LL-L "Etymology" 2005.03.04 (03) [E/German]
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Arthur Jones <arthurobin2002 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology 2005.03.03
Groeten, Laaglanners,
Jonny Meibohm and Ron Hahn were corresponding about the distinction and
etymology of "Dirne" and "Deern".
For some inexplicable reason, the discussion took me back to the St. Pauli
section of Hamburg, where I lived for several years. On a clear day, it
featured both categories of feminine professional job descriptions.
Which led me to Old Saxon, about 9th Century, I believe, a verse that
exhorts us to live virtuously and not:
"thaet is druncennes and dyrnegeligere"
Could it be that early Saxons from the Nedderelve introduced Britons to the
forerunner of the Reeperbahn? In that case, was woad really Blue Ointment?
Arthur
----------
From: Roger Hondshoven <roger.hondshoven at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2005.03.03 (09) [E/German]
>jonny Meibohm<jonny.meibohm at arcor.de> wrote:
>" heute schrieb ich einen Brief an eine gute Bekannte. Ich verwendete das
Wort
> "Miin Deern", eingeflochten in den ansonsten hochdeutschen Text. Meine
> Intention war, damit auszudrücken: "Liebe, vertraute Frau".
> Dabei fiel mir auf, dass, hätte ich den Brief auf Englisch geschrieben,
ich
> vielleicht die Formulierung "My Dear" gewählt hätte.
>
> "Deern" ist ein typisch "niedersächsisches", sehr liebes Wort für
"Mädchen",
> nicht zu verwechseln mit der neuhochdeutschen "Dirne", im modernen
> Sprachschatz meist gebraucht als Synonym für "Hure".
> In Dutch the word 'deerne' (unfrequently 'deern') can be used in two
different meanings : 1. (in a favourable sense) young (and usually also
understood as 'pretty') girl; 2. (pejoratively) young woman of easy virtue,
hussy, tramp.
Regards,
Roger Hondshoven
----------
From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2005.03.03 (02) [E]
Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>* not to be confused with _lôch_ ~ _lôg_ '(meeting) place' (c.f., OG
luog,
OE lôg, Lat. locus 'place', Sanskrit लोक _loka_ 'earthly place' >
'world'
etc. < IE _legh-_ 'to lie down' (refl.), 'to settle', 'to situate
oneself')<
Unfortunately Compuserve doesn't appear to allow me to convert my viewer so
I can see all the accents;
Is it possible for you to explain what the vowels used here are without
using coding?
I am v interested in this as, if you remember, my query some time last year
was looking at the origins and meanings behind "Lachbrunna" "Lagbrunna"
Lagbourne
and whether they were related to Lachbaum - a boundary marker tree and
Lachstein - a boundary marker stone.
re -ley
I live in the village of Wichenford and we have a thriving Heritage group
trying to work out our village origins because they are not known and
appear interestingly complicated.
What is immediately clear is that we are surrounded by other villages /
parishes whose names end on -ley.
It has been suggested that we are the centre part of a forested area which
little by little was cleared round the edges - hence the 'ley names all
around us; And then eventually we in the the centre were cleared and became
a settlement.
Tho' interestingly although we have two streams running through the parish
neither is so broad or deep that a good 4-6 foot leap wouldn't clear them.
So why name us WichenFORD . My guess is we were a 'road through the wood'
celtic Ffordd > 'ford'
Heather
----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology
Hello, Arthur!
> Which led me to Old Saxon, about 9th Century, I believe, a verse that
> exhorts us to live virtuously and not:
> "thaet is druncennes and dyrnegeligere"
Are you sure it's Old Saxon? It seems rather Old English (Anglo-Saxon) to
me.
swiðor micle þonne his sylfes gewil.
Warna þe georne wið þære wambe fylle,
forþan heo þa unþeawas ealle gesomnað
þe þære saule swiðost deriað,
þæt is druncennes and dyrnegeligere,
In Old Saxon I would expect this:
that is ovardrank endi hôre(willio)
'that is drunkenness and consorting with harlots'
Hello, Roger!
> > In Dutch the word 'deerne' (unfrequently 'deern') can be used in two
> different meanings : 1. (in a favourable sense) young (and usually also
> understood as 'pretty') girl; 2. (pejoratively) young woman of easy
virtue,
> hussy, tramp.
