LL-L "Etymology" 2009.07.01 (03) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 01 July 2009 - Volume 03
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.07.01 (02) [EN]

From: idebruin <idebruin at home.nl <mailto:idebruin at home.nl>>

> Subject: makkar
>
> Hello /makkers/
>
> I think the of the Dutch word makker (friend)  is derived from Hebrew  רכּמ
> /makkar /which means acquaintance, friend. Before the second world war there
> used to live a lot of Jewish people in the Netherlands and they enriched the
> Dutch language with a lot of words – /jat,/ /jof/e/l/, /bajes/, /lef/,
> /Mokum/ etc. Moreover the Dutch never made bones about picking up words from
> other languages. I wonder whether there are Hebrew words to be found in
> other European languages.
>
>  From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com <mailto:sassisch at yahoo.com>>

> Subject: Etymology
>
> Hello, dear Iwe!
>
> First of all, welcome to the talking team! I'm happy you took the step.
>
> And you did so with a bang. Some of us that should have known better
> (including yours truly) should hang their heads in shame.
>
> You are absolutely right, מכר means 'acquaintance', 'companion' in Hebrew.
>
> Duh! "Problem" solved.
>
I doubt that. Words like 'jofel' and 'lef' were introduced into Dutch via
Bargoens. Bargoens did not exist until the 17th century. 'mackerschap' is
first attested 1565. It's a compound, so the single word 'macker' is likely
to be even older. There were no Jews (or very, very, very few Jews) in the
Netherlands and Northern Germany in the earliest times. Some few Jews are
attested since around 1300, but no bigger communities existed before the
expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. But they didn't reach the North
directly and in areas like Holland or Hamburg Jews only arrived at the end
of the 16th century. 'macker' and 'mackerschap' are coastal words. That
makes a Hebrew origin even more unlikely. The Jews engaged in trade, but
mostly in land-based trade.
It's not technically impossible that the word made its way from Hebrew into
the languages of the Westgermanic North Sea coast, but its seems very
unlikely to me.

The other explanation of a reanalysis of a cognate Old English /maka/
'companion', 'husband' is not convincing too. Regular sound shifts would
have changed that to 'make' at an early stage and the two sound '-a' and
'-er' were quite different back then (unlike today).

I'd rather stick with the explanation that the word is old and related to
Low Saxon 'mack', English 'match' and German 'gemach' and means 'somebody
you can stand'. Of course there's no proof for that too (and hardly ever
will be if no attestance older than 1565 is produced somehow), but at least
there are no arguments that stand against it.

Marcus Buck

•

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