Q: Borrowing of French <marron>

[Larry Trask]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The French word <marron>, 'chestnut' and later 'brown', is first attested
as a color term only in 1824, in Balzac (I am told).  Since then, it has
achieved basic status in French, and several recent sources suggest that it
is gaining ground at the expense of the older word <brun> (and that it has
displaced <brun> more or less completely in some regions of France).

But I'm interested in the way <marron> has been borrowed into the other
Romance languages.  Contemporary sources tell me that the basic, unmarked
words for 'brown' in these other languages are as follows: Occitan
<marron>, Portuguese <marrom>, European Spanish (but apparently not
American Spanish) <marro'n>, Catalan <marro'>, Italian <marrone>, Romanian
<maro>, and Judeo-Spanish <marron>.  (I have no data for Galician,
Sardinian, or the Rhaeto-Romance varieties, or for Brazilian Portuguese.)

These borrowings appear to be recent.  For Spanish, <marro'n> doesn't even
get an entry in Corominas's well-known etymological dictionary.  For
Italian, dictionaries up until about the 1960s give <bruno> as the unmarked
term for 'brown', and cite <marrone> only as 'dark brown'.  But all
contemporary sources insist that 'brown' is <marrone>, while <bruno> is now
confined to hair and skin.  For Romanian, a 1952 dictionary gives <brun>
and <oaches> as the words for 'brown', and <maro> is not entered.  A 1986
grammar gives <castaniu> as the general term for 'brown', and cites <maro>
only as 'maroon'.  Yet all the contemporary sources I've managed to consult
insist that 'brown' is <maro> and nothing else.  For Judeo-Spanish, I'm
told that <marron> is recently borrowed and still marginal, but without
competitors.

I find all this more than a little surprising.  Has anyone made a study of
it?  Or can anybody explain to me how and why this word has seemingly
spread so far and so fast -- apparently in some cases displacing earlier
words?

Please reply to me, and I'll summarize to the list.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk