Where does "Family" come from? Etymology of FAMILY, СЕМЬЯ, HOME, ΟΙΚΟΣ | Etymology Monday
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ม.ค. 2025
- Etymology of English 🇬🇧 family, Italian 🇮🇹 famiglia, Russian 🇷🇺 семья
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In Chinese, 家 (jiā in Mandarin) means both family and home, and it's a pictograph of a pig underneath a roof, from ancient days when livestock lived with the family and was fundamental for its sustenance. Sometimes in oracle bones you can even see ancient versions of 家 with two pigs!
Random funny I would like to point out: In Cantonese "family member" is 屋企人 (uk1 kei2 jan4) literally translates to house-people which I find oddly funny
oh and also 家 can also mean house, and to show it's specifically a family or household we use 家庭 (jiā tíng Mandarin Pinyin/gaa1 ting4 Cantonese Jyutping/ka-têng Hokkien-Min Nan POJ/jia din T1 Shanghainese Wiktionary), and 庭 is a photo-semantic character whose sound is 廷 and radical is 广 which means house, specifically one built on a cliff
I thought that the word famelico (hungry) had something to do with family
@@innerthreatcircus5651 afaik, famelico comes from Latin fames, "hunger", that has the same root as FA-tisco, in the sense of "to lack/be in need of".
@@novdelta381 Glad to know there are Cantonese speakers who pay attention to polyMATHY.
Where are you from (Canton/HK/Macau/Malaysia)?
@@novdelta381 屋企 is literally akin to English "household" ---- (house - stand/ prop up).
"just wait untill I do 50 of these" yes! Please do 50 more! I love this videos so much 😊
Every Monday will be Etymology Monday!
@@polyMATHY_Luke I like this idea a lot. Make it so.
In Serbian, family is "Porodica", derived from "porod" - offspring, which in turn is derived from "rod", meaning kin, from the verb "roditi" - to give birth. Foundation is "osnova", but in construction terms, it's "Temelj" - derived from Greek themélio, so it's a nice indo-european rollercoaster.
We also have rod in Romanian. It means fruit. Figuratively, it can be used to mean child as the fruit of one's womb. The verb is a rodi = to bear fruit.
Interesting! In Polish "poród" means childbirth. We have "rodzina" which is also based off the root "ród", which in Polish means "lineage". We also have "rodzić", which has the same meaning as Serbian "roditi" - to give birth.
@@itsbazyli same in czech .. except "rodit" in czech means to give birth (actually even "roditi" is an anachronistic way of saying it ) ..so in this case a little bit closer to serbian .. oh yeah - "rodič" means "a parent"
Similar to Russian.
Род/Rod can be translated from Russian as "extended family", "lineage" or "ancestry" or, if you want to go really old-fashioned, as "a house". In biology it also means "genus".
Родить/Rodit' is "to give birth".
Родитель/Roditel' means "a parent".
Родич/Rodich is an old way to say "a relative", "a kin".
Родственник/Rodstvennik is a more modern word for "a relative".
There's also an old word Родня/Rodnya which is similar to Род/Rod in meaning and can also be translated as "extended family", although it may refer to close family as well (to parents, to siblings). Rodnya is more of a vulgar, simplefolk word though, in comparison to Rod, which has a more "official" vibe to it.
Interestingly, in modern Russian the word Фамилия/Familia simply means "surname" or "last name" and is indeed unrelated to the word Семья/Sem'ya, which is "family".
Funny enough, Семья/Sem'ya sounds identical to a phrase Семь я/Sem' ya - which can be translated as "seven me" (Семь/Sem' is "seven", Я/Ya is "I" or "me"). That's a good hint on how families in the past used to be viewed as large groups of people.
And one more little history lesson: traditionally, most simple peasants in Russia had no proper last names. To distinguish between several different men named Ivan, they used nicknames such Ivan the crooked (maybe because he had an injury), or Ivan the priest's son (because his dad was a local priest), or a person could just bear a nickname as a name - like a man named Wolf could be named so because he was aggressive. You can see how most of these nicknames evolved into modern Russian last names (like Волков/Volkov - translates as "of a wolf").
I just wanted to comment this lol.
In Slovak, that western Slavic language, the word for family is rodina, which is definitely related to the verb rodiť, to give birth, and the noun rod, genus.
This helps me see where the word "familiar" comes from, in the sense of a witch's familiar. I kind of wondered how that came about. A wonderful video as always.
Good thought! That didn't occur to me ^^
Yes! Or a vampire's like in What We Do in the Shadows. 🧛♂️ Thanks!
I instantly had that thought in my mind when he said family was related to slave.
