to make a very thin parchment, called velum (vélin in French). Therefore it is not excluded that calf comes from

a word meaning foetus.

Here is a summary of this complicated evolution, where are kept only Indo-European data:

*g^wow *wet

ox & cow (of the year) Sansk. garbha

Latin bos Ger. *ku Latin vitellus “foetus”

boeuf cow veau

buey Kuh vitello Kalb

boi koe velum calf

Despite this diversity, we find some convergences in English and French (Anglo-Norman to be more exact) between calf and veal. These borrowings from French are to be placed in a coherent series that go back to the social organization of England when it was dominated by an aristocracy speaking French in the XIIth, XIIIth and XIVth century.

The origin of the doublets, as you know, is to be found in the fact that during England’s Norman domination, “old Alderman ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs [...] but becomes Beef, a very French Gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when be becomes matter of enjoyment.” (More on this later) From Ivanhoe, where Walter Scott (1771-1832) gives us a colorful lesson of English vocabulary).

7. Horse, Cart and Career

Archeological reconstructions have demonstrated that Indo-Europeans used both the horse *ekwo and the cart. This root evolved toward Greek hippos and Latin equus. In Romance languages, however, the various names for horse do not originate in Latin. As for French cheval, Italian cavallo, Spanish and Portuguese caballo, they hardy pose any etymological problems: they go back to Latin caballus, perhaps of Gaulish origin. This root is also at the origin of the whole vocabulary of chivalry, chevalier, caballero, cavaliere, etc.

Yet, “the noblest conquest of man” still has a few surprises in store for us. The female of the horse, in Old French, was called ive, based on Latin equa. In Spanish we still say yegua for a female horse. However it’s the Latin jumentum, (work horse?), which took over, for example in French under the form jument.

The noble horse, for its part, continues “to make war”. It’s even doubly utilized: the valiant knights move about on a palfrey but fight in combat on their steed. This palfrey or palefroi owes its name to a compound noun, Greek and Gaulish, paraveredus, which gave birth to German Pferd (horse). You’ve guessed that the English word palfrey is just the English pronounciation of French palefroi.

We still have to add the word destrier . This destrier, for its part, was led

by an an écuyer, (a young horseman) who, while holding the reins of his own horse with his left hand, held the reins of his master’s horse with this right hand, i.e. his dextera mano, hence the word destre (right) and destrier, a now poetic term translated in English by steed (< Old English steda, stallion).

As for the wordhorse itself (Dutch ros, German Ross , poetic form of Pferd), we go back to Indo-European *kur, a root that is clearly at the origin of the Latin currere, and therefore French courir (to run), Spanish correr and corrida, Italian correre. This same root has also given the word courrier, which we call mail in English as well as courier when we mean the messenger rather than the message. It has also given the word corsair, which we call pirate or corsair, and literally means a roamer of oceans. French courrier has its equivalent in Sp. corrreo, It. corriere. Corsaire has the cognates corsario in Spanish and corsaro in Italian.

In Germanic languages, *kur has evolved into a ros form, which gave the word horse in English (i.e. the runner), Ross in German, and also the Old French rosse, which means a bad horse; and probably the name of Don Quichotte’s horse, Rossinante.

We’re not finished yet with *kur. In Gallic, it took the sense of cart or carriage, and it was borrowed by Latin with the same sense (carrus) to produce in English car, chariot, cart, carry; Karren, chargieren in German, char, chariot, charrette, charger in French. (See how French spelling is unconsistant: chariot is spelled with one r and charrette with two!)

Interestingly enough, the word caricature (It. caricatura) comes also from the same root by the intermediary of Latin verb caricare (to charge, to overload...

in order to prove your point).

The most interesting avatar of *kur probably is the notion of career, in the sense of “professional progression”. Isn’t a career, which literally means a carriage-road, “a course of life or employment”?

8. Pink Flamingo and Spanish Flamenco

Very often, semantic passages are eloquent witnesses of the manner certain peoples see other peoples. Here is another example: the way the Spaniards view the Flemish people and their rosy complexion

The swarthy Spaniards (who occupied the Low Countries between 1519 and the middle of the XVIIth century) had been struck by the fair skin of their Flemish subjects. Plus the fact that the Flemish called themselves Flaming was going to give its common name to the Phoenicoepterus roseus, the pink flamingo, which is equally Flamingo in German and flamant rose in French, i.e. a Flemish. Only the Italians changed the name in fenicottero.