In German, too, there is this variation. In Bavarian dialects, the
diminutive form _Dirndl_ simply means 'girl', and this is what the name of
the Bavarian folk dress is based on. In Missingsch of Hamburg (and probably
of other cities in the North Saxon region) Low-Saxon-derived _Deern_ means
'girl', and German-based _Dirne_ means 'slut' or 'prostitute' (though the
latter sounds rather foreign, stilted, in place of more "descriptive"
words).
What strikes me as rather interesting is that _Dirne_, _Deern_, _deerne_,
etc. seem to be derived from words denoting "servant girl," and that outside
North Saxon (e.g., _huusdeyrn_ or just _deyrn_ 'maidservant'), they cannot
now denote this. However, _magath_, _magad_, etc. (on which German
_Mädchen_ is based) seem to have meant simply 'girl' and later came to
denote female servants, such as English "maid" and German _Magd_ 'female
farmhand'. If you read literature of a long period up to the 19th century,
"maidservant" and "woman of easy virtue" were closely related. My theory is
that maidservants may not necessarily have earned that reputation, certainly
not all of them, that it is an interesting chapter in women's history, in
which, unlike married women and daughters of "better" houses that tended to
be guarded and confined (as chattle), unmarried women working as maids
(which meant that they were poor) were virtually enslaved but were rarely
considered worth protecting, at least not their "virtue," just as long as
they could continue doing their chores. Maids were "up for grabs," were
easy prey, and they often had no say whatever in all of this, not regarding
their possibly undeserved reputation either.
So I have a feeling that this is a case in which words can tell or
corroborate stories.
Hi, Heather!
> Unfortunately Compuserve doesn't appear to allow me to
> convert my viewer so I can see all the accents;
Try looking at the relevant messages in the archive
(http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html), and switch your
encoding mode (under "View") to Unicode.
> Is it possible for you to explain what the vowels used here are without
> using coding?
Sure.
* not to be confused with _lôch_ ( |l{o=circumflex}ch|) ~ _lôg_
(|l{o=circumflex}g|) '(meeting) place' (c.f., OG luog, OE lôg
(|l{o=circumflex}g|), Lat. locus 'place', Sanskrit लोक (|Devanagari|)
_loka_ 'earthly place' > 'world' etc. < IE _legh-_ 'to lie down' (refl.),
'to settle', 'to situate
oneself')<
NB: I use the circumflext in place of the macron, because fewer people use
fonts that have macron letters.
The story of your place name seems rather thrilling. Please keep us
informed about this.
You wrote:
> Tho' interestingly although we have two streams running through the parish
> neither is so broad or deep that a good 4-6 foot leap wouldn't clear them.
> So why name us WichenFORD . My guess is we were a 'road through the
wood'
> celtic Ffordd > 'ford'
Is Welsh _ffordd_ 'road' really a Celtic-based word, not an English loan?
Both "ford" and "fare" (cf. German _Furt_ and _Fahrt_, _fahren_, etc.)
ultimately go back to Germanic *_far-_, *_fôr-_ (|f{o-circ.}r-|) and
Indo-European *_par-_, *_por-_, *_pǝr-_ (|p{schwa}r-|) 'to go through', 'to
pass' (cf. Sanskrit पर्- _par-_ ~ प्ऱ्- _pr-_ 'to carry
through/across/along').
Note that there is a particularly high percentage of loanwords among Welsh
words beginning with _ff_ (/f/).
Incidentally, Welsh _rhyd_ for 'ford' seems suspiciously close to Old Irish
_rót _ and _raite_ 'road', 'highway', 'clearing', probably related to French
_route_, from Latin _ruptus_ 'broken', thus apparently also 'passage way',
much like "ford." Thus idea of "break (through)" may well be preserved in
Scandinavian _fjord_.
My point -- do I have one? -- is that you may well be right in your
assumption but that by the same token it might be well worth our while
considering the possibility of earlier semantic stages of the words
involved, that "-ford" may have meant more than just "passage way across a
river," perhaps "passage way" in a more general sense, such as through a
forest, a grove or such.
Just trying to confuse you ... Not!
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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