In Modern Greek, family is οικογένεια /ikoʝénia/ from οἶκος (in Modern Greek pronunciation, /íkos/) + γένος (Latin genus = lineage, descent)
I think the word οικογένεια is a very Byzantine word . I found it in Byzantine chronicles of 11th century.
Γένος is cognate with, but not derived from, Latin genus. I guess cognate is another one too. Con + natus (born with) or gnatus, ultimately from PIE *ǵenh₁-, whence γένος.
In Turkish, for family we use "Aile" (pronounced similar to 'I lay', except the y part) which comes from Arabic, meaning "people one is obliged to look after", derived from the word "ˁāla عال", meaning "One has looked after, one has fed, one has provided for (the family)".
I am not quite sure but before Arabic word was borrowed, "ocak" (odjack) was used (literally, fireplace.) The term is used closely with house, which was in Turkic culture a tent and a fireplace at the center. But this term does not cover family anymore.
Family is also borrowed into the language, as "Familya" (Familia). But it is used generally for taxonomic categories of species in nature.
Sorry for my bed England.
Love your content, keep up the good work 👍
Merhabalar, TH-cam sorun çıkardığı için yorumum gitmemişti de şimdi tekrar gönderdikten sonra yorumları incelerken baktım ki sanki sizden araklamışım gibi durmuş, kusuruma bakmayın lütfen okuyup da öyle bir izlenime kapılırsanız.
@@burakerdem9758 hiç sorun değil :) Ben de zaten kimse yazmamış diye eklemiştim buraya, bizden birilerini görmek sevindirici 😄
Cool!
"Odžak" (from ocak) exists dialectally in Bosnia. It's also a name of a town there.
Great video, I love learning about etymological roots. Family in Persian is Fâmil, borrowed from French. The native Persian word is Xânevâde which is also used and means "household."
In Icelandic, we have a few words for family. The most common is fjölskylda, which is a compound of 'fjöl' (which comes from PG '*felu', cognate with Latin 'plus') and 'skylda', which means obligation or duty (derived from 'skuld', a word for debt, and cognate of English 'should'). So your family is 'the people to which you have a duty'. Similarly, to say that two people are related, you use the adjective 'skyldur', literally 'dutybound' or 'obligated'.
Another word that means extended family is 'ætt'. After googling it, it apparently comes from a PG word for property. I'm also relatively certain that I heard on Jackson Crawford's channel that each of the three 8-rune families in elder futhark was called an 'ætt', which brings to mind a standard construction, that is 'átta' (eight) becoming 'ætt' (set of eight). It could be related to that as well.
Finally, the word 'hyski' used to mean family, but now means something more like 'gang'. It's derived from the word 'hús' (house), and is transparently understandable as just 'the people of the household'.
In Irish 'family' is also derived from house: teach > teaghlach; effectively meaning household.
There's also the word 'muintir', that is more broad (extended family), and can even mean community, the broadest and most famous example being 'muintir na hÉireann' = the people of Ireland
Outstanding!
The ancient Greek θεμέλια (I hope I spelled that right) made its way into Romanian as temelie. It means the same thing: the foundation or base of something.
Wow foarte cool!!
also in Croatian is: temelj ... foundation; base ... (of the house, for example) ... (letter "j" in Croatian is always pronounced as "y" in English word "yesterday"), btw. yester in yesterday is in a relation towards German Gester-n ... The entire "central Europe area" where is in usage Latin alphabet use the letter "j" in this way: so, In German, in Polish, in Czech, in Slovak, in Hungarian, in Slovenian, in Croatian; the same thing is with usage of letter "k" ... I belive it is because and under German influence ... Polish language became the language of literature in 15th century ... and in Polish alphabet for voice /v/ they are using letter "w" (same as in German), and for voice /h/, in Polish is used "ch" (same as in German) ... It is interesting that in Croatian and in some other Slavic languages (maybe in all of them, I'm not sure) we have word "dom". And "dom" means "home"; in Polish "dom" means also "house", while in central south Slavic languages, there is word "kuća" (letter "ć" is pronouced similar as in Spanish "ch" in word "noche")... I'm not sure, but etimology of "kuća" could be from word "kut", what means corner (of the house, or an angle in geometry) ... Interesting is that there is "domus" in lingua latina ... (domus Romanum) ... in Croatian we use word "domovina" (root in dom-) meaning "homeland" or what is Heimat in German ... in Srbian language they use "otadžbina" what comes from word "otac" (father) ...
@@krunomrki "Dom" comes from Homeric "δώμα" which means a house. Albanians and south Slavs still use the word. Greeks too but with a slightly changed meaning.
@@andreasmpintas9073 As far as I know word "dom" is in use in all Slavic languages; so, it didn't come to Slavic languages from Homeric epos, but it is a relative (like cousin in 3rd grade) ... with Homeric' s "doma" as well as with Latin "domus" ...
@@krunomrki Not just in Slavic languages, also in the Baltic ones. In Lithuanian 'namas' means house (n and b are often exchanged in Baltic languages compared to Slavic, i.e. 'debesis' meaning 'sky/cloud' in Lithuanian, but 'nebo' in Slavic languages). I also very much doubt it was borrowed from Homeric Greek into Slavic. Sanskrit 'dáma' also means house, which is further proof for an PIE origin and not a borrowing.
Ma nisu ovi Grci baš toliko posebni da su cijeli svijet izmislili ;)
Modern Dutch makes use of two words for family; familie, which encompasses all members of the family and gezin, which only entails the parents and the children. German has the archaic "Gesinde", which refers to manservants and the like; both Dutch gezin and German Gesinde go back to a hypothesised Proto-Germanic *gasinþiją, which itself is based on the root *senþ-, meaning to go or seek, which itself goes back to a hypothesied Proto-European form *sent- meaning to go.
Very cool!
Interestingly, this word yields another branch of etymology. When reading "Gesinde", I vaguely remebered that it's the root of the Czech slang word 'ksindl' (mening 'rabble', 'riffraff', 'vermin'), derived from German 'Gesindel' with the same meanig. Further etymology connects your's in an obvious manner. ;-)
@@jaromir.adamec Gesindel is still used (albeit) in a limited context but Gesinde is very archaic. You might read it in a history book or a novel
In German there is another word for ”family“, it is called Sippe as sib- in English sibling.
Sehr gut
In Russian фамилия (familiya) means last name. But it can also mean family in some fixed expressions such as фамильная реликвия (familnaya relikviya)- heirloom
In Polish; "familijny" means family as in the genre for films and TV.
It's just a neologism in Russian.
Thank you for another great etymology! These are my favorite.
You'll get them every Monday!
@@polyMATHY_Luke Monday is my new favorite day
I love this random etymological knowledge. Linguistics is very fun, and this also gives some nice inspiration for conlanging.
I'm glad you like it!
So many interesting comments abt word relationships in different languages. So great.
Thanks! 😃
Wonderful video, as per yuʒ!
Haha thanks! Great IPA!
CIAO! I love the videos about this THINGS, in a FAMILIAR mood, the WORLD needs more videos like this one, BRAVO!
Haha well done!
@@polyMATHY_Luke ♥️
Without further research I would have presumed it was connected to bread, and was a very early split from proto-IE that a p>f and n>m sound change could occur.
I love your videos!
Here's a suggestion for a future video: why do the Romances languages all have a different word for "boy"? (Latin: puer, French: garçon, Italian: ragazzo, Spanish: niño, Portuguese: menino, Catalan: noi, Romanian: bâiat)
Well, in Portuguese there are other words than menino too, such as rapaz and moleque (from quimbundo).
Your channel is basically a playground for language nerds. I love it. Greetings from Gemany!
Interestingly enough, the Greek word for "house" or "home" has survived in the concept "economy" which literally means "household. I wonder, though, where the Icelandic word for "family" comes from. It's "fjölskylda".
Great vídeo!
Beautiful!
Same in Polish, the modern word for 'household' - ''gospodarstwo'' also has a base root as 'economy' - ''gospodarka''. There is a possibility this is a calque from Greek or Latin.
Your skill for finding clips is truly impressive :)
Haha thanks! I love pop culture references.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Just like your cat memes
Aaaah, ogham writing!
@@alaksiejstankievicx that it is
@@weirdlanguageguy 2 or 3 of my writing systems was based on ogham (however I almost not use the original ogham).
Speaking about "Heim," there's "Heimat" in German, which can be translated as "homeland."
Greetings!
Right!
The french word for "hamlet" is "hameau". In Italian, "casa" (house) is often used to define a royal family (casa Savoia = the Savoia royal family). Another interesting french word for family is "foyer", which means "fireplace", which is itself a synonym for "house".
English uses 'houses' to describe royal lineage. The House of Lancaster or The House of Windsor
In West Slavic languages family is a variant of the word “rodina” (this is the Czech and Slovak spelling). That comes from the verb “rodit” meaning “to give birth”, or perhaps “to be born”. It is cognate with Latin “radīt” with a similar meaning. Semantically, therefore, it’s similar to English “kin” or Latin “genus”, instead of referring to a household.
Actually, Vladimir, the slavic RODA as in NARODA = people is cognate with romanian and latin ROD/ROADE/ A RODI = fruits of the earth and romanian RUDE = relatives (cognate with latin RUDIMENTA) and all of them are based on the word RADACINA/ROOT/RADIX in latin (hence the word RADICAL ) = the root of plants/people....and this is based on the sumerian and egyptian word RA = LIGHT in sumerian/SUN GOD in ancient egyptian because THE SUN/LIGHT is the ONE who makes everything GROW and multiply.