For the Sapniards, this rosy skin-color of the Flemish people was then to be applied to women with fair skin. How did the word changed later on to mean “provocative” (a simpler word probably would be sexy? I don’t know. Women different from your own kind are supposed to be “lighter”, n’est-ce pas? The fact is that the adjective flamenco - flamenca in the feminine form - came to mean the idea one had of the Gypsies, Gitanas in Sapnish. So, via another semantic passage, the term flamenco ended by naming the Gypsy songs of Andalusia, the flamenco (which in Spanish is an exact homonym of the flaming o bird).

IV. FOOD

1. From Salt to Salary

The *sal root concerns only the Western branch of Indo-European languages. From that root have emerged Latin sal, then French sel, Sp. and Port. sal, It. sale, Eng. salt, German Salz. Salt has always been a vital commodity, therefore the Latin salarium designated the money given to military men to purchase their salt, hence the word salary ; by definition a soldier is the one who is paid “in salt”, or at least paid in cash to purchase his vital salt.

The French term used to pay soldiers incidentally is la solde, (a term we also use in accounting in its masculine form:le solde to mean the balance of an account. This solde does not originate in *sal but in Latin solidus, which is the goden coin that we find in the word sou in French, Spanish sueldo, It. and Port. soldo. [The word shilling, on the other hand, comes from Germanic skillingaz [unattested]). Is there a “crossing” between the idea of salt and Latin solidus?

We don’t know, but it’s possible.

Salt, as we know, is essentially used in cooking. We find the same root in such words as sauce (salsa in Sp. or It., sauce in French or in English), sausage (Sp. salchicha, Port. salsicha, It. salsiccia, Fr. saucisse).

Just as an aside, the great majority of slang words in French used as a synonym for money find their origins in food: fric (<fricot), oseille (sorrel), blé (wheat), avoine (oat), galette, etc.

2. Beer and Bread

The symbolic basis for food is bread and wine, rather than bread and beer. Except that wine is a Mediterranean creation, whereas beer is much more ancient, and that the making of beer appeared in very different parts of the globe: it already existed with the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Gauls, as well as in Africa where was made a beer with a grain called millet (which we give to the birds!). One way or another, beer is made from the fermentation of an aqueous (water-based) extract of germinated cereals.

In European languages we find three roots for the word beer.

1. An Anglo-saxon root ealu, which is continued in Suedish öl and in our English ale

2. A Dutch root, bier, borrowed by the French in the XVth century, which gave bière,, beer in English, Bier in German, bjorr in Islandic and birra in Italian.

3. A Gaulish root, cervesia, which has survived today in Spanish cerveza, Port. cerveja, and in the Old French word cervoise.

An additional note on the origin of the word beer. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford Paperbacks) I’m using says: Old English beor = Middle Low German, Middle Dutch ber, Old High German bior (Dutch, German bier), a West Germanic word. And here is the interesting (wrong) note: “perhaps from monastic Latin biber drink, adoption Latin bibere.”

This, just to signal that our etymological roots often leave room for interpretation.

We see then that, despite the rare counter examples (ale, cerveza), it’s the West Germanic word that has won over.

Forget the fanciful allusion about the drinking monks “imbibing” their celibate life in booze. More seriously, at the origin of beer, there is an Indo-European root, *bher, expressing the idea of bubbling, which via Latin fervere (>fever), to boil, gave in French the word ferment, It. fermento, and via Germanic gave in Italian brodo, English broth, the verb to brew, and, importantly, “our daily bread”. Similarly in German we have brot (bread),

Brühe (broth), and brauen (to brew, when talking about beer).

Therefore beer is closely related to bread and German Brot. The German word Bärme (yeast) marks perfectly the semantic link beween these two products, which have in common their processus of fabrication based on the idea of fermentation.

Correspondences

*bh

Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic

bh ph f b

If bread goes back to the idea of fermentation in Germanic Languages, it is rather based on the idea of food in Romance languages. An Indo-European root, *pa, *pas, *pat (to feed), gave in Latin the verb pascere with the same sense, from which we have the word pastor (he who feeds the flock). It also gave in Latin the word panis, which gave in French “Au bon pain ”, Sp pan, It. pane, Port. pão.

Combine the preposition cum (with) with panis, and you have “the one with whom you share your bread”, that’ your companion. Thus we have in French compagnon and copain, Sp. compañero , compagno in Italian, andKompan in German.

From companion to company, the passage is easy. This derivation is found in several European languages: accompany, Sp. accompañar, It. accompagnare.

