{"id":1498,"date":"2023-03-15T14:57:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T14:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2023-03-15T15:23:35","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T15:23:35","slug":"royal-rules-on-rich-rectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2023\/03\/15\/royal-rules-on-rich-rectors\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Rules on Rich Rectors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, the Guildford Shakespeare Company put on a production of <\/a>Richard II,<\/em> a fascinating tale of political strife and the perils of having a leader lacking in competence when the country is in crisis. Sound familiar? In any case, this got me thinking about the name Richard<\/em> and its many etymological links.<\/p>\n

First with the name Richard<\/em>. It\u2019s borrowed from French, but it didn\u2019t start there. In fact it is one of a number of French words that was borrowed from Germanic, deriving from Frankish *Ri\u0304kahard<\/em>, meaning \u2018hard\/brave king\u2019. This also gives modern German Richard<\/em> and through the travels of the Goths and Vandals also made its way into Spanish as Ricardo<\/em> and Italian as Riccardo<\/em>. The first part of this name, the *ri\u0304k-<\/em> \u2018ruler\u2019 part, in other derivations also gives words like German Reich<\/em> and Dutch rijk<\/em>, both meaning \u2018empire\u2019 or \u2018kingdom\u2019, which in English is also found as the \u2018domain, kingdom\u2019 suffix -ry<\/em>, as in Jewry<\/em> \u2018the Kingdom of the Jews\u2019. As different derivation again gives us English rich<\/em>, something you’d rather expect a king to be. As a component of names it is ubiquitous in Germanic, such as in Old English Godric<\/em> \u2018God(ly) king\u2019, Wulfric<\/em> \u2018Wolf-king\u2019 and Theodric<\/em> \u2018King of the people\u2019. This last one turns up in German as Dietrich<\/em> and, again courtesy of the Franks, through French Thierry<\/em> comes into English as Terry<\/em> (see also my previous post on the Germans<\/a> for more on this Theod-<\/em>).\"\"<\/p>\n

But it is not only Germanic languages that have this root. Indeed, some form of it crops up across the Indo-European language family, usually meaning something like \u2018king\u2019 or \u2018ruler\u2019. In Celtic (from which Germanic likely borrowed the ri\u0304k-<\/em> words) we find e.g. r\u00ed<\/em> in Irish and rhi<\/em> in Welsh, both meaning king. In Gaulish, rulers such as Vercingetorix<\/em> and Ambiorix<\/em> had an earlier form –rix<\/em> it as part of their name, and in a reduced form we find the same in the Welsh surname Tudor<\/em>, originally meaning \u2018ruler of the people\u2019 and thus cognate with Theodric\/Dietrich\/Terry<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Latin too we find re\u0304x<\/em>, again meaning \u2018king\u2019 or \u2018ruler\u2019. This form survives as such in many modern Romance languages, for example Spanish rey<\/em> and French roi<\/em>. We also get two separate adjectives in English: regal<\/em> from Latin and royal<\/em> from French. Further afield, we find this word cropping up as far away as India, in the form of Sanskrit ra\u0304ja<\/em>, once again a \u2018king\u2019 word, as well as r\u0101\u1e63\u1e6dr\u00e1<\/span><\/em>, a ‘kingdom’.<\/p>\n

All of these forms can be traced back to a form in Proto-Indo-European (the reconstructed ancestor of all of these languages), which we represent as *h3re\u0304\u0301g\u0301s<\/em>. In the terminology of Indo-European studies this is an ‘athematic root noun\u2019, meaning a short root without additional derivational suffixes onto which inflectional endings such as the nominative singular *-s<\/em> are suffixed directly, rather than having an additional \u2018theme vowel\u2019 *-o<\/em> inbetween. As with many such forms in Proto-Indo-European, when we isolate the root itself, *h3reg-<\/em>, which probably meant something like \u2018stretch out the arm, direct\u2019, we can find even more related derivations.<\/p>\n

Adding a thematic vowel *-e\/o-<\/em> we get a verb which shows up in Latin as rego\u0304<\/em> \u2018rule, govern, direct\u2019, along with an array of derived nouns which we have inn English. We have the agent noun rector<\/em>, the instrument noun rule<\/em> (from a French reflex of Latin re\u0304gula<\/em>) and the abstract noun regimen<\/em>. Additionally, we have prefixed verbs such as di\u0304rigo\u0304,<\/em> e\u0304rigo\u0304<\/em> and corrigo\u0304<\/em>, which through their respective supine forms di\u0304re\u0304ctum<\/em>, e\u0304re\u0304ctum<\/em> and corre\u0304ctum<\/em> give us English \u2018direct\u2019, \u2018erect\u2019 and \u2018correct\u2019 respectively.<\/p>\n

Germanic, meanwhile, provides us with a different set of reflexes of this verb. While we have already seen the rich<\/em> set relating to wealth and kingship, the \u2018straighten\u2019 meaning of *h3reg-<\/em> results in other interesting links. We have the (originally separate) verb and noun rake<\/em>, a device for making straight lines, and the former participle right<\/em>, originally meaning \u2018straightened, directed\u2019. Then we have reckon<\/em>, perhaps a natural extension of the metaphor of lining things up in order to count them. Finally, from a causative \u2018make straighten up\u2019 we have reach<\/em> (as if ‘straightening out one’s arm’).<\/p>\n

This here is the greatest joy of etymology for me; by untangling these webs of relationships, we can show how so much of our vocabulary results from variations upon a common root. It reminds us of the continual creativity involved in using language and, by extension, the creativity of language users, i.e., humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, the Guildford Shakespeare Company put on a production of Richard II, a fascinating tale of political strife and the perils of having a leader lacking in competence when the country is in crisis. Sound familiar? In any case, this got me thinking about the name Richard and its many etymological links. First with the name Richard. It\u2019s borrowed from French, but it didn\u2019t start there. In fact it is one of a number of French words that was…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,4,25,19,168,80,74,75,81,164,154],"tags":[],"coauthors":[157],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-derivation","category-english","category-etymology","category-french-languages","category-gaulish","category-historical-linguistics","category-latin","category-lexicon","category-linguistic-reconstruction","category-sanskrit","category-welsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1503,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}