The romanian word NEGURA = undefined darkness, and romanian NEGRU/spanish Negro/italian NERO/french Noir and vedic sanscrit NEHRU are ALL COMING FROM TWO AGLUTINATED WORDS NEGO+RA = THE NEGATION OF RA/SUN/LIGHT = dark/black.
To this, there are also interresting meaning shifts between slavic languages. In Russian, the same word 'родина' means 'homeland', which is vlast' in Czech '. In turn, the same Russian word 'власть' means 'power', 'authority', 'rule'.
@@jaromir.adamec Actually, if you factor in the East Slavic pleophony, the same word in Russian is "волость", which kinda makes more sense 😁 But yes, vlast/власть/волость/оболость/область (cf. ἐπαρχία) are all of the same origin, *vȏlstь.
Rod reminds me of Root. They must be cognates. Rod is an ancient word it seems. Roditi/Rod/Rodbina/Porodica (eetsa) in Serbo-Croatian.
Latin: Familia
Spanish: Familia
Learning Latin has been so easy for me since it is so similar to Spanish
In Polish family = rodzina. It was derived from the word ród = lineage, house (as in House Targaryen), line, etc. which in turn came from the Proto-Slavic word rodъ, meaning "giving birth" or "what was born."
,,Rodzina" kinda sounds like smaller version of ,,ród" or part of it or descendant of it
@@krk5770 And it surely is, when I say rodzina I think about my close family, and ród would be our whole family tree or something.
Heavily underrated channel
How kind of you! In time, we will grow together 😃
These videos are my favorites!!! Do you take etymology requests?
Also... "Just wait until I do 50 of these"... (Dominica's heart skips a beat 🥰)
Awww! How sweet! Yes I take requests
One can note the intense use in Christian Latin of the expression "famulus Dei" servant of God, frequently applied to priests. "Family" initially designates in Rome the set of slaves belonging to a house and, by extension, it applied to the house itself with all the people, free or slave, who lived in it. The expression "Res familiaris" is equivalent to the property or property of the owner of a house. "Familiaris" (familiar) also meant a very close person, a friend; thus the abundant letters of Cicero bear as title in literature the name "Epistulae ad familiares". Instead, the current meaning of "familiar or relative" (Familiar/pariente in Spanish) was expressed in Latin with the adjectives "propinquus" or "cognatus".
The traditional etymology links the word "famulus", like the form "famel", and the word "family" to the root of "fames" (hunger), so that the group of "relatives", are consanguineous or domestic servants , would refer to those who satisfy their hunger in the same house to whom a "pater families" must feed. Whether it is a traditional etymology or not, it seems to me that this is what the Romans understood before the original term: a group of people who eat together in a house.
Right! Although the etymology of "famēs" is uncertain, and the connexion to "famulus" has not been clearly demonstrated. Thanks for the comment! en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fames#Etymology
When he talked about "famelos" the first thing that came to my mind was "famélico" which is Portuguese for hunger
Awesome comment thanks for that one. When I read It I had one of face palm moments because it is such a good example. Amazing how certain etymological information is right under our noses but we don’t always see it.
@@hieratics "famélico" is someone who is really hungry, like dying, hasn't eaten for days, looks like a skeleton (the word has a strong meaning). The common word for hunger is "fome", directly from "famēs", I imagine
@@hieratics in Portuguese, at least in Brazil, “famélico” is a term more used in the law field, referring to a man who is in the state of hunger and steal food
there's also a word фамилия that shifted in meaning in an interesting way
Very factual!
In Arabic there are 2 words used for family: عائلة [؟a:?ilah] which comes from a verb that means to support or povide to, so it means those whom one supports or provides to.The other word is أسرة [ usrah] comes from the word سر [ sirr] meaning a secret , so it means those who know one's secret . Another word used id ال [a:l] , with a long a pronunciation, can mean family in the sense of house of , comes from a root that means to belong to, to come from or originate ,which gave words like اول [ awwal] meaning first, أولي [ awwali] meaning primary,initial etc
Is Oikos related to economics? Eg the economics of the household
In Hebrew, it is believed that the word for family, משפחה (mishpakha) is either derived or related to שפחה (shifkha), a female servant. It is known that the female servant was a part of the family for the rest of her life, and even gave birth instead of the mother of the family if she couldn't (there is even a story in the bible describing this), so it is kind of similar to how the Latin word was created.
In addition, there is an assumption that משפחה and שפחה are related to סיפוח (sipuakh), which means adding someone/ some people to another group (also means annexation in modern Hebrew).