In the same series, we have words such as Fr. panier, It. paniere (bread carriers = baskets). The Sp. panera means both basket and granary. If the French word boulanger (baker) goes back to Latin bulla, thus designating the maker and seller of “boules de pain” (Sp.: panaderor, It.: panettiere), all from the same root.

The German Bäcker and English baker go back to a root indicating heat and cooking: *bhogo, which via Greek phôgô (to roast) and Latin focus (Fr. feu, Sp. fuego, It. fuoco), take us to other words such as foyer (hearth, fire place) as well as fusil (rifle). (The word fire, for its part, has an Old Saxon origin: fiur, Old High German fuir, Ger. feuer)

A close parent of baker or Bäcker is the word bath (Ger. Bad, city of Baden-Baden) by means of what is implied in the root *bhogo. It has nothing to do with the Roman bath, which originates in Latin balneum and gave in French balnéaire as in “station balnéaire”, which is translated as seaside resort.

3. Fodder, Feed and Fur

The *pa root, from which we derived the idea of food seems to be linked to another Indo-European root, that of *poi, to guard or to protect. If we follow these two semantic directions, we have a series of words denoting protection on the one hand, Fr. fourreau (sheath), fourrure (fur), and what needs to be protected on the other: our food, and for animals: fodder or forage (< Fr. fourrage). Here is how we can schematically represent the semantic evolution:

*poi

to guard, to protect

Latin Gothic Gothic

pascere fodjan fodr

(to feed)

pasture fodder food fourreau fur

pastor (sheath)

Let’s begin with terms indications protection. Gothic fodr is at the origin of the French words fourreau (sheath), which protects the blade of your sword,

It. fodero, Sp. forro (which means lining) and fourrure (which protects your body). In English we have fur, furrier, Ger. Futter (case), and füttern (to stuff and to feed animals?).

Halfway between the idea of protection and that of food, we have, from Latin pascere, all the words that suggest the notion of pasture andwatching over, which we find in the Fr. word pâtre (shepherd) or the English word pastor, Sp. pastor, It. pastore, Fr. pasteur (= Protestant minister by opposition to the priest <presbuteros i.e. the old and respectable one).

From the French verb repaître, a literary term we could translate as to feast and, more basically to feed asto feed one’s mind on books, we arrive at the word repas, English repast, a word based on Old French repast (adoption of Latin pastus, fodder, food.)

It’s the Gothic fodjan to feed, which is going to generate the vocabulary for food with two variants, one corresponding to animal food: foder (forage)

[Fr. fourrage, It. foraggio, Sp. forraje] and the other human nourishment:

the English word food.

4. All by itself: Wine

Wine is a purely Mediterranean creation. Greek oinos and Latin vinum are words originating from the same root, reconstructed under the form *wein, which does not go back to Indo-European, but rather to a non-identified Mediterranean language. The reason is simple: Indo-Europeans didn’t know wine, no more than they knew olive oil or cultivated fig trees. . .

Modern Greek has replaced oinos (which we find in learned words such as oenologist) by krasi (the first meaning of which is mixture). Latin vinum is transmitted to the various Romance languages (Sp. & It vino, Port. vinho,

Fr. vin) and Germanic languages (Ger. Wein, Eng. wine). The vinum paradigm unfolds without problems in Romance languages and, part of it, was borrowed by Germanic languages.

Here is how it can be summarized:

French Spanish Italian Port English German

vin vino vino vinho wine Wein

vignea viña vigna vinha vineyard

vignoble viñedo vigneto vinhedo - Winberg

vendange vendimia vendemmia vindima vintage Weinlese

vinaigre vinagre (aceto) vinegar Weinessig

One last note: “Le vin réjouit le coeur de l’homme” (Wine rejoices man’s heart). Yet the semantic derivatives have nothing of a rejoicing nature: vineyard, vintage, vinegar. The French word ivrogne (drunkard) or ivresse (drunkenness) originates in an another source, Latin ebrius > ivre (drunk), which is incidentally at the origin of the word sober, from Latin se-ebrius.

By definition, sober (sobre) means “sans-drink”.

5. “Fruits of the sea”

What we call in English seafood or more poetically in French or in Italian fruits de mer or frutti di mare were not known by Indo-Europeans, more accustomed to steppes than shores. True, the word for fish has a distinct Indo-European root, *pisk, which leads, as it is expected, to forms in -f- in Germanic languages: fish, Ger. Fisch, Dan. fisk) and in -p- in Romance tongues: Fr. poisson, It. pesce, Sp. pez). But this type of fish was only freshwater fish.

When it comes to fish from the sea, the names are hardly unified. For example, the Italians name pescecane (poisson-chien = fish-dog), what the French call requin, English shark, Spaniards tiburón, Portuguese tubarão, and Germans Hai; all this not without posing some etymological problems.

Just a few indications in three directions.

1. Sp. & Port. tiburón / tubarão. It has been suggested that the word has its origin in the Tupi language of the Indians, uperu, borrowed by the Portuguese (at the times of Brazilian colonization) with the normal agglutination of the t, which in Tupi represents the article: tuperu = the shark; -- Hyundai, probably playing on shark/sharp appeal, has just named one of its cars Tiburón. You see, it helps to know some Spanish!

2. English shark may find its etymology, somewhat like the verb to search, in an old verb, to shark meaning “to roam in search of a prey”, which itself originates in the Old French verb cherquier to search ;

3. The French word requin is just an etymological mystery. One (wrong) hypothesis is that the word comes from Church Latin requiem. \He who is attacked by a requin is bound to end up in the beast’s belly with only requiem mass said to for put his soul to rest! Others have suggested that the requin was so named because of its teeth, from the Old Norman verb rechigne: to show one’s teeth, and its corresponding adjective rechin, which means grumpy. Others have suggested quin, a form of chien . Conclusion: Nobody seems to know. . .

The Indo-Europeans didn’t know either what were crustaceans, so named because they are protected by a crust (from Latin crusta - the same word that gave us “French custard” < from same crusta > to Frenc croûte) . Therefore, it’s uniquely a Latin root that gave, via Greek Kammaros and Latin cammarus, crustaceans such as Sp. camarón (shrimp), It. gambero (crayfish), French homard (lobster) and German Hummer.

The French langouste, (which my Collins-Robert French-English Dictionary translates as both crawfish and crayfish), for its part, goes back to a European root in which we find the idea of jumping, hence the Latin locusta, English locust, Sp. langosta, It. locusta (grasshopper) and aragosta (crawfish), and finally English lobster, (Old English loppestre, lopystre, lopustre, adoption of Latin locusta crustacean, locust, with unexplained “p” for “c”, etc...)

Another European root, *gerbh (to scratch), which is at the origin of the Greek verb graphô, (to write), presides over two parallel series naming one a freshwater crustacean and an ocean crustacean. On the freshwater side, *gherb gave us High German Krebithz, which took us to Old French crevisse (hence, modern Fr. écrevisse (crayfish), and to German Krebs (same sense). Spanish cangrejo and Italian granchio, for their part, go back to Latin cancer ; on the sea side, *gherb takes us to a series that is mainly productive in Germanic languages (Dan. krabbem, Dutch krab, Ger. Krabbe, and, of course, Eng. crab, from which the French (for a change) borrowed the word crabe.

Crayfish and crab (crawfish), which are quite distinct for gourmets, are much less so for languages and dictionaries. Thus, crab in Spanish is called cangrejo de mar, i.e. crayfish of the sea, the same as in Italian we have ranchio di mare. And supreme confusion, English extends this “oecumenism” further, since - as printed in my Collins-Robert Dictionary - crayfish or crawfish mean both the freshwater and the sea water crustacean. However, no French gourmet is going to confuse écrevisse and langouste or langoustine!...

To complete our fruits de mer extravaganza, we need to add to our plate oysters and mussels. The French huître (for oyster) goes back to Greek ostreon, via Latin ostrea, which ends up in Spanish as ostra , It. ostrica, Ger. Auster and Eng. oyster.

Just a note about the bizarre French spelling. There should be no h in huître, it should be written “uitre”. But, at at time when -u- and -v- were written exactly in the same manner, how can you distinguish “uitre” and “vitre” (window) pane of glass? The h was added to prevent confusion. As for the moule, or mussel, its origin goes back to Latin musculus, which gave German Muschel,

Sp. mejillón and Por. mexilhão.

6. Life, Soul (Anima) & Animal

The Indo-European root *gwey (life, alive), it as the origin of two Greek verbal forms with the meaning of alive, one with an initial b- (bios, (life) sumbiôsis (to live together) and the other with a z- (zôon, alive, and zoê, life), which leads a philologist to conclude that, despite appearances, zoology and biology are, etymologically speaking, the same science.