I'm not a hebrew speaker but if I take this word mishpakha and turn it in arabic...This gave mishfaka مشفقة.... 'Mi' is a prefix for place or action... Chifka = Taking care/sharing happiness and sadness... The sens of the word become place group of person who take care of each other and share same feelings = household/Family!!...the arabic etymology of this word is more accurate than the hebrew one!! (modern hebrew is a recreated language spoken by non semetic, and lost many of its original meanings)
Família in portuguese is family too.
Dude this is so awesome! I’m glad I came across this! Fits you to T! Nice job brother and great to see you!
Otro gran video señor Luke 😎👌
Gracias :D
In Turkish, the word for family is "aile" (adopted from Arabic) and means "group of people that one is responsible to provide for". It apparently comes from an Arabic word that means "provide for, care for". Thanks for prompting me to look it up!
Please more series 😁😀
You'll get it! This is Etymology Monday. 😃
the Arabic word أهل (IPA /ʔahl/) meaning "family, household, relatives, parents; inhabitants of a place, people that follow, are expert in, or are in someway related to something" is cognate with words that mean "tent" in Hebrew and Aramaic and "settlement, city" in Akkadian, and this video reminded me of that!
In Serbian we have word Temelj, never realised it is cognate with Family. Family in Serbian is Porodica, it comes from Porod, which means Descendants (another words that come from Porod are Porodilište, place where babies are born and Preporod, which means rebirth). We also sometimes use Familija but it is rarely heard
It's similiar to Polish "rodzina" (family) which also is connected to "rodzić" (to give birth), "ród" (kin, extended family), "poród" (labour - as an act of giving birth), "rodowód" (lineage) and many others.
@@sharkie115 It's always interesting to hear similarities. To translate words that you gave:
porodjaj - act of giving birth
rod, rodbina - kin, extended family
rodoslov - lineage
@@sharkie115 related to russian "Родина", that means Motherland?
Cool!
@@darktyrannosaurus22 I assume it must be related.
The shirt you're wearing combined with how the thumbnail is cropped gives strong Captain Picard in The Next Generation vibes.
Thanks! I wear a Picard uniform in an old photo on IG
Отлично. Спасибо за видео!)
Como já dizia o poeta "família, família, cachorro, gato, galinha,,," talvez alguns entenderão a referência.
Hahaha perfeito
"Almoça junta todo dia, nunca perde essa mania"
Lovely video as always! Nobody will complain if you do 50 of these hehe
Haha yay!
It never ceases to amaze me how interconnected all the world's languages are. In this case Greek, Latin, and Slavic.
On a somewhat unrelated note: Whenever you speak in Latin, is it Classical Latin that you speak? Or is it Vulgar Latin, as in the Latin that the Romance languages are descended from? Just curious. And once more, great vid!
They are interconnected because the belong to the same language family, and presented in the same geographical and cultural area. You find not so much connection between any Indoeuropean and Bask lnaguages, or even less with native american
Thanks! Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin are not different entities 100 BC to 200 AD. It’s just Latin. And that’s what we speak. No one speaks “Vulgar Latin” exclusively
@@polyMATHY_Luke Oh okay... I actually did not know that. Thank you! 😊
You should cover as well the etymology of servus and servio (hence a lot of words like "servant" and "preserve").
Just to keep the cherished reference to slavery.
Haha I might do that
Great video!
So,
Another example of how to say family in French is to refer to a ‹ foyer › , which is the place where fire burns, meals are cooked, etc. By extension it designates a home, and, thereby, a family.
Persian borrowed /fāmīl/ from French (? with a final L.. sic), but formal Persian has also /χānæwādæ/ خانواده , composed of χānæ خانه the house and wādæ واده origin, foundation..
Arabic has عائلة /ʕaːʔila/ related to having children, but also /ʔusra/ أسرة (of which i dont have the etymology.. but it does sound like it's related to /ʔasiːr/ أسير the prisoner :/ )...
But there's also other words in use, classical /ʔaːl/ , /ʔahl/ which is still used in dialects today , and of course the metonymic use of ‘house’ بيت /bajt/ ,
as in the doublet ‘Ahlu-l-Bayt’ أهل البيت lit. ‘People of the House (sc. of the Prophet)’, to refer to his close family in islamic historiography.
The Arabic for family أسرة comes from the root which as a verb means to "take as a prisoner (usually of war)". It is related to Hebrew words meaning to tie up and even forbidden. It is also possibly related to سرير meaning (raised) bed.
Another interesting word is أهل which means people or family. It is sometimes used to refer to one's wife specifically and is cognate to the Hebrew word for tent.
In French, there is the word "famille", but also "foyer".
"Foyer" has multiple meanings. The first one is "a place where people make fire", then you have "hearth"," home" ("une femme au foyer" is a housewife), and finally, by metonymy, "family". For instance, "fonder un foyer" means "to start/found a family".
The ability to make fire was really important in the past. Maybe you could make a video about it? The origin of "Fire".
i really enjoy these more relaxed etymology videos with the really dry humor; it just makes me laugh harder than it should have. i hope you make more of these. they're great fun :D
Thanks! Yeah people weren’t watching them so I moved on to another series for now. But I’ll do more.
There's also a house connection in the Welsh word for family 'teulu' which is a combination of 'tŷ' (house) and 'llu' (throng, band or force). I think there's a similar etymology behind the word for house in other Celtic languages. 'Llu' has somewhat military associations, like a group of people associated with the same house fighting for the same causes. You see it in words like heddlu (police), corfflu (corps) and gweithlu (workforce). I don't know if there are any studies out there about it, but I thought it would interest you anyway :)
My latin teacher once told us that they referred to a female slave as "famina" which meant something like "the hungry one", o "la hambreada" in spanish, maybe from there comes "famine" too xD. Also, your voice is quite soothing jajaja :v
I love your videos!
I'm glad you like my videos! I also have an ASMR channel
In Latvian, there are two words for family, ģimene and dzimta. Ģimene is more about close relatives and people living in one household, and dzimta is about extended family and kin. Ultimately both come from the same proto-Baltic root *gim- (to give birth), as dz and ģ are two possible palatalizations of g in Latvian. A related term is ģints (tribe, clan), which is a cognate of the Latin gens who shares a similar meaning.
Nice!
Thank you 🙏
In Valencian, fam means hunger. Tinc molta fam, means I am very hungry.
In Spanish, famélico, means starving, same as Famelic in English.
I am wondering if Family has something to do with "eating together", could it be?
I enjoy your videos. Take care and keep them coming.
In modern Greek the word for family is οικογένεια originating form the word οικογενής, meaning home born and it was apparently referring to a home slave, i.e. a slave that was born inside the home. I think this is a stunning connection to the Latin story!!
Thanks! Yes it is
Bravo!
So interesting! In Lithuanian, we have "kaimas" (village), obviously cognate with Germanic Heim, and "šeima" (family), very similar to East-Slavic семья, both stemming from the same Indoeuropean root!
Glorious! Lithuanian is the best 🇱🇹 ♥️
"kaimas" you say ... in Croatian village is "selo" ... that is in standard language and the most widespred word... but in northern dialects in Croatia it was in the past used word: "vas" or "ves", meaning village (a street in Zagreb today has the name "Nova ves", because in middle ages there was a village); in Slovenian language is: vas, and in Polish language is: wieš ...
@@krunomrki "Selo" is a common modern Slavic word for "village" or "pasture". Apparently it is a fusion of proto-Slavic "selo" (pasture/field/Latin "salum") and "sedlo" (settlement/to sit/Latin "sella/sedla"). Only Western Slavic still retains distinction in pronunciation between the two meanings, e.g. "sedl(i)ak" meaning "villager" in some languages/dialects.
Speaking of "семья" and "home", did you do your take on centum and satem?
Cool, what a gem!
In Arabic the word for “family” is عائلة which derives from the verb عال meaning “that which sustains/supports/provides for/supplies with sustenance”.
If I could provide any help to the matter, in modern greek there is a word 'εφάμιλλος' (deriving from άμιλλα, meaning emulation "effort to match or surpass a person"), or as the ancient greek word 'ἐφάμιλλος /efámillos/ or ἐφάμιλλον /efámillon/' meaning in both cases, someone (or something) of equal value
How can a bold guy look so cute???
What a silly thing to say. Being bold does not mean you cannot be cute... Geee
@@FarfettilLejl
Hey! 😠 you do NOT GEEEE my jokes!
KAPEEESH???
@@jaydoublegee2831 if there was a joke there, I clearly missed it. Don't worry, though, I'm sure I was the only one!
@@FarfettilLejl
Yeah 12 likes from viewers and a ❤️ from the guy who uploaded the video should have been a clue but mk
@@jaydoublegee2831 perhaps you're right. Anyway, let's stop wasting our time arguing unnecessarily in the comment section
I just wish I finally got the joke
Luke, saludos. Tienes un canal excelente. Actualmente en español se usa igual que en latín "familia".
love you Luke
Thanks!
Does latin famulus have any Indoeuropean cognates?
Great video by the way!
Wonderful, thank you!
Best fucking channel ever. I fucking love your videos.