*gwey

Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic

jivah jiv zoos bios vivere quius

alive, life alive life vivre quick

(living)

zoology biology vivacity quick

“victuals”

The Latin verb vivere, naturally, is going to produce in Romance languages, vivre, vie, vif (quick) in French and, more unexpectedly, viande (victuals) from Latin vivenda (“things that keep you alive”), a term that at first designated all that people eat, all kinds of foods, before taking the specialized meaning of flesh.

From the Greek originate many learned forms, such as amphibious, lit. “living a double life”, microbe i.e. “mini life”, zodiac “animal constellations” (zodiakos [kuklos] = (*circle of carved figures), or azo- az- in chemistry, from French azote (from a - [not] + zoê, life, i.e. “lifeless” [unlike the life-sustaining oxygen].

All these forms, or almost all, are found in all the Romance languages: for example: vie, vida, vita ; vivre, vivir, vivere, Port. viver, with however some interesting semantic variants. For example, in Spanish, vivienda means “the place where one lives”, “abode”, whereas in Italian, vivanda designates “food”. In general, however, the *gwey root gave Romance languages forms designating life, the living (men and beasts), physical nourishment (which allows one to stay alive), and the concept of vivacity (proof of life). Conversely, this track is less productive on the Germanic side, where the Gothic quius is hardly found except in our English quick, and in the compound German word Quecksilber (unpredictable, mercurial).

To conclude, let’s point out that the encounter between the animal world and life in general, between zoology and biology, which we find in all Romance languages, is not surprising and is “written” or expressed in the words thelmselves:

French Spanish Italian Porguguese

âme alma anima alma (soul)

anima animal animale animal

At the origin of this conjunction or union, we find the Latin anima, breath, based on the Greek anemos, wind, which itself goes back to Indo-European *ani, breath, that is to say the “breath of life” that animal shares with man.

V. THE ELEMENTS

1. Shiny Silver or Money and Brilliant Clay

It’s an Indo-European root, *arg- (to shine), which is going to be, in this example, the point of departure: a root that Greek argos (shiny) prolongs naturally. But, if, as we know, “everything that shine is not gold,” it’s precisely because gold is not the sole shiny metal: silver shines too, and therefore took in Greek the name arguros. This metal (Latin argentum > Fr. argent, It. argento) is then going to represent money. But the idea of brilliance applies also to the brilliance of the spoken word: thus, from the same arguros we have the word argument, Fr. argument, It. argue, Sp. argumento or the verb to argue. Hence we go from the concrete (metal and money) to the abstract (mind).

The passage from silver metal to silver money tookplace as well is Spanish, where the word plata (silver) first referred to money before being replaced with the same sense by dinero (although in South America the word plata for money is still used.) This dinero, as well as the Portuguese dinherio, goes back to the Latin denarius, which itself originates in an Indo-European root *dek’m (ten). The Latin denarius was in fact a silver coin, which was worth ten as (the ace of our card games was in Latin a unit used both for money and a weight measure. We find this compound meaning in the French denier, but also in the word denrée (foodstuff); a denrée is the quantity of food you can purchase with one denier, which is an image that is frequent in slang, as we’ve seen earlier: blé (wheat) in French or dough in English.

*arg

shine

Greek argos argilos

(clay)

arguros

argument (silver) metal

(silver) money

The racine *dek’m is also at the root of all the manners of saying ten in Indo-European languages (diez, dieci, ten, zhen), as well as ways of saying eleven, twelve and therefore of saying Dec-ember (the tenth month in the Roman year). The least unexpected heir of *dek’m is perhaps the word dean, Ger. Dekan. It. and Sp. decano, Port. deão, French doyen, which comes from Latin decanus, “commanding ten men”.

One last word on the *arg root, which means to shine and is used to designate silver (metal), argument, and money. The Greeks used a word coming from the same root, argilos (white clay) to name a white earth, shiny as money. Hence, the Romance languages (Sp. arcilla, It. argilla, Port. argila, Fr. argile) are closely related when it comes to lump together earth, mind and money.

2. Water and Fire

At the origin of the naming of water in European languages, two roots are found, one uniquely European, *akw and the other, Indo-Europen, *wed, which both reappear in Latin, where the Romans had two views of the water: one as element, aqua and the other as movement, unda.

The form aqua evolved normally toward ewe in Old French, then eau, or agua in Spanish and Portuguese, acqua in Italian, and, of course, toward all the derivatives of aqua in English as well: such as aqueous (watery), aquatic, aqueduct (acquae-ductus: a water conduit) or words like aquarelle: a drawing done in transparent water colors, an English word borrowed from French aquarelle, It. acquarella, Port. aquarela. The word gouache, (a method of painting using opaque water colors mixed with a preparation of gum), originates as well in aqua, via Italian guazzo (puddle)

idea of fire idea of water

*peuor *bhogo *akw *wed

Romance Germanic Romance Germanic Romance Germanic

bure fire feu bath onde water

bureau feuer foyer bake eau undulate Wasser

gouache winter

The posterity of Latin unda is as numerous as aqua: onde (Sp. and It. onda), but also, since unda carried the idea of water in motion, of such verbs as Fr. ondoyer (to undulate, to ripple), Sp. ondear, it. ondeggiare), onduler (to undulate, to ripple, to wave), Sp. undular, It. ondulare. hese derivations are almost visual, based on the image of the water surface that, under the breeze, undulates.

Connections between the verb inonder (to flood) Sp. inundar, It. inondare,

and the Latin root unda are visible in the words themselves: in-undar, Engl. in-undate. It may not be as clear in the case of the verb to abound (Fr. abonder), from Latin ab-undare, where we easily see the root unda, which meant to flow, hence the idea of aboundance.

The same Indo-European root *wed has evolved toward Germanic forms that have kept the initial -w- : wato in Gothic, water and wet in English, as well as Winter (wet season), Wasser in German, vand in Danish and water in Dutch.

On the fire side, again we find the same type of duality, two European roots expressing, one the idea of fire, *peuor, and the other the idea of heat, *bhogo. Via the Latin focus, *bhogo gave the names for fire in Romance languages: feu, fuego, It. fuoco, Port. fogo, and the names for bath in English, Ger., Dan. and Dutch Bad), as well as the notion of cooking in a oven in the Germanic languages: Eng. bake, Ger. backen, Dan. bage, Dutch bakken.

The root *peuor is, for its part, at the origin of the Greek form pur, (fire), that we find, for example, in the compound pyromaniac (arsonist), and the Latin burrus, (brown), hence in French the word bure (It. burello), which means a coarse woolen stuff of brownish color (i.e. the color produced by fire) used to cover writing desks, and gave the word bureau, originally the name of the cloth that was placed on a table to write on it. The meaning of the word then has evolved from desk to the room itself: un / le bureau = office. In English the word has evolved to mean also a government department.

The Indo-European root evolved also toward a Gothic form, fon, and the names for fire in Germanic languages: fire, Ger. Feuer, Dan. fyr, Dutch vuur.

3. Rain and Fleet

The Indo-European root expressing the idea of “moving water” is *pleu, which we find in Greek in the form plein, (to navigate), hence the Greek verb periplous, “to navigate around”, which gave the French périple (from peri around), Eng. (sea) voyage or (land) journey.

In Latin, the root gave pluere (to rain) and pluvia, Fr. pluie, It. pioggia, Sp. lluvia, and in Old Scandinavian the root flod, which gave fleet in English. This Germanic form is the one that became the most fertile for European languages: for example, flotte, flotter (to float); in English flow, flood, flush, fleet; in Ger. Flut , Fluss (river), Floss (raft), fliessen (to run, to flow), etc.

Finally, there is an interesting connection or metaphoric encounter between “liquid” and “money” as “flow of money” in English and its French equivalent: flux monétaire. The French verb renflouer, which, etymologically means to “refloat”, is used also in the sense of “aiding financially”, which is called in English “bailing out”.

4. Down to Earth and With Your Feet on the Ground

An uncertain, yet attractive, etymology has the word terre (earth) originate in the Indo-European *ters expressing the idea of “drying out”; the earth would be, then, by opposition to water, “what is dry”. A “torrent” (from torrens, the present participle of Latin torrere, to dry, to burn) would be an “etymological brother” of earth, as well as the word toast, thirst (Ger. Durst). However, it’s more prudent to stay with the Latin etymology and the word terra, which gave Fr. terre, Sp. tierra, It. and Port. terra. This etymology provides us with words such as territory and terrain, but also terrace and the Mediterranean Sea, by definition “in the middle of the terrain.

On the Germanic side, we find a coherent series: English earth , Dutch aarde, Ger. Erde, Dan. jord : a series that did not originate in Indo-European any more than in Romance languages, and probably came from Greek era (earth). It’s rather limited when we consider the earth to be the basis of our world. We may have, as the expression goes, “our feet on the ground”, and yet we don’t know where the words designating our “common grounds” come from!

Ground is translated in Romance languages assol in French, Sp. suelo, It suolo; a word that seems to go back to a European root meaning “the sole of the foot”. Hence, Eng. sole, Ger. Sohle.