That’s so nice of you! Thanks! Etymology Mondays are now the thing 😃
so I literally only thought about it now for the first time but
in Hebrew "family" is משפחה (mishpacha) which now that I think about that probably comes from שפחה (shif'cha - female slave)
also the word for male slave is עבד (eved) which comes from the word עבודה (avoda - work)
this may not be true but it makes a lot of sense so maybe there's a pattern here
Ahi ahi ahi 😨😱😵🙉🙈
Indeed, both are of the same origin. Some people suggest that it has to do with the sense of joining (שורש ס.פ.ח). It is about the same thing: a family is always being together.
More about that: hebrew-academy.org.il/2014/02/02/%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%97%D7%94/
@@laurapavone3513 yupppp
@@etai.hakaryan yeah it makes sense. if we were to only rely on text it's probably less likely but since most of the language is spoken I guess ס and ש got mixed up because of the sound
LOL. So sad. :(
Hi Luke. What microphone are you using? You sound amazing! -Aziz
Rode Podcaster ☺️
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you very much.
Great video, do we know if the original Oscan word also meant slave? Since borrowings from other languages sometimes change in meaning.
In Oscan it seems to mean servile 😊
1:11 uma forma poética de definir , como se a família fosse para nós o que seria a pedra angular nas antigas construções ... Bonita ( e se contextualizada, polêmica, hahaha) definição...
In Swedish, ”familj” refers exlusively to the nuclear family. We have ”släkt” a separate word for the extended family, which was borrowed from the German ”Geschlecht” (probably spelled differently in low German). There is another archaic word, ”ätt”, nowadays mostly used to denote royal lineage. It is cognte with Gothic ”aihts”, meaning property.
Cool!
Pr.Germanic *-ᚨᛉ (*-az) and Old Norse -ᛦ (-r) are cognates with Latin -us and Greek -ος
That’s right!
Suddenly I realized that Lithuanian word Šeima might be related to German Heim. Thanks for the insight!
Excellent! When the Romans used famila to refer to the slaves, did they have a separate word for the “family” in our sense of the word?
Gens, possibly.
I'm not aware that they did, but the stirps would be inclusive to the heredity, as were tribūs and gēns
@@polyMATHY_Luke OK, thanks :)
Hej lucas interested
In Albanian language we say familja
And the house is shpia/shtëpia conectet with word shpirt=spirit ,also we use & banoj/banesa=reside
Trovo molto interessanti i tuoi video anche se parlo solo ita e inglese.
Ma parli anche un greco fluente?
The Filipino word for family is "pamilya", loaned from Spanish. However, we could argue that the word "tahanan", the Filipino word for home, could be taken to mean family (although often not used to directly translate the English word "family") in the sense that it is found in the phrases "haligi ng tahanan" ("pillar of the home"), which refers to the father, and "ilaw ng tahanan" ("light of the home"), which refers to the mother.
Amō pelliculas tuas etymologiae!
Just imagine if Oscan and Umbrian and the other Italic languages had not been replaced by Latin and had been allowed to thrive, with their own literature and all that.
It would be very interesting!
This explains why I’ve seen the word “familiar” used to denote a servant, often of a vampire or demon, on TV shows!
yeah even in games familio is used to summon low or weak demons!
Hello Luke, thanks for the video!
What I don't understand is that, since I suppose most Romans were commoners who didn't have thousands of slaves let alone 1, (Am I correct there?) how come this word of an extravagant origin came to represent the word for family among all social classes?
By the way, while the most common words for family in Turkish are "aile" and "hane", which are from Arabic and Persian respectively; one could say "ocak", a Turkic word which originally means "hearth" and is rarely used in the familial sense.
Great question! It's a common idea that language has to come from the lower classes, but this isn't always true. The parent language of Romance, which is mostly Vulgar Latin, wasn't the language of the lower class, but of the middle class, people of sufficient power and influence to drive commerce, farms, businesses, etc.
It would seem that once Rome was the ruler of all of Latium the word was part of standard Roman Latin, and the powerful position of the average Roman citizen in Latium may have contributed to its generalization as the vōx propria for "family."
Soooo awesome!! Don't want to put you to work.... but...
Ut queant laxis
Resonari fibris
Mira gestorum
Famuli tuorum ...etc (S. Ioannes hymn)
Is this famuli related? (No pun intended! XD)
Haha this isn’t work at all! It’s great.
Yup! Famulī here is the plural.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Do you this hymn? I's where the names of the latin notes come from... (of course you know it!!) 😅😉
No I don’t know it actually 😊
Famulus, servus, ancilla, minister, and other terms for “slave” are the same words for “servant,” so it can take on the sense of a paid employee or even a special bond, thus Sāncta Ecclēsia ancilla Dominī. Famulus can even mean “waiter,” as well as “minister” in modern Latin.
@@polyMATHY_Luke
Ut queant laxis
Resonari fibris
Mira gestorum
Famuli tuorum
Solve poluti
Labii reatum
Sancte Ioannes
Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, S.I., were taken from the first syllable of each verse which started in the named note.
Except for si which are Sancte Ioannes first letters. Yeaaaay!
Oh of course! 😅 I thought it looked familiar
Ergó valeó! Always when You say valéte I feel good hahae.
That’s great! 😃
Chinese does the same as ancient Greek, “family” and “house/home” are the same word: 家, jiā. The character comes from an idiogram of a roof 宀 with a pig 豕 inside-because they used to keep their animals on the ground floor. There’s also another word for family, 家庭 jiātíng, where 庭 means “courtyard”-i.e. “house and courtyard”-referring to the design of traditional Chinese households.
I think at some point in school an english teacher actually tried to tell me in all seriousness that the word family was artificially created from : " Father and Mother, I love you " Even at that point I felt it would be incredibly weird if a word for something so basic was at some point just artifically changed :D
That was really interesting! I have a hunch that one of my favorite etymologies might be right up your alley: "otrok". To Slovenian ears, this is simple a child, but in Czech it means "slave." Linguists have reconstructed its Proto-Slavic root form "otròkъ," which encompasses both meanings.
In medieval times in Serbia, Otrok was most likely a step above a slave, an indentured servant, although It still is a subject of much debate in scholarly circles.
Finnish PERHE stems from the word PERÄ that means: back, rear, tail end. Perhe was in Proto-Finnic pereš.
teraz - rodzina
So, in Hindi, the word is "Parivār" which means something like "surroundings," but I think it implies something like in the sense of a joint-family house. In Urdu the word is Xāndān, which is from an older Persian word that I think means something like "Household." This is basically the same thing as Xānevādeh, which is the modern Persian word that also means "household," but many also use the word fāmīl, which is French. The word Xāneh/Xānah (house) in Persian comes from the Middle Persian Xānag, which is apparently a contraction of Vahanam, which is cognate with Sanskrit Vasanam, which means "dwelling."
In Sanskrit, sometimes a family can simply be referred to as a gṛha or house, but there are also words that are more "descent-oriented" to refer to family, or in some cases, any analytical/genetic subunit. The word jāti is often mistranslated as "caste," but it actually means something like a "genetic subunit," "tribe," "species," or "race." When applied to humans, it the most accurate translation would be something like "ethnic group." It is cognate with the Persian "nezhād, which also means something like "race" (hence, Ahmadinejad = "of Ahmedi race" or "of the Ahmadi ethnic group). Likewise, its derivative suffix -jā is found in many names and is cognate with the Pashtun "-zāi" and the Persian "-zād." These words are related to the word "genesis" (compare to Skt. "janam") and describe someone with a common genetic origin (in the broadest sense, since many of these cultures consider adopted children to be blood descendants). Words like vaṃśa, kula and kutumba can have very similar types of meanings and can be translated as either "tribe" or "race," or more broadly, "ethnic group." Gotra and kula can both also be understood as "clan." Kutumba means something more like "lineage," and vaṃśa literally means that everyone in the vaṃśa has a common ancestor. For example, because my ethnic group is all descended from a mythical ancestor known as Chitragupta, we are known as Chitraguptavāṃśi, but my "gotra" would be a smaller subunit, but my community doesn't have gotras. I guess all of this complexity is from the not-so-distant past where everyone in South Asia was organized into many different configurations of clans and tribes.
It requires humility to be family, ready and willing to tend to the needs and legitimate wants of others and not arrogantly presume they are to serve me.
Luke, didn't ancient Greeks used the οικογένεια?
They did! And the adjective essentially means "famulus," but didn't come to mean the family until later.
does the word famen (hunger) have something to do with the origin of familia?
It appears not to 😊
@@polyMATHY_Luke oh ok !
Ah, ille illustrātus Mozart, in fīne quī audītur, est compositor mihi amātissimus! Ō laete tū, quī nomen eius habēs! 🎻🎼
Mihi quoque amātissimus! Etiam, sum faustus fēlīxque!
So, is it Lucius from Lykos? Wolf-gang (gang from gehen, ich gehe, ich bin gegangen; Wolf's passage or crossing)?
Teulu welsh, clann Gaelic for family
I please have a question : I tought I heard that you speak russian. I am leastening this langage (and latin) and here is my question : to you, what is the best russian method to learn this langage, and do you know if a "russian Orberg" exists? Thanks a lot for your videos !
We are looking for such a thing!
In Dutch there is a word that refers to only the parents and their children, namely "gezin". The word "familie" is used to refer to the parents, children, uncles, aunts, cousins and so on all together.
I have never heard of another language that has a word like "gezin".
In other languages their version of the word "family" simply fulfills both